May 15, 2012
Pilgrimage Push Off

I awake, again, having slept well. I open the windows to my room, which faces another building across a narrow space between the two on the second floor to check on my socks and underwear, which I washed last night (as I have every night of this trip), and hung by a hanger outside to dry.

It takes a while to open the windows, as well-constructed Galician houses have two sets of windows: the outer, which are shutters with glass panes; and the interior, which are shutters of a heavier wood. The windows are made this way to keep the pervasive damp out. Until relatively recently, Spain was a poor country: only after it entered the European Union and benefited from the subsidies, was it propelled to the prosperity it enjoyed for two decades. Conditions before then, certainly during the terrible years when Franco imposed autarchy on the country, were harsh: in those days, the warmest place in a Galician house was the kitchen, where a cast-iron, wood-burning stove dictated that meals were eaten there in the cold months, even if there was a dining room. Galicia's homes now have central heating and there is no need to take a hot-water bottle to bed, but the climate is still damp: my socks have not yet dried.

A Spanish writer, Alfredo Conde, wrote a column in El Correo Gallego yesterday that touched upon the way it was, and the difference between now and then. Entitled Sentimos Menos --We Feel Less, he observes that although it rains just as much as it ever did, we are wet by the rain less than we used to be. Good raincoats, better umbrellas, waterproof shoes, city and suburban buses, interior parking, mean we move about barely aware of the weather.

He reflects on this, because, over the last few weeks, as he takes the daily walk his doctor has ordered for his health, he finds it pleasing to feel the rain on his face, to amble along the streams nearby, watching trout swimming, a bird flying by. This pleasure, which he had lost, returned thanks to an unwanted duty.

The coldness of the houses in winter, the hot water bottle warming the bed, the eucalyptus leaves steamed in boiling water for inhalations, the children's matinees with all their noise --he misses the contact he once had with natural climate and sounds of Galicia, which was inescapable. It was that way when colds were battled by sweating them out, rather than with a with a doctor's injection, given provisionally.

it doesn't rain less, but we live longer even if we ignore the intensity of life, unlike those days when there was time enough for things, so we could execute our tasks with careful attention to detail, taking pleasure out of doing so.

Today everything happens quickly, the brevity of the rain, the insolence of the thunder and lightning, the frequency of the fog --we contemplate them all from the steering wheel of the car. But we never --or almost never, abandon ourselves to feel the velvety contours of the natural world .

Before it did not rain more, but today we feel it less, and our senses are asleep, little aware of the natural world around us, almost useless, as if it did not exist, just ourselves, abandoned to ourselves, foreign, distant and alone. My rough translation does not do justice to the magisterial Spanish of Alfredo Conde, a prize-winning author.


I will certainly have a chance to reflect on all these things as I make my pilgrimage. I made my confession to a priest in the Cathedral yesterday. Priests there sit in a confessional that does not enclose them, but makes them visible to anyone passing by. When not serving the faithful, the priests read, or look out at the visitors and the church. The priest I speak with tells me to remember my husband, and our happiness, not to allow negative thoughts about his death to enter my mind, also to let him intercede for me. Bill --able to help out from his perch in heaven. It is a new concept for me.

This morning I go through my things one more time. I realize that the delicacies I so happily enumerated here will only weigh down my pack, so I transfer them to the bags to be left behind at the hotel. I will not be dropping the knapsack off and walking, I will be walking with the knapsack on my back, so the lighter I can make it the better. I will carry the almond tarts I foolishly bought yesterday out of gluttony, but otherwise, I will be eating whatever I find on the road.

Here I am, guilty of gluttony, paying for it by having more to carry. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins: Anger, Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Jealousy, Lust, Sloth.

I guess the moral is "You can't take it with you", especially to Santiago . As usual, unable to distinguish between the essential and the inessential, here I am, making God laugh.