Laredo > Güemes > Santander > Boo de Piélagos = 75 km
Today we walked the coastline of the Cantabrian sea westward from Santander to Boo. Alien rocks suffered the cold triumph of water. It’s a rocky coastline, prouder and higher than the sea. We ate lunch out of cans under a shelter of sticks. It might have been lonely without my friends.
Our trio: we are going seperate ways tomorrow, so that’s on my mind. We flourished like mayflies. No time to chill. Now on the morning of the seventh day everybody seeks their own adventure. I know why I’m here now. On the camino I am patient enough to learn patience.
It’s still thirty days from here to Santiago de Compostela. After ten days, you feel like a real pilgrim, so it is said, your body says give me pain, I need it. In Santander our albuergue host had done the camino twenty times. (!)
He told me, Si no te veo en la mañana, te veo en la próxima vida, If I don’t see you tomorrow, I’ll see you in the next life. And he clapped me on the shoulder and walked away, an old busy man. Even thinking of it now makes me emotional. A farmer gave me a bag of sweet peas for free. I told someone I’m learning Spanish and they responded, Muchias gracias, thank you. That last one left me a bit confused, but okay. Like if someone secretly folded your laundry, or something.
The German man I’ve been travelling with had his own kind of advice. You need to know that in German, the verb for “to give advice” is transitive, and it literially means “to slap the [receiver of advice] across the face [with your advice].” So he’s fond of saying “take your own shit.”
I’m on the camino, because I promised myself I would do it. But why did I promise? I promised, in order to keep a promise. Circles within circles.
I promised, because a lot of my psychic energy is tied up in old broken promises that I made without thinking. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m not so good at keeping promises. When the oven gets hot, I flake like a good pastry. So to make a promise and to keep it will free up a lot of psychic energy for me. To commit to something with my whole heart. To prove it. To practice doing it. Promises. Persistence. It’s like a rebirth, if rebirth gave you really painful foot blisters.
I haven’t even gotten into how the host of the albuergue in Güemes was a radical priest who was jailed for starting a strike. He was cool, but I can’t say more.
I must do the harder thing. And sleep.
cdzhouse 