I am on my seventh day in the United States of America, land of my birth. It is an exciting and exhilarating and very very exhausting place, America.
I think it is not only the ambitious pace, the odd eating habits, and the harrowing winter weather -- and my habit of lumping some of life´s more unpleasant duties into each of my visits. (this one included a professional conference, as well as visits to the dentist and the Department of Motor Vehicles). I think the main factor, for me, is genetic.
My family lives here.
Families are messy, emotional, demanding things. You don´t know how much you love them until they are threatened. And as you know if you´ve read this blog recently, my mother´s health took a bad turn in the past month. I flew back to the old stomping grounds to stand by while she recovered from an abdominal surgery, and the lab results that came after.
It started out exciting and star-studded, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. While there I spent quality time with my great friend Kathy, my daughter Libby and her Intended, and several old friends sent my way by the Camino. I also met an awesome Franz Klein painting, la Infanta Christina de España (a princess), and a Hollywood movie star (Martin Sheen)... all of them up close. I met an ambassador, an importer of Spanish jamones, and some fascinating college professors, too. I invited them all over to visit, and some of them may well show up in Moratinos in coming months, part of a new intercollegiate pilgrimage study program. (probably not the painting, nor the princess. Nor the star. But you just never know.)
Maybe the best part of the whole trip, though, was driving a little rental car from Washington DC up to Pittsburgh, over the Allegheny mountains on an ancient highway on a Tuesday morning. I turned up the radio, and enjoyed it more than I have enjoyed the radio in a very long time -- starting out with National Public Radio´s deep and wide coverage of revolutions in the Middle East, then fading into the rural stretches of Maryland with country boys singing of fishin´ buddies and pickup trucks and Mama´s Hungry Eyes, then Eminem snarling "Mama, I Didn´t Mean to Hurt You," shifting into preachers calling me to a life of "the joy of holiness," hair-bands howling out how they Sold their Soul for Rock and Roll. Finally, up over Breezewood and onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike I found the jazz station from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, playing old Ella Fitzgerald "Got You Under My Skin" with a weird rhumba tom-tom syncopation. George Benson. Cedar Walton... then a shift up the dial for some Decemberists, Death Cab, and finally Train and Lady Gaga and the Top 40. By the time I rolled up at Mom´s house the NPR news cycle started up again.
The snow in mom´s yard is almost knee-deep. The house was fragrant, my sister Beth had brought over a big pot of beef vegetable soup.
Mom was her funny old self, walking slow, thinner and smaller than I ever remember seeing her, terribly pale. But smiling radiantly. Her hug felt the same, that beautiful Same that is Mom. I did not cry, at least not on the outside.
And so I stayed with her. I cleaned the bathroom, swept the floors, folded laundry, filled up the bird-feeders out in the snow. I learned about the sickness she´s up against, but I didn´t look at the big cut down her belly. I learned that my sister Beth is not only handling all of mom´s paperwork, she is now taking care of that horrific surgical wound, too -- arriving after 8 each morning to change the dressing. (I have known Beth my entire life, and the older I get, the more I have to admire her. I could never ever do that kind of heavy-duty nursing. No way. Not even for mom.)
I visited my grandfather, who at 94 years old looks more spry and healthy than my mom does at 72. I visited my sister Beth, my nephew Joey, my Aunt Esther and cousin Barbara and cousin Pete ... all the people who make this place my home town.
And this morning, me and Beth took mom to the big cancer hospital in Pittsburgh for the Last Word.
The tumors are not invasive, not even really cancer, the handsome young oncologist said. Someday Mom may need more surgery, or some chemotherapy, but not anytime soon. Her bloodstream and vital organs are not compromised. They will check her every six months for signs of cancer, but so far, so good. She is going to be alright.
Mom and Beth smiled politely and thanked him.
I went out into the hallway and sobbed til my nose bled.
The snow is melting, rain is coming down hard, the rivers are rising. It´s almost March.
It´s time to get the heck outta here. Time to go to my own Home.
I drive back down to Washington Saturday morning with the radio blasting, and I will fly out over the Atlantic overnight. God willing, I will be back home at The Peaceable on Sunday afternoon. (I know you come here to read about Moratinos, not Pittsburgh.)
Once there I will scratch my dogs and pass around the goodies I bought for everyone. And I will go to bed and sleep. I will sleep for days and days, because I will finally be able to rest again.
My mom is alive still. The earth is tipping back onto its axis. Life can go on, at least for a while.
Thank God thank God thank God.
Friday, 25 February 2011
Monday, 14 February 2011
Vermut
The little brick church was very cold inside, as Spanish churches tend to be. And while Don Santiago sang out the Mass, the weak winter sun coming in the windows darkened down. The scanty lightbulbs above the altar shone more and more yellow. The candles brightened and shivered -- the wind roared down the bell tower.
Sometime between the Sanctus and the Padre Nuestro, winter swaggered back in from the west.
After church we scuttled across the plaza and into the little meeting room in the ayuntamiento and gathered close around the butane heater. Esteban slid open the lid on the bar cooler. Out came the grape juice and refrescos for the ladies, and the white wine, the red, and the eponymous Vermut for the men. Sunday, after noon, after Mass...Vermouth. It is what is done here.
It is what we did. Around the table we sat. José took a calendar down from the wall, and on it -- month by month, with remembrances called out from everyone present -- he scrawled everyone´s name, on everyone´s respective birthday. In January we celebrated Raquel´s birthday, and this month, Patrick´s. Today it was Milagro´s turn. In March there´s only one, in April, several. We´ll be in the depths of Lent, but what the hell. We´re gonna have a good old party then, when spring is here, when the rye in the fields is ankle-deep.
En Mayo hay pocos cumpleaños. En Junio? Ningunio.
The wind tossed rain like gravel against the windows. Inside we marched through the calendar, through the year, remembering birthdays and births. Which inevitably led us to aging, and funerals, and deaths -- a primary topic of Vermut conversation. Which of us was born on the day of whose funeral, whose Abuela lived to be 93, whose Tio is still is alive at 96, still sharp. A "mere youth" from Sahagun, aged 78, died last week when a wall collapsed and buried him under tons of roof tiles. In Terradillos, the town next door, another man is ailing unto death -- the brother of Eutichio (or some wonderful name like that -- here we have Agapitas, Hilarios, Heliodoros, even!)
Fascinating.
But it wasn´t all death and dying. There´s news, too: Pepe, "the dueño of Terradillos," this week cut down the little forest out along the carretera and sold the timber to an outfit in Segovia. We´ll hear no cuckoos there this spring.
Paddy told about Harry, our sweet new galgo dog, adopted from the giant dog-pound in Medina del Campo -- part of a great wave of refugee hunting dogs dumped recently outside a shelter in Seville. (He howls with an elegant southern accent, I think. When the neighborhood dog chorus tunes up at 2 a.m. He yodels bulerias, saetas like a Flamenco star at a Holy Week procession.
The nascent character of Roque, a puppy sired by Esteban´s randy mutt Toby, out of Florín´s lapdog Amora and destined for Eduardo´s yard, was analyzed. Eduardo lives alone in a big house across from the church door. His last dog, also called Roque, (known by us as "Pants Dog,") was a vicious brute who attacked Tim one morning out in the plaza. Tim won, but Roque bit Eduardo in the melee. And when later on the dog bit Eduardo again, well... no more Roque. This new pup will be sweeter, calmer, and much smaller. So it was decreed.
The Vermut is becoming a Sunday routine, a healthy, friendly hour out of the week. Everyone is invited, but not everyone attends. Not everyone approves, I think -- but those absent are not discussed. Still, among the people gathered in the ayuntamiento, Moratinos life is recounted, celebrated, cemented.
The rain fell, the wind howled, the pilgrims stomped past outside, hunched inside their ponchos. Inside we were toasty-warm, from the stove, the merry company, and the Vermut.
Sometime between the Sanctus and the Padre Nuestro, winter swaggered back in from the west.
After church we scuttled across the plaza and into the little meeting room in the ayuntamiento and gathered close around the butane heater. Esteban slid open the lid on the bar cooler. Out came the grape juice and refrescos for the ladies, and the white wine, the red, and the eponymous Vermut for the men. Sunday, after noon, after Mass...Vermouth. It is what is done here.
It is what we did. Around the table we sat. José took a calendar down from the wall, and on it -- month by month, with remembrances called out from everyone present -- he scrawled everyone´s name, on everyone´s respective birthday. In January we celebrated Raquel´s birthday, and this month, Patrick´s. Today it was Milagro´s turn. In March there´s only one, in April, several. We´ll be in the depths of Lent, but what the hell. We´re gonna have a good old party then, when spring is here, when the rye in the fields is ankle-deep.
En Mayo hay pocos cumpleaños. En Junio? Ningunio.
The wind tossed rain like gravel against the windows. Inside we marched through the calendar, through the year, remembering birthdays and births. Which inevitably led us to aging, and funerals, and deaths -- a primary topic of Vermut conversation. Which of us was born on the day of whose funeral, whose Abuela lived to be 93, whose Tio is still is alive at 96, still sharp. A "mere youth" from Sahagun, aged 78, died last week when a wall collapsed and buried him under tons of roof tiles. In Terradillos, the town next door, another man is ailing unto death -- the brother of Eutichio (or some wonderful name like that -- here we have Agapitas, Hilarios, Heliodoros, even!)
Fascinating.
But it wasn´t all death and dying. There´s news, too: Pepe, "the dueño of Terradillos," this week cut down the little forest out along the carretera and sold the timber to an outfit in Segovia. We´ll hear no cuckoos there this spring.
Paddy told about Harry, our sweet new galgo dog, adopted from the giant dog-pound in Medina del Campo -- part of a great wave of refugee hunting dogs dumped recently outside a shelter in Seville. (He howls with an elegant southern accent, I think. When the neighborhood dog chorus tunes up at 2 a.m. He yodels bulerias, saetas like a Flamenco star at a Holy Week procession.
The nascent character of Roque, a puppy sired by Esteban´s randy mutt Toby, out of Florín´s lapdog Amora and destined for Eduardo´s yard, was analyzed. Eduardo lives alone in a big house across from the church door. His last dog, also called Roque, (known by us as "Pants Dog,") was a vicious brute who attacked Tim one morning out in the plaza. Tim won, but Roque bit Eduardo in the melee. And when later on the dog bit Eduardo again, well... no more Roque. This new pup will be sweeter, calmer, and much smaller. So it was decreed.
The Vermut is becoming a Sunday routine, a healthy, friendly hour out of the week. Everyone is invited, but not everyone attends. Not everyone approves, I think -- but those absent are not discussed. Still, among the people gathered in the ayuntamiento, Moratinos life is recounted, celebrated, cemented.
The rain fell, the wind howled, the pilgrims stomped past outside, hunched inside their ponchos. Inside we were toasty-warm, from the stove, the merry company, and the Vermut.
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
It´s Christmas After All
 |
| photo Laura Collins: The Metropolitan, Madrid |
We had a nice weekend, stayed at a fine hotel at a very reasonable price. We hiked around a good bit, had a visit with Candy, an old expat friend from New Orleans and Detroit (author of a Madrid guidebook!) and Paddy befriended a galgo at a restaurant terrazo in the Plaza Cervantes. We discussed our restaurant options at great length, but ended up eating forgettable Indian and Mexican meals... we were staying in a neighborhood unfamiliar to us. Had we been in our usual Madrid digs (Lavapies/Anton Martin) we´d have done much better, but hey. As Paddy likes to say, year-round, when we overspend: "It is Christmas, after all." (This may be the title of my autobiography.)
It was a worrisome weekend, what with my home football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, being in the Superbowl on Sunday night, and Patrick turning 70 years old on Monday, and my mother in the hospital with an unknown prognosis. Only time would work us through these mortal coils, so that is why we decided to pursue the plans already in motion.
It was the right thing to do. My sister Beth, always the one to Get Things Done, kept me updated on Mom. And in the fullness of time we learned Mom has a strange and rare condition called pseudomyxoma, which isn´t quite cancer, but isn´t such a great thing to have... but Mom is not on the Fast Track to Heaven, at least not anytime really soon. And I will admit, when I got the news (in the Starbucks on Calle Atocha at 9 a.m. Monday) I found the nearest church and I got right down on my knees right up front and cried like a baby saying Thank You God Almighty. (In Spain, in the cities, the churches are open for this kind of business. How cool is that? The guy cleaning the windows came over and handed me a tissue and patted me on the back.)
And thank you friends, who pray so almighty strong. You already in December proved you can turn gray Galician winter into soft blue-sky April, just by saying "please." So please, don´t stop.
My mother went home from hospital on Monday. Once she mends from the big surgery the doctors will start a round of chemotherapy, to kill whatever might still be inside there. She has good health insurance. She is in Pittsburgh, an excellent place to be if you need a doctor. And she is on first-name terms with God Himself. She is a lot more cool about all this than I am. She makes me look like the weenie I am, all my Buddhism and faith and pilgrim-ism notwithstanding. I am eternally grateful for her. (I am well aware that someday, something will take her out. She is in her 70´s. Death happens to everybody. I just want a chance to get used to the idea, before it happens to her. )
Paddy and I came back yesterday on the morning train. Christina the nun had gone, and another pilg had arrived -- Oliver, a hospitalero from Germany. Like many pilgs, Oliver loves to talk, mostly about Oliver. He speaks many languages, he cooks very well (he made us a lovely simple dinner), when I went to bed at 8:30 or so he was still going at it. I slept for 12 hours straight. We had been up til 4 a.m. the night before, watching the Steelers crash and burn in the big game... Oh well. It is not always easy or cheap, keeping the faith -- especially from a time zone six hours ahead. But we watched the game, with a lively group of Steelers fans around us, and with Adam and Marta, too -- two Madrid-based musicians who´ve been part of the guitar scene here for the past two years. Another nice visit. We are not alone out here.
And so back we are in Moratinos. We have not seen a lot of local action yet -- only Esteban the Mayor, stopping his car to ask us how Mom is, how Madrid was (he is a blog reader too). The weather continues beautiful. The garlic is sprouting, the saffron, the struggling grass seeds in the Somme out back... it cannot last, but it is a beautiful break. I am very grateful. I dried the laundry outside today, on the clothesline. I turned the compost, and turned over the earth in the new garden beds.
Tomorrow we go to Palencia, to see about replacing Paddy´s stolen Resident Alien card. Then we will head southwest to Medina del Campo, to a place called Scooby. Where we will, hopefully, meet the next member of the Peaceable Crew... Scooby is a dog pound that specializes in abandoned greyhounds. They sent us an email on Friday, begging for help. Hare-hunting season is just ending, and Evil People all over the country are dumping their less-than-stellar hunting dogs at Scooby´s doorstep. 160 dogs in the past two weeks... can we take at least one? (there are other ways to contribute!)
And this evening, after sundown, Lulu stood in the patio and cried with loneliness. Maybe we can find a galgo who is more people-friendly, energetic enough to give Lulu a good run every morning, and maybe give her a bit more confidence around humans, a creature of her own kind to help keep the barn warm at night. (Lulu, our greyhound, is neurotically shy, an outcome of an abusive background.)
Four dogs is a lot of dogs. But somehow this seems right. It is downright exciting, really... A galgo, a gift from the campo, for people of the campo.
I will let you know soon how grateful I feel.
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Disappearing
I feel like I disappeared off the earth for a while.
I am not sure what became of the last week or so. A pile of things have been achieved in that time, though: little Rosie Dog has been "fixed;" Tino the Electrician showed up and repaired all the electrical things that were not working (and installed a LOUD doorbell that sounds just like the one that launched us from biology to algebra class, back in eighth grade). Both our computers are running extremely slowly and we don´t know why. It snowed one night, and the rest of the days were sunny and bright. We clipped the hens´ wings, after watching how-to videos on YouTube, so now they cannot fly over the fence and ravage every living green shoot of the back yard. (We also learned on YouTube how to hypnotize chickens. This information could be devestating if it fell into the wrong hands, but we´ll probably try it soon if things don´t liven up. It is eerie, twisted somehow. It just ain´t natural.)
The fields are lime-green. A mendicant nun from Finland has been staying with us since Monday. Tomorrow me and Paddy will go to Madrid on the train. There we will see in his 70th year at an Irish pub on Plaza Cibeles, watching the Steelers win the Superbowl.
And, well... that is about it.
My mother is very sick in a hospital in Pittsburgh. I had planned to go to the USA in a couple of weeks, but only to Washington, DC, only for a couple of days. It looks like I will have to extend that trip... I love my mom terribly. The thought of seeing her so sick, along with the prospect of rental cars and February interstate driving, and figuring out the plane tickets (yadda yadda yadda) it all makes me want to, well...
Disappear off the earth for a while.
So if you don´t see me around here, that is where I am.
Still, many miles away to the west, Neptune shines bright. The Big Dipper is almost touching the horizon. The tiniest sliver of new moon is up there, too, skimming low along the southern sky.
God is in his heaven.
The world keeps turning.
I am going to be OK.
I am not sure what became of the last week or so. A pile of things have been achieved in that time, though: little Rosie Dog has been "fixed;" Tino the Electrician showed up and repaired all the electrical things that were not working (and installed a LOUD doorbell that sounds just like the one that launched us from biology to algebra class, back in eighth grade). Both our computers are running extremely slowly and we don´t know why. It snowed one night, and the rest of the days were sunny and bright. We clipped the hens´ wings, after watching how-to videos on YouTube, so now they cannot fly over the fence and ravage every living green shoot of the back yard. (We also learned on YouTube how to hypnotize chickens. This information could be devestating if it fell into the wrong hands, but we´ll probably try it soon if things don´t liven up. It is eerie, twisted somehow. It just ain´t natural.)
The fields are lime-green. A mendicant nun from Finland has been staying with us since Monday. Tomorrow me and Paddy will go to Madrid on the train. There we will see in his 70th year at an Irish pub on Plaza Cibeles, watching the Steelers win the Superbowl.
And, well... that is about it.
My mother is very sick in a hospital in Pittsburgh. I had planned to go to the USA in a couple of weeks, but only to Washington, DC, only for a couple of days. It looks like I will have to extend that trip... I love my mom terribly. The thought of seeing her so sick, along with the prospect of rental cars and February interstate driving, and figuring out the plane tickets (yadda yadda yadda) it all makes me want to, well...
Disappear off the earth for a while.
So if you don´t see me around here, that is where I am.
Still, many miles away to the west, Neptune shines bright. The Big Dipper is almost touching the horizon. The tiniest sliver of new moon is up there, too, skimming low along the southern sky.
God is in his heaven.
The world keeps turning.
I am going to be OK.
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Geordi y Ivan
The sky was blue, the sun was warm inside the walls of the Peaceable. I chopped down the blackberry thicket out back where the chickens are hiding their eggs. I had the back gate open, to clear the way to the brush-pile. The hens pecked round the green sprouts just outside.
Two men appeared at the gate from off the road outside. The chickens fluttered and squawked. I stood up and said hello.
"Is there an albergue in the town?" one of them asked, through broken teeth.
"No," I told him. "Nothing here for pilgrims. Do you need anything?"
"We aren´t pilgrims, at least not real pilgrims. We´re heading the other way, to Burgos," he said. He was giving me an opportunity to send him away. An honest man, I thought. Lots of travelers pretend to be pilgrims, even though their tennis shoes and bags and bluejeans give them away.
And their weariness. Pilgrims look tired-out. Homeless people are weary.
"Come in and have a coffee," I told them, wondering if I felt like having company. Paddy was ensconced in the kitchen, tapping away at the computer. I peeled off my gloves. My fingers were bloody, even though the gloves are the heavy-duty rosebush kind. I was ready for a break, too.
With coffee they relaxed, and the bigger one, Geordi, started talking. He spoke Spanish with a choppy regional accent I first thought was Basque. They are Geordi y Ivan, brothers, from Girona, up north of Barcelona. They shook Patrick´s hand, they gave me kisses of introduction. In ten minutes we knew their family was split up, their father in Catalunya, their mother in Lugo, way out west in Galicia. A year ago they lost their jobs when the fruit-processing plant closed. Their van was repossessed, and finally they were turfed out of the house by the evil stepmother. They hit the road, looking for work.
"Any kind of work. I can wait tables, pick fruit, short-order cook," Geordi said. "My brother knows all about inventories, warehouses, sorting things out. We worked at a campground for a while, in Ciudad Real, making salads and repairing things, but the campground closed down. We helped with the olives in the south ... but all those jobs are going to the Moros, the Morroccans, the foreigners who work for nothing."
I put some cookies on the table. They vanished. Geordi and Ivan had said "no, only a coffee," but they were hungry.
And they needed to talk. Or at least Geordi did.
They were in Madrid when they heard there was work in Toledo, building a new railway. They had no money for the bus or train, so they walked there, along the highway. Ninety kilometers, three days. In August.
They worked there til the job ran out. They headed north to their mother´s place in Lugo, stopping in the capitol to pick up some warm clothes from the big Caritas charity warehouse. The sleeves are short, Ivan said, holding up his arms -- but the clothes are warm, and free. His green sweater bore an embroidered logo from Xacobeo 1999. A holy year on the Camino.
While his brother talked Ivan excused himself. I thought he might be heading for the shower. I found him out in the back yard with the gory gloves and the sickle, finishing the gardening job I´d started.
Lugo is cold, Geordi said. Their mother´s little apartment isn´t big enough for long-term guests. There was no work for them up there, either. So they´re headed back east, hitching rides along the national road that parallels the Camino, bumming food and coffee and cigarettes, working wherever work can be found.
If I had been on my own, I would have fed them and then politely moved them on. But Paddy was home. And Paddy invited them to stay for dinner, stay overnight if they wanted. They said yes, thank-you, and washed their clothes and bodies, they ate a stewed rabbit with great relish, played with the dogs, and then slept for 12 hours on beds with real sheets and blankets. It made a change, Geordi said, from meals of sandwiches, and bedding down in bank lobbies with the ATM machines glowing overhead.
Geordi and Ivan moved along this morning. They let themselves out the back gate, back onto the highway. They were not effusive in their thanks, and that is how it should be. They have their dignity, those two, even if they don´t have money or jobs or nice clothes.
They are another kind of pilgrim. They do not walk to discover their inner selves, or to ponder the next step in their personal evolution. They don´t tie themselves into knots wondering if someone else´s pilgrimage is "authentic," or if they are getting enough B-vitamins from the Menu del Dia.
They walk to survive.
In my eyes, that is about as authentic as it gets.
Two men appeared at the gate from off the road outside. The chickens fluttered and squawked. I stood up and said hello.
"Is there an albergue in the town?" one of them asked, through broken teeth.
"No," I told him. "Nothing here for pilgrims. Do you need anything?"
"We aren´t pilgrims, at least not real pilgrims. We´re heading the other way, to Burgos," he said. He was giving me an opportunity to send him away. An honest man, I thought. Lots of travelers pretend to be pilgrims, even though their tennis shoes and bags and bluejeans give them away.
And their weariness. Pilgrims look tired-out. Homeless people are weary.
"Come in and have a coffee," I told them, wondering if I felt like having company. Paddy was ensconced in the kitchen, tapping away at the computer. I peeled off my gloves. My fingers were bloody, even though the gloves are the heavy-duty rosebush kind. I was ready for a break, too.
With coffee they relaxed, and the bigger one, Geordi, started talking. He spoke Spanish with a choppy regional accent I first thought was Basque. They are Geordi y Ivan, brothers, from Girona, up north of Barcelona. They shook Patrick´s hand, they gave me kisses of introduction. In ten minutes we knew their family was split up, their father in Catalunya, their mother in Lugo, way out west in Galicia. A year ago they lost their jobs when the fruit-processing plant closed. Their van was repossessed, and finally they were turfed out of the house by the evil stepmother. They hit the road, looking for work.
"Any kind of work. I can wait tables, pick fruit, short-order cook," Geordi said. "My brother knows all about inventories, warehouses, sorting things out. We worked at a campground for a while, in Ciudad Real, making salads and repairing things, but the campground closed down. We helped with the olives in the south ... but all those jobs are going to the Moros, the Morroccans, the foreigners who work for nothing."
I put some cookies on the table. They vanished. Geordi and Ivan had said "no, only a coffee," but they were hungry.
And they needed to talk. Or at least Geordi did.
They were in Madrid when they heard there was work in Toledo, building a new railway. They had no money for the bus or train, so they walked there, along the highway. Ninety kilometers, three days. In August.
They worked there til the job ran out. They headed north to their mother´s place in Lugo, stopping in the capitol to pick up some warm clothes from the big Caritas charity warehouse. The sleeves are short, Ivan said, holding up his arms -- but the clothes are warm, and free. His green sweater bore an embroidered logo from Xacobeo 1999. A holy year on the Camino.
While his brother talked Ivan excused himself. I thought he might be heading for the shower. I found him out in the back yard with the gory gloves and the sickle, finishing the gardening job I´d started.
Lugo is cold, Geordi said. Their mother´s little apartment isn´t big enough for long-term guests. There was no work for them up there, either. So they´re headed back east, hitching rides along the national road that parallels the Camino, bumming food and coffee and cigarettes, working wherever work can be found.
If I had been on my own, I would have fed them and then politely moved them on. But Paddy was home. And Paddy invited them to stay for dinner, stay overnight if they wanted. They said yes, thank-you, and washed their clothes and bodies, they ate a stewed rabbit with great relish, played with the dogs, and then slept for 12 hours on beds with real sheets and blankets. It made a change, Geordi said, from meals of sandwiches, and bedding down in bank lobbies with the ATM machines glowing overhead.
Geordi and Ivan moved along this morning. They let themselves out the back gate, back onto the highway. They were not effusive in their thanks, and that is how it should be. They have their dignity, those two, even if they don´t have money or jobs or nice clothes.
They are another kind of pilgrim. They do not walk to discover their inner selves, or to ponder the next step in their personal evolution. They don´t tie themselves into knots wondering if someone else´s pilgrimage is "authentic," or if they are getting enough B-vitamins from the Menu del Dia.
They walk to survive.
In my eyes, that is about as authentic as it gets.
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Kafka in January
Seems like I wrote that Calendar blog a long, long time ago!
Since then we went to Belgium for a week of riotous indulgence: art deco, opera, oysters, roast goose, and five days of steady downpour. A good time was had by all, but I bet Filipe is very glad to have his little house back.
Paddy behaved well, seeing as he hates going anywhere. He even admitted that Ghent is a wonderful place. He declared it "very civilized." But he swears he will never leave home again. (Paddy swears a lot.)
Ghent is beautiful, (and so are Filipe, roast goose, and art deco) but I cannot show you the photos.
The trip home was frightful. The airplane from Brussels sat on the runway for an hour before taking off. We got to Madrid airport, onto the subway, and into Chamartin train station just in time to see the Kafka Express, the last Sahagun train, pull out and head north. (I call it that after Franz Kafka, the Czech novelist who took bureaucracy and boredom and turned them into hair-raising literature. If you´ve seen the movies "Sliding Doors," or "Groundhog Day," you will understand what this eternal train ride through darkness does to the mind.) Our computer couldn´t get internet access at the station, and the locutorio was closed.
After much discussion and a flurry of phone calls we learned that Hostal Isabel, our favorite Madrid boarding house, was full-up. We let the travel agent in the station book us into a place downtown. On our way there the subway was packed. Three professional-looking young men at the second-to-last stop took off with our zippy little camera, which was (I thought) securely zipped inside my daypack. And so our Belgium photos are now, perhaps, being admired by a family of Rumanian pickpockets.
They also took Paddy´s wallet. It upset Paddy mightily when it happened, but when we calmed down and checked over our belongings we realized there was no money in there. Just his bank card, his healthcare ID, and his Spanish Legal Alien ID.
I still have all my cards and ID and cash. We have another camera at home. We were not left without resources. Just a monumental pain in the ass.
We got to the hotel. It was noisy, overpriced, and grubby. We took a walk, found Restaurant Bangkok, and drowned our troubles in Tom Yum and lemon grass. We were in the swinging tourist hotspot of Spain´s capitol, but all we wanted to do was go home.
Which we finally did. The next morning we took the Zen Train, the morning Regional, which stops every couple of miles. You see the backyards of castles and cattle-pens all across Castilla from that train. It´s great meditative practice, if you have a great expanse of time.
At home the house sparkled, Kim smiled, the dogs wagged as hard and fast as their bums could wiggle, and Murph uncoiled and stretched himself in our direction. Even the chickens seemed to mass ´round the window to welcome us home. We unpacked all our loot from Belgium, took a long walk across the campo, and opened the mail.
I found one of Filipe´s t-shirts in our luggage, and his bus pass in my wallet.
I looked up the legal process one faces when one loses one´s Spanish Alien ID card. It is as Kafka-esque as the night train from Madrid. (Spanish bureaucracy is a marvellous thing.)
The complicated dichroic 230v. cable-lights failed in Kím´s bedroom. I went to change one of the bulbs and it broke off in the socket. We called an electrician. He has yet to arrive.
One of the brown hens is ill.
The girlfriend of one of Paddy´s sons has taken up with someone else.
Kim left this afternoon, off to America. We do not know if or when we will see her again, and that makes me sad indeed.
Still, today is not so bad. Paddy is making pulled pork in the crock-pot. Bruno is back from Italy, and great progress is being made at the albergue. A few of the bulbs I planted in November are poking up sprouts from the black mud of the patio. The trees in the ditches are turning yellow, showing signs of life to come.
After dropping Kim at the train station I went round to the Redondo Stihl Boutique to order one of those huge vacuums Miss April is so fond of. Señor Redondo said no, that is too expensive. I must first test-drive the smaller model Stihl vacuum he uses in the shop, a vacuum that sells for less than half the price. He went to find it, and learned his sister had borrowed it. She is building a house, and needs to clean up after the drywall installers. Which made me think this might be the vacuum for me -- three dogs and a cat each day create at least as much dust as the average sheet of gypsum board. But I will have to go back tomorrow, and see the machine at work. Señor Redondo apparently doesn´t want me to buy too much vacuum. I can appreciate that.
For the first time in weeks the sky is clear and bright. Tonight I will take out my telescope. The moon is brilliant, and Saturn´s moons and rings are said to be breathtaking this time of year. I have my little planisphere sky-map, and I think I remember how to use it. I can´t wait!
And so I am reminded: When the world all around me is gray and muddy, I don´t have to just stand there with my head hanging down. I have options. I look elsewhere.
I can even look up.
Since then we went to Belgium for a week of riotous indulgence: art deco, opera, oysters, roast goose, and five days of steady downpour. A good time was had by all, but I bet Filipe is very glad to have his little house back.
Paddy behaved well, seeing as he hates going anywhere. He even admitted that Ghent is a wonderful place. He declared it "very civilized." But he swears he will never leave home again. (Paddy swears a lot.)
Ghent is beautiful, (and so are Filipe, roast goose, and art deco) but I cannot show you the photos.
The trip home was frightful. The airplane from Brussels sat on the runway for an hour before taking off. We got to Madrid airport, onto the subway, and into Chamartin train station just in time to see the Kafka Express, the last Sahagun train, pull out and head north. (I call it that after Franz Kafka, the Czech novelist who took bureaucracy and boredom and turned them into hair-raising literature. If you´ve seen the movies "Sliding Doors," or "Groundhog Day," you will understand what this eternal train ride through darkness does to the mind.) Our computer couldn´t get internet access at the station, and the locutorio was closed.
After much discussion and a flurry of phone calls we learned that Hostal Isabel, our favorite Madrid boarding house, was full-up. We let the travel agent in the station book us into a place downtown. On our way there the subway was packed. Three professional-looking young men at the second-to-last stop took off with our zippy little camera, which was (I thought) securely zipped inside my daypack. And so our Belgium photos are now, perhaps, being admired by a family of Rumanian pickpockets.
They also took Paddy´s wallet. It upset Paddy mightily when it happened, but when we calmed down and checked over our belongings we realized there was no money in there. Just his bank card, his healthcare ID, and his Spanish Legal Alien ID.
I still have all my cards and ID and cash. We have another camera at home. We were not left without resources. Just a monumental pain in the ass.
We got to the hotel. It was noisy, overpriced, and grubby. We took a walk, found Restaurant Bangkok, and drowned our troubles in Tom Yum and lemon grass. We were in the swinging tourist hotspot of Spain´s capitol, but all we wanted to do was go home.
Which we finally did. The next morning we took the Zen Train, the morning Regional, which stops every couple of miles. You see the backyards of castles and cattle-pens all across Castilla from that train. It´s great meditative practice, if you have a great expanse of time.
At home the house sparkled, Kim smiled, the dogs wagged as hard and fast as their bums could wiggle, and Murph uncoiled and stretched himself in our direction. Even the chickens seemed to mass ´round the window to welcome us home. We unpacked all our loot from Belgium, took a long walk across the campo, and opened the mail.
 |
| Rosie, or Rosey. Or "Rosalia Castro de Arzua" |
I looked up the legal process one faces when one loses one´s Spanish Alien ID card. It is as Kafka-esque as the night train from Madrid. (Spanish bureaucracy is a marvellous thing.)
The complicated dichroic 230v. cable-lights failed in Kím´s bedroom. I went to change one of the bulbs and it broke off in the socket. We called an electrician. He has yet to arrive.
One of the brown hens is ill.
The girlfriend of one of Paddy´s sons has taken up with someone else.
Kim left this afternoon, off to America. We do not know if or when we will see her again, and that makes me sad indeed.
Still, today is not so bad. Paddy is making pulled pork in the crock-pot. Bruno is back from Italy, and great progress is being made at the albergue. A few of the bulbs I planted in November are poking up sprouts from the black mud of the patio. The trees in the ditches are turning yellow, showing signs of life to come.
After dropping Kim at the train station I went round to the Redondo Stihl Boutique to order one of those huge vacuums Miss April is so fond of. Señor Redondo said no, that is too expensive. I must first test-drive the smaller model Stihl vacuum he uses in the shop, a vacuum that sells for less than half the price. He went to find it, and learned his sister had borrowed it. She is building a house, and needs to clean up after the drywall installers. Which made me think this might be the vacuum for me -- three dogs and a cat each day create at least as much dust as the average sheet of gypsum board. But I will have to go back tomorrow, and see the machine at work. Señor Redondo apparently doesn´t want me to buy too much vacuum. I can appreciate that.
For the first time in weeks the sky is clear and bright. Tonight I will take out my telescope. The moon is brilliant, and Saturn´s moons and rings are said to be breathtaking this time of year. I have my little planisphere sky-map, and I think I remember how to use it. I can´t wait!
And so I am reminded: When the world all around me is gray and muddy, I don´t have to just stand there with my head hanging down. I have options. I look elsewhere.
I can even look up.
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Weighty Decisions
Somewhere down in the root of my being, I don´t believe in time.
I keep track of time only in a more-or-less fashion. Not the minutes-and-hours kind -- I haven´t worn a wristwatch in decades, not even when I worked with three daily deadlines. Keeping track of days and dates is about as micro-managed as I can get. Thankfully, Spain has a pretty loose grasp of time, too. I can tell we are coming to the end of one year and the start of another by the number of calendars accumulating on the nail in the kitchen wall.
We have wall-space in our house for a single calendar. Merchants give away stacks of free calendars each December, a low-cost goodwill gesture that gets their advertisements into households throughout the region. This year we have a marvellous array of them, from High Art to Vulgar Girly, and I must decide, somehow, which will make the cut.
First are the little desktop models. One came from Fertiberia, manufacturers of fertilizers, seeds, and agricultural chemicals. Our neighbor Esteban gave these out at the Vermut a couple of weeks ago -- his family runs the Fertiberia franchise in Sahagun. Another desktop model, a shiny folded pyramid, came in the mail last week from a new plumbing-and-heating outfit in Carrion de los Condes. In addition to the days of the weeks and months it tells me TreTak does solar hot water and construction projects.
I don´t need a desk calendar, because I almost never use my desk, because it is in the Salon. (It´s COLD in there in the winter, and in the summer it´s full of pilgrims.) But I want to keep track of the TreTak contact numbers. So when the calendar fell down behind the sofa I left it there. It´s not going anywhere, and this way I know where to find it when/if we get to the lower-kitchen plumbing re-do.
The rest are wall calendars, the kind we can really use.
We started the year with it, but after a week it is proving too artsy for daily use. The numbers on the dates are too tiny to be seen from across the room. And that is what a wall calendar is for.
St. Joseph and The Holy Child know that, and they glow at me from the calendar beneath the Modigliani. Their numbers are bold and black -- they have saints´ days, too, in red, and the phases of the moon with smug smiling moon-faces. They are beautifully old-fashioned, cheesy even in their soft-focus blonde curls. But.
But their calendar is two months at a time, and their picture does not change, and neither does the big 40-point type beneath them:
Supermercado TABOA
Especialidad en TERNERA GALLEGA
Much as I love their wholesome working-class charm, I don´t think I want them hanging around here for an entire year. Or an ad, even one for Galician Veal.
What´s a woman to do? There´s the Camino Cats 2011 Calendar, which arrived in the mail today from a thoughtful former pilgrim in Canada. It features nice amateur photos of cats he saw along his pilgrimage. Murphy is in there, in a typical pose (eating his dinner). I like it very well, but the numbers, alas, are artfully small. I shall put it upstairs in my room.
For sheer brass I considered for a few moments the 2011 Stihl "Chicas ´N Chainsaws" Calendar, a gift from Garaje Redondo, the Grease Boutique where we take our chainsaw for sharpening. I am not a fan of cheap soft-core porn, but I gotta admit I love this thing -- it is barely a calendar at all, the months and dates squeezed into a two-inch border beneath a glossy expanse of stiletto heels, push-up cleavage, and hydraulic hoses. Miss June is sprawled next to a swimming pool, apparently overcome by the pressure-washer coiled at her side. Miss November carelessly caresses a weed-wacker, dressed in a matching purple panties and pumps. (wherever she is, it is not November.)
By far the finest thing about the Stihl calendar is the warning label, printed in characteristically careful German: "The images do not show real-life working situations," it admonishes. "Before you use a Stihl device, read and strictly follow the safety instructions. Please wear proper protective clothing at all times."
Damn. I shall have to stop clearing brush while wearing my silver lamé bikini, I guess...
Like St. Joseph and the glowing Child Jesus, I have a hard time finding long-term lodgings for the Pneumatic Babes of Stihl. Not everybody who comes here will understand their heavy-metal charm. I will have to send them away. Except for Miss April. Miss April poses with a Stihl heavy-duty shop vacuum. I want one of those, and I will ask the good folk at Garaje Redondo to get one for me. Without photographic evidence, they will most likely tell me Stihl does not make shop vacuums -- "no se existe" ("it does not exist") being a favorite response to any request for items not presently on the shelf. (We burn through vacuums here at a terrible rate.)
(not to mention silver lamé bikinis...)
I may be the only person who has noticed there is a vacuum-cleaner in that picture at all.
All this said and written, I admit the calendar that holds the place of honor on the kitchen wall is one we bought -- a 5 Euro donation to the cluster of 12 little parish churches that comprise our deanery. Each page is a color shot of one of the scruffy adobe-and-brick sanctuaries -- Sto. Tomas of Moratinos is May. The days and dates are in bold black and red, with all the saints and moons duly noted. The big decider, the one thing no one else could offer, was the notes on who and where is having a fiesta that month: 24 June, San Roman de la Cuba. 26 June, Población de Arroyo. 29 June, Terradillos de los Templarios.
Respectable. Familiar. Supporting a good cause. Readable from across the room.
And I never have to miss another party!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)