The altar in Santiago's cathedral wasn't the most elaborate, but it was the cheeziest, most gino thing i've EVER seen. Notice the angels/scary baby faces in the upper left and right... The guy in the middle who's well lite isn't Jesus, it's St-James, St-Jacques, Santiago, the man himself. You can go round back and hug him. He has a solid gold dress on with precious gems. When I went back there, a lady was touching him and crying her eyes out.
----Original Message Follows---- From: Al Buscemi To: Maria Subject: book Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 10:12:17 -0500 (EST) I found and read a book called Off the Road by Jack Hitt. He walked the trail to Compostela about 10 years ago and lived to tell about it. Most interesting. He goes into a lot of historical detail about each place along the way. He also talks about the people he met and the places to stay. It is interesting that he mentions the snoring and farting at night also. He did the trip more for historical reasons, but really is not definite about it. Did you find what you sought along the way?
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SO many people come home and want to write a book about it. Shirley MacLaine wrote a very strange and New Agey book which i read during the walk, and of course Paulo Coelho's book was the reason I walked it. although there is some debate as to whether he actually walked it or just wrote about it.
i walked because i was searching... i wanted to find a reason behind the madness... i don't know that i found ALL the answers, that i found what i sought... mostly because i wasn't sure what i was looking for. things seem more vivid, more obvious on the Camino. it's said that the energies from the Milky way, and this supposed fault line under the Camino create these energies which make for clearer thinking. that your senses are more awake, more aware...
the bad part is when people get too comfortable on the Camino. when people find their set group of friends and walk with the same people everyday and think only of walking and forget to think about life. they get so enthralled by this social life, by the fact that everyone is so happy, so open, so understanding, so loving, that they never want the Camino to end. they're so happy to have made friends that they don't want to go home.
i couldn't wait to be finished. right to the very end i was coming to realizations, inescapably, but they weren't always happy realizations, or if they were, i couldn't wait to share them with my friends, to live them in my life, but my REAL life, not this Camino life. maybe it was because I hadn't been running away from anything.
Some of these people had really dropped everything, they'd left their spouse, been fired or quit their job, someone had died... it was these people I wished I could shake awake, these people who KNEW they had a lot of painful realizations to come to, but they got too comfortable in the Camino life.
My life before I left for Spain was great! I had good friends, a nice apartment, a high paying job... it was mostly the job driving me insane, with this interior knowledge that i could be doing something more.
There were some days that even these people couldn't avoid thinking. Walking in the rain or walking alone... there were some days when nobody was in the mood to talk, you'd see everyone in the hostel kind of keeping to themselves, going to bed early to write or pray or meditate or listen to music...
I was walking to prove to myself that I could do something. Something I knew nothing about, something no one else had done, that I knew of. Something I had only read about. To finish what I started. I can't say it was easy.
It was easy in the sense that everyday I knew where I was going, the path was clear, I just had to follow the arrows. At night, I was assured a place to sleep, I had a list of where the hostels were, people discussed which ones were open, which ones were closed, which ones were better... The books tell you what the terrain will be like but...
There were days when I was so tired of walking I would cry. My legs would stop functioning, I was dragging myself along with my walking stick, stopping every 10 steps to say to myself, only 2 kilometers to go, only 2 kilometers to go, stop crying and just WALK!! These moments of utter despair, when everyone has walked ahead and you're alone on a road in a small Spanish village, limping to the next hostel wishing God would just smite you and get it over with.
There is no better satisfaction that walking into that hostel, putting your backpack down, slipping off your shoes, taking a shower, and giving your feet a nice loooong massage. People would ask, "Are your feet hurting?" and you'd say, "a little."
What I was looking for was the strength to carry on. The driving force to be able to do what needs to be done. It's now and when I get home that we shall see if I've learned anything, if I've found anything. We shall see.
Oh yes I did!! There she is! Pilgrim extrordinaire!!! Les gens trouvaient ça drôle. And please, notice the socks. I was tired of wearing my hiking shoes, so I bought socks with the fingers so I could wear them with my flipflops. hehe.
I was walking with Suzanne and she said, "C'est vraiment beau avec la vache sur le dessus." J'étais d'accord et j'ai pris la photo tout de suite. Elle a voulu attendre que la vache revienne sur le dessus de la colline comme on l'avait vu au début. Je sais pas combien de temps elle est restée là, mais j'ai eu pas mal de temps à la devancer!!
The cows are coming home!! We check in to the albergue in Ribadiso, we're setting up, doing laundry, when I hear MOOO! Elles traversaient la petit rivière!! Elles avaient besoin de se faire traire les pauvres!
On our way out of "somewhere" there was a car repair shop where all these dogs were sitting around. Among them was this tiny puppy who was SO CUTE!! All the other dogs came to see us at the fence but the puppy was stuck behind this tube... too adorable!!
Une autre preuve que je suis blanche comme neige, LA PUERTA DEL PERDON!!! AKA the door of forgiveness ou la porte du pardon. tada!! again, clean slate. Remarquez mon bâton de marche que j'ai ramassé à Astorga. (Villafranca del Bierzo, Spain)
The whole day was covered in fog. In the guide books it said, Superb Views with Panoramic Beauty. Ouais. Rub it in why don't you. Ce village, on était content de le voir... up up up, finally down for a biiiiig lunch. Mais j'ai perdu mes gants cette journée là. doh!
There's my little blue stone with a goat on it. :D Some people carried some big-ass stones up there. Some people left their boots, jackets, pictures, radios...
This is the Cruz de Ferro, just after Foncebadon. It was, well, not a nice day out so all pictures were a bit useless however I had to take a pic here because people leave a stone here from their homes to symbolically leave their sins. I didn't know about this because I didn't read my guide book but La Providence was with me and I had dropped into my bag a stone my sis-in-law gave me for Christmas one year. Woot! Sin free baby!!
C'est le palais épiscopal à côté de l'église à Astorga... Gaudi, the famous Spanish architect designed it. Inside there is a museum of various religious artefacts and Roman findings from the city. Il y a aussi une exposition d'artistes contemporains de la région. (Astorga, Spain)
All these churches have Cloisters, pictured here, which are squares within the Church or Monastary which are decorated and where often, people are buried. The most awesome, that I saw, was this one in Leon. I want 2 things in my house, when I build it one day, a Cloister, like this one...
The cathedral in Leon is called, wait for it... Santa Maria. This church kicks Notre Dame de Paris' ass. For those who think that churches weren't built to compete with one another has never been in a Spanish church. This is MY house - not too shabby if I do say so myself... (Leon, Spain)
J'aurai tout vu... On our way into Leon, for those who can't read Spanish, McDonald's was offering a free desert to pilgrims!! Proof that the Devil tries to tempt us... nasty! (Leon, Spain)
C'est le max de couleurs qu'on a eu cet automne en Espagne. Leurs arbres vont du vert au jaune. C'est beau pareil, mais j'aurais préféré les couleurs canadiennes... (Burgos, Espagne)
Some days, when the weather was uncertain, I would put my camera in my bag and wouldn't bother to take it out, even if there was a picture opportunity. On this morning, I decided to bother.
After the rain, they don't have worms on the streets in Spain, they have snails. Ils sont tous petits et inmangeables, mais il y en a beaucoup!!! Collés aux branchailles sur le bord de la route et traversants les trotoires... trop cute!!
Pendant que j'étais à Los Arcos, il y a eu des funérailles à la place de la messe du pélerin. We went to the mass anyway. Thank God I've been absolved of all my sins... otherwise I couldn't say that one of the palbearers was cute. The proof: I am a Saint. At least in Spain I am. (Los Arcos, Espagne)
On our way into the city of Los Arcos, we were admiring a Armory on someone's house when a man stopped to try to explain what the Armory was. He then invited us into his house... where we found two men in the back making wine, pressing grapes. We tasted his new white wine, and he gave us a bottle of his red. Nice guy, if only we spoke Spanish... (Los Arcos, Spain)
Every once in a while, you'd come upon a memorial plaque like this one, for someone who died on the Camino. I took a picture of Mary's because she was canadian. I walked the rest of the day for her.
Atop a mountain, a castle: le château de Monjardin. It's an interesting landscape, if anything. The Tor, the Castle, and the village in the middle. (Villamayor de Monjardin, Espagne)
Dans le petit village d'Irache, il y a un monastère. À ce monastère, il y a une fontaine... une fontaine DE VIN. One spout has red wine, the other, water. I'm not kidding. (Irache, Spain)
Tous les chemins mènent à Rome... except this one goes to Santiago. Those Romans... everywhere!! On a marché dessus sans savoir ce que c'était. I had to run back to take the picture!
For those of us who have often asked, mommy, where do almonds come from? trees dearest, trees. Gérard en tient une dans sa main pour me la montrer. (Puenta la Reina, Spain) ps - it was really good.
Um, Maria, why are you in your pyjamas?? It was laundry day, and they insisted I pose in this all-too-often-posed place, on the bridge in Puenta la Reina. (Puenta la Reina, Spain) ps - notice the rainbow in the background!!
On arrivait tellement proche des éoliennes... everyone was taking pictures. But don't mistake the sculpture for pilgrims... (Atop a mountain near Puenta la Reina, Spain)
