Bodenaya > Campiello > Granadas de Salime = 71 km
I’m hiding under the awning of my albuergue as I write this, as it’s midafternoon thunderstorming again. To my left is a leafy bush that makes the dripping rain sounds, and to my right is an occupied spiderweb and somebody’s still-smelly laundry. Despite the rain, I can still hear spooky cow noises in the distance. (They really just bellow.) I’ve just eaten a donated avocado and I’m having a donated beer. Finally, after three up-and-up- and-down days, I’m tranquila.
I’ve got to collect the last three days into some kind of coherent narrative.
I’ll start by telling you about the Way. The Way has been rain, rain as I walk through oak and pine forests, on needle and moss, rain even when the sun is shining, and I find a black bubosa, slug, as thick as my arm, no shit.
And the Way has been mountains. Yesterday we slept in a mountain village and, upon waking, blundered through a fog flavored faintly of goat shit. The smell was more of a stimulant than coffee. I walked alone, after my friends took a look at my mood and fucked off, bless them.
I got above the fog layer, it looked like a white sea below me, and I looked at the mountains striped with farm-terraces and thought, they look like a giant who can really pull off a modern shirt.
Then later I ran across a band of Free-Range Horses who were guarding an Important Ruin. The Free Horses had long hair that fell in their eyes and they were skeptical of my business with the Ruin. My business was to devour oatmeal before it rained again. The Important Ruin was a pile of rocks, apparently and incredibly a former mountain hospital in the 13th century (!) But why in the mountain? … Too many pilgrims with bad knees?
So yesterday I was on the mountain and alone. I had chosen to go the more difficult / scenic way even though it was probably going to thunderstorm and I cower like a mouse when it’s lightninging. No one has ever accused me of having exceptional executive functioning before noon. I was daydreaming about The Trial, which I had just finished courtesy of F., when the first big drop landed deliciously right on the crown of my head where the hair parts. This is just like how Kafka said, I’m thinking. We only keep our loved ones around to protect us from the oppressive state: but without any loved ones around, I’m free to run from the state. The state in this case is compulsive alientation and obedience: here on the mountain, I’m so free… freer than I would have been if I had companions with me… I had already mentioned my fair-to-poor mood on this day.
The thought of Kafka on the mountain was very funny to me. Embrace the rain. Tranquila.
Five minutes later, it’s fucking beating on my head and the lightning is rolling in. I can’t think about anything but finding some shelter. I’m looking around for a Very Important Pile of Rocks. There’s nothing, not even a tree. I keep going.
Then, I won’t tell you how I felt, but probably probably no more than ten minutes later, a Jeep comes down the Camino, which is a surprise as the Way is mostly a single-file footpath of pebbles. I wave them down to ask where the next town is. It’s an hour. This is not good news. The two farmers inside offer a ride, and I accept, which is my first time really getting a chance to andar en dedo, hitchike.
Once I buckle in, the Farmer immediately breaks from the path and goes windshield-first down the mountain. At first I’m alarmed at the air we’re getting but lo que sea, whatever, trust in the life. I attempt to make some very bouncey small talk. They raise meat cows. No, they do not name their cows. To my horror, we’re in the car for more than a half hour together, because they’re doing me a really big favor by driving all the way to where the Camino intersects with the highway. Then I insult them both by attempting to pay for the ride.
I’m thinking Kafka was right: the proceedings gradually merge with the verdict. But the accusation of guilt is actually an affirmation of one’s importance handed down directly from a higher authority: the Law, or Chance, lo que sea. Guilt is how you temper your understanding of your interdepence with others, your dependence on your parents, lovers, neighbors, teachers, friends. But the accusation of guilt is actually a revelation: the higher authority and/or State needs you to justify its own existence. To free yourself from the State, you need to depend more on others, not less. This is the K., the protagonist’s, fatal flaw.
This is one reading, I’d like talk it over more as social theory, as I think I’m ignoring some important points about the main character’s personal behavior. I’m kind of just reading K. as a Postmodern Post-Nobody.
Sobre todo its been a mountain-nice adventure 😉 I put myself outside my comfort zone and maybe even learned something, but there are opportunity costs to such acquired wisdom, such as not being able to find The Trial very funny anymore, just true.
cdzhouse 