Que tal, possibly human readers. I’m back in Santiago de Compostela, I arrived by the earliest bus from Finisterre. I’m here for all of eight afternoon hours, really just the the hottest part of the day, long enough to get sweaty but not long enough to justify paying an albuergue for a shower, soap not included. At dinnertime I’m on another bus heading approximately south and back to the coast to Porto, Portugal, where the wine is green, along with a Czech guy who impressed me with a pragmatical approach to book buying, you could say he made a living off it. The mutual interest in the having of books endeared him to me.
Quick anecdote on my knowledge of Czech:
We’re running low on books and hit the snooty bookstores here in S.C. You think finishing a book is a dopamine hit? Finishing a book and then immediately losing half a pound in your backpack is a strong incentive. (If in lack of friends or friendly backpacks, I can leave books on the front steps of secondhand stores and libraries.) On the Camino we always shared food and books and almost never shared clothing: each to his own smell.
And so on. But the Camino is over: just life is left. I spent the midmorning reading under the fruit tree, blessedly secured away from shouting children and/or young men composing songs about how hot it is, like we needed reminding. Honestly unsure what kind of fruit tree it was except that the fruit fell from the tree and hit my head and it was rotten, and I finished Zadie Smith’s NW, which was prosey, hence my mood, and so I had room for 1 (one) not-too-self-absorbed book.
But before I buy another book, I have to use my gift of unwarranted small talk, so I ask the man behind the counter if they have any books in English, Ok they have a small miscellaneous section, Ok do you have any books in Czech? But what I say is, Do you have books for Czech? He runs a bookstore, he’s an old guy but not above a bad joke, from a pocket he shows me his private chequebook. So I learn the word for Czech in Spanish is Checia not Czech.
I’m enjoying the life. Maybe the word is bemused: the life bemuses me. In Finisterre, last night, there was a big moon rising over the rocks and beamed half the beach searchlight-white, and the sand was sprinkled with the red lamps of the nighttime divers harvesting clams. And the daytime cats slept under cars, on cupolas, bannisters, any puddle of shadow.
Just yesterday I came back from the beach wreathed in flies and met some friends on accident, really, by amazing coincidence they were staying in the same building as I was, even though I hadn’t really made a plan to stay anywhere, I was just bouncing from bus to couch, and I’m remarkably open with the word friends. I had sand crusted in all my loose skin, but what can you do, sometimes you start day drinking and next thing you know, you’re at a fire on the beach where everyone is lighting their joint with a stick and the French guy with the tentacle beaded hat is really feeling his rendition of Carnival music. Then I’m drunk and decide it’s time to learn German, which I think was at least part a drunken reaction to being annoyed with a French guy and in part homage to my German friends.
At the best of times I’m relaxed in myself. It’s not so easy, about every fifteen minutes I’m arrested by a desire to get a bad tattoo, and my mind plays the game of plotting a labouriously long story for-writing-but-not-Yet! This for me is the longest game. But it is summer: and it often is the best of times.
I don’t really have any clever anthropological observations to make at this point on any subject besides myself, I’m moving too fast through space and time, I I can barely take notes and collect characters. On the Camino someone wise pointed out to me there’s a nuance between the need for male validation and having romantic feelings for a man and boy howdy, this is one previously unknown pocket of nuance it would behoove me to explore, but I don’t tell more yet. Have to stretch my gray matter and inform myself on this point.
I just wanted to write, it’s just fun. Murakami says the key to writing is to do it every day and to stop just at the point where it becomes fun, that way you want to do it again the next day. Right now I am inhabiting exactly the opposite approach, not writing every day and only stretching as much as it’s fun to do so, but then again, I’m on holiday and furthermore not on holiday forever. Aprovechar el tiempo.
Maybe I will learn something in Portugal, like Portuguese. Optimism is mandatory. Also, the new book I got is Jose Saramago’s The Stone Raft, which was a good choice as Saramago is Portuguese and also my favorite writer with regards to how he wields commas and finally I’ve wanted to read this book since it was quoted as an epigraph in A Small Revolution in Germany:
Good night, comrade. Pleasant dreams, prophet.
Almost dinnertime, the pideons remind me. I gotta split. Cheers.
cdzhouse 