Two months? TWO MONTHS and then some? WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MYSELF? Here's a synopsis for the curious:
September was an odd conglomeration of responsibilities and the lack thereof: sunny carless days, a long weekend along the northerly stretch of the Long Trail, kicking up my heels but dragging my feet at the prospect of regular employment, so I began picking grapes. The vineyard is only two miles south of my house, the easiest commute I’ve ever had; it’s a good job when the weather is good and earns me next to no money. I've learned lots of little things I never would have otherwise: the difference between good rot and bad rot, how certain varieties can be trained to grow higher up than others, that too much water in the ground drastically reduces yields, that red grapes are far easier to harvest than white ones because the white ones camouflage themselves among the leaves, and that frogs, mice, birds, and snakes all like to make their homes in the vines. I've also come to the conclusion that I'd rather get paid less to work outdoors and close to where I live than get paid slightly more to commute and work indoors.
The grapes are just about done now, so I’m supplementing as best I can by substitute teaching every now and then. Subbing is peculiar since it means going back to my old elementary school, the school I ditched at age twelve in pursuit of a more "progressive" and "rigorous" education. Being back there now, a decade later, makes me realize how much of a bedroom community this town has become. These kids feel infinitely more urbanized, or at least suburbanized, than the kids with whom I started school. Maybe that's just the nature of our ever more technologically homogenized world: everyone carrying the latest ipod and a glitzier cellphone than I will ever own.
But they're still kids: they make noise in the hallways, fall off their chairs, draw on their hands with markers, beg for ten minutes of free choice at the end of French class so they can build houses out of playing cards. Let me just say, the stuff kids draw on their hands is WAY more creative than the coloring worksheets we give them. You should have seen the little finger-puppets the kindergarteners were drawing onto themselves last week! And any kid who asks me if she can have a blank piece of paper instead of a coloring sheet gets a definite YES. And stacking cards? The skills those sixth-grade boys are exercising when they build card-houses (coordination, fine motor, spatial reasoning) are at least as important as whatever skills they would gain from actually playing Milles Bornes or French Uno (now if I can just get them practicing their French while they stack!).
In other news, I have a peck of Northern Spy apples just begging to be made into something delicious. (Did I mention I've developed a localvore vegan apple crisp recipe? It converts pretty easily into an apple tart, too, and involves cornmeal. If I ever bother figuring out the measurements, I'll post it.) I also have a whole pile of red cabbages (gleaned from my uncle's abandoned garden) that should get turned into kimchi and sauerkraut; I wonder where my mason jars are...
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Meet Magda!
I replied to the post, and toyed with going down to and making an offer, but the $700 asking price seemed a bit too much. So I put it out of my mind. Then, last week, an email showed up in my box. Apparently, the Benz was still without a home, and the owner needed it off her hands by the end of the weekend. "First offer takes it!" Saturday, I made the hour-long trek in my grandmother's dinky Mazda, through torrential rains and gusting winds, to Waitsfield to check out this beast. The test-drive was a blast; since it was pouring I got to experience first hand the leaky trunk (she comes with a complimentary bilge pump!), the hole in the passenger-side floor (to accommodate the grease system), and the overall awesomeness of this vehicle. The driver-side seat belt buckle doesn't really work. "I never bother with it," the former owner told me, "but you could just use the passenger buckle." It takes a bit of coaxing to get her started, especially if she's cold from sitting still, and sometimes she prefers starting in neutral instead of in park. So, I put the Benz through her paces, convinced her to haul us up a steep gravelly hill, and got her going 55 on Route 17. I was beginning to understand why no one had made an offer, and I was in love.
The girl selling the Benz was headed down to work on a farm in Costa Rica on Monday, so she was about the most motivated (read: desperate) seller one could ever hope to find. "If you don't take it," she admitted, "I'm bringing it to the scrap yard." So I gave her $200 and told her I'd be back to pick up my new baby blue beater as soon as my boyfriend had a day off. Gabe and I planned on going down Sunday before Magda's former owner took off for warmer climes. When I tried to call her to figure out where to meet, her phone told me it had been disconnected. Hmm. I started to envision myself wandering around Waitsfield like a private eye, going up to locals and saying, "Have you seen this vehicle?" Or else I'd end up on Judge Judy with this chick, being all like, "I gave her $200 for this car, and then the bitch took it to the junkyard anyway!" But none of that was to be. She called me back the next day, and promised to leave the car at Full Circle, the auto place in Waitsfield that specializes in WVO conversions.
Gabe and I drove down after work on Monday afternoon and had to cruise up and down Main Street for a while figuring out just where Full Circle is. Found the greasebeater, sat for ten minutes or so warming up the glow plugs (and finding the e-brake), and we were off! Right now, she's running on regular diesel until I put in a new Fleetguard filter for the veggie. For a car that's eight years older than I am, Magda drives impressively. She is a true German tank, heavier, I think, than my Audi wagon was--you can feel it when she barrels down hills. She's inspected through next June, and the only real issue that might keep her from passing is the rust. Her previous owner gave me the contact of the shop she'd been going to for inspection: "He doesn't really care as long as all your lights work. Also, the rear bumper is a 4-by-4. He told me, 'That's not really legal; you might want to spray paint it black.'" So that's the plan: Bondo the rust and spray paint the bumper (and probably the rest of the car while I'm at it).
Now, I know I said I wasn't going to own a car again anytime soon, but you know what? I feel better, from an ethical perspective, owning the hottest veggie-beater on the East Coast than I did bumming other people's cars on a regular basis. Also, my car insurance is now cheaper than it was as just "named-insured" driver insurance, so Progressive is actually sending me money! Ah, the joys of a car worth nothing. Did I mention the tax and registration cost me more than the car itself did?
A note on naming: I believe in naming. Rather, I believe in naming everything that shares a large part of one's life. I had planned on not getting too excited about this car, but the pride I feel toward this vehicle borders on parental. My first Audi, the first car I ever really loved, came with the name Veronica. In keeping with the tradition, I named my second Audi Archie. I toyed with calling the Benz Betty, but there are enough real-life human Bettys in my life that it would be a little weird. I also wanted the name to have the letter G in it. I don't know why. Gabe was pushing for Gunter, but as soon as you get behind the wheel it's clear that the beater is a girl: stubborn and finicky and way too sexy to be a male automobile. Naming is not a democratic process. The name imposes itself and there is no way to refuse it. Personally, I was leaning toward something very period, very 70s, like Donna or Aretha. I really liked the sound of Jackie O. But Magda kept pushing, so Magda it is. It's got a good German ring, which is important for a German car. And it's strong. "It's a strong name," just happens to be my mother's justification for naming me Kate. I never bought that argument, but here I am. I guess Magda and I will just have to be strong together. With our powers combined...
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Limping Along, Figuratively
A lame dog, an old friend in the hospital, oh-so-marginally employed, and staring down the barrel of four months of student teaching (that’s an UNPAID full-time internship), but on the rosy side, I’m in love. My writing has dried up the past month or so. Writing has devolved into that purely utilitarian act of putting down on paper what is necessary to complete this particular phase: emails, resumes, applications, a four-inch-thick portfolio to prove I’m ready for student teaching. (No matter that no amount of reading or writing prepares one for even a day in a classroom.) There is no poetry in any of this. I’m leaning on poems from six months ago like a crutch, my words these days are so stilted and stocky, so ho-hum and hokey. So lame. Worry about everything perpetually and experience ends up muffled. I live through a scarf wrapped around my senses, a thick dull blanket. I can’t breathe as deep as I’d like to. I’m crippling myself with worry—not walking nearly as much as I’d like. The mountains feel far away. The days are only getting shorter. It’s one thing to do absolutely nothing in the summer; the sun and swelter are justification enough. But September is long gone and everyone is buckling down, battening down, or just down. If I could, I would hibernate through the next six months.
So why am I writing? Why now? Why not a month ago, two months ago? The obvious answer would be release, relief: things have gotten too heavy, and I’m here to lighten my load. But I’m too much of a Brechtian to believe wholeheartedly in catharsis. In fact, I sincerely hope I don’t spend every subsequent post unburdening myself to the virtual public. What I want to do here is write about anything I don’t have room for in my school papers. Blame it, ironically, on writer’s block: I’ve been sitting in front of my computer on and off all weekend, struggling to write about curriculum design for high school English classes, and I keep getting stuck. I get up, I make tea, I bake, I walk, I chip away at what needs to be done in the garden before winter sets in for real, and all the while wisps and scraps of poems push themselves up through the rubble. I want to give those scraps a space. My paper journal has been given over to notes on books, important phone numbers, and infinite to-do lists. I’ve stopped bothering to write about the first frost, new music, the comings and goings of people, of migratory birds, how the lake is getting lower, what I had for breakfast. These things go unrecorded and my life fades out of my own consciousness. The details of the past weeks are more or less lost. I’d like to correct this tendency before the weeks become years. So I’m going to write. Whatever it takes. That’s why I’m back. This is an attempt to exercise some discipline, some authority. I have to remind myself that I matter. I have to bring myself back from the margins of my own writing, push myself back to the center. I’m not letting any more words go to waste.
So why am I writing? Why now? Why not a month ago, two months ago? The obvious answer would be release, relief: things have gotten too heavy, and I’m here to lighten my load. But I’m too much of a Brechtian to believe wholeheartedly in catharsis. In fact, I sincerely hope I don’t spend every subsequent post unburdening myself to the virtual public. What I want to do here is write about anything I don’t have room for in my school papers. Blame it, ironically, on writer’s block: I’ve been sitting in front of my computer on and off all weekend, struggling to write about curriculum design for high school English classes, and I keep getting stuck. I get up, I make tea, I bake, I walk, I chip away at what needs to be done in the garden before winter sets in for real, and all the while wisps and scraps of poems push themselves up through the rubble. I want to give those scraps a space. My paper journal has been given over to notes on books, important phone numbers, and infinite to-do lists. I’ve stopped bothering to write about the first frost, new music, the comings and goings of people, of migratory birds, how the lake is getting lower, what I had for breakfast. These things go unrecorded and my life fades out of my own consciousness. The details of the past weeks are more or less lost. I’d like to correct this tendency before the weeks become years. So I’m going to write. Whatever it takes. That’s why I’m back. This is an attempt to exercise some discipline, some authority. I have to remind myself that I matter. I have to bring myself back from the margins of my own writing, push myself back to the center. I’m not letting any more words go to waste.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Taizé in Retrospect
Two posts in one evening! A record! I promised myself that as soon as I’d collected myself and composed my thoughts, I would take the time to write something to try to explain the Taizé community before it slips from my memory. There is lots of practical and historical information at their website, http://www.taize.fr/, so I won’t dwell on those details. Suffice it to say: the community was established in the 1940s by Brother Roger, a Swiss man who came (by bicycle!) to settle among the hills of Burgundy. He offered refuge to those fleeing Nazi persecution. He opened his door to people of faith from around the world. And from there, the order grew. Today, people by the thousands to participate in services, speak with brothers and sisters, and to find a bit of respite from the world at large.
Having heard other folks speak of the peace and tranquility they find at Taizé, I was truly overwhelmed when I arrived by the immense human bustle of the place: crowded-dirty-cold showers; a sea of tents; mealtimes evocative of summer camp or the Marlboro College dining hall—only outdoors and with about ten times as many people (no tables, just wooden benches, but not enough to accommodate everybody, so every semi-level surface is occupied with diners). After two days of train-hopping, I could do nothing with myself but pitch my tent in the quietest corner I could find, take a cold shower (don’t expect to ever get a truly hot one), and collapse. I didn’t get up until the church bells summoned me to prayer the next morning.
Once again, I felt wholly overwhelmed: the church is a big barn of a thing, with garage doors inside to expand the space depending on the size of the congregation that day. The space is gently lit with small candles in red glass votives and a few soft overhead lights and small stained-glass windows. Everyone sits on the floor: sturdy institutional carpeting, walkways demarcated with masking tape, and there are wooden benches along the walls for those who need them. A good number bring their own prayer benches. Though itb looks nothing like the centuries-old cathedrals I spent the month of July walking through, the acoustics in the Taizé church are amazing—and this of course is the building’s raison d’être. At a Taizé service, there is no “sermon” and no “choir.” The brothers lead chants in every language imaginable, from Latin to Polish to French to English, read a short psalm (short enough to be repeated in numerous translations), hold a five-minute silence (which is never purely silent, thanks to the cooing and muttering babies, and the coughing and sneezing that are inevitable when you have hundreds of people living in close quarters), and close with more songs. Everyone is given a songbook , and everyone sings. Whether or not you are familiar with Taizé services, whether or not you can read music, whether or not you speak any language other than your own, after a few days of repetition the songs begin to make sense. They get easier (even the intimidating Slavic ones!). There are lots of Taizé recordings available, and places all over the world hold Taizé-style services, some more regularly than others. If this has caught the interest of anyone in or near Vermont, the Benedictine monks of Weston Priory, http://www.westonpriory.org/, hold beautiful prayer services, or so I’ve been told… At the heart of these prayers is their participatory nature, the sense of community they inspire, the feeling of hundreds of voices becoming one voice and filling the air. That first morning, the ringing harmonies bowled me over—and I was already sitting down.
The rest of the day, everyone is expected to assist in chores (serving meals, washing dishes, changing trash bags) and attend at least one Bible-study session (I most skipped Bible-study; chalk it up to my Quaker roots, but sitting around with a bunch of other 17 to 29 year olds and talking about God—just doesn’t feel right). And the rest of the time? Walk, sit in the sun, read, sing… There is constant singing in a multitude of languages, accompanied by guitars, hand drums, flutes, recorders, even a trumpet and a saxophone showed up. I can’t tell you how many times, over the past weeks, I have heard renditions of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” nor in how different accents.
The monks at Taizé are also incredible artisans, producing gorgeous woodcuts and pottery. I spent hours drooling over the claywork, the rainbow of glazes, and finally succumbed to the temptation to buy something souvenir-ish—the first time the whole trip! It should also be noted that Taizé is very close to Cluny, a lovely town and home to the ruins of another monastery mucho older than Taizé. (Of course, for me, the name Cluny just evokes memories of the villain in the first Redwall book—anyone follow?) My second day, feeling claustrophobic at Taizé (and miserably underwhelmed by the food—more on that in a moment), I bussed it to Cluny and spent the afternoon wandering, gloriously pack-free for once! There was also an equestrian even going on at the town’s hippodrome so I got to watch so absolutely gorgeous dressage horses and hunter-jumpers. They made me long for the days when I rode…
For those in need of deeper reflection, looking for a challenge or just a little extra peace and space and solitude, Taizé offers the option of spending a week or a weekend in silence. After a couple of days of the exhausting summer-camp atmosphere, I leapt eagerly at the chance and undertook two-plus days (Friday through Sunday morning) in silence. There were already about a dozen women spending the entire week in silence at “Cerisier,” the Silent House in the village of Ameugny, a short 1.5 km walk from Taizé. We three dozen or so joining in for the weekend kept our sleeping arrangements on the main campus due to space constraints (which was fine, since my tent was already strategically pitched in the “Silent Area”—a relative term), but took meals at Cerisier and were welcome to spend our days in the house and its garden or wherever else we chose. Our daily schedule consisted of prayers and meals, the rest up to us—how liberating! I felt like I was returning to my natural state, and the whole experience took on a new light. I felt better about everything. Not to mention the infinitely better food—and by “infinitely” I simply mean real, fresh baguettes in the morning, and an electric kettle to make real hot tea whenever we wanted.
I guess I need to spend a few lines explaining Taizé dining. Now, I’ve always said that I could pretty much live on bread and chocolate, which is just what they serve every morning for breakfast. However, the bread is nowhere near what one hopes for when one is spending a week in France: dry, day-old slices of those pale par-baked baguettes, the likes of which can be found “fresh-baked” at any supermarket in the United States, tasting heavily (to my palate) of commercial yeast and preservatives. To add insult to injury, there is the matter of “tea”: although called tea, what gets served at breakfast is in fact hot instant tea, a la Nestea, artificially lemony and impossibly sweet. I took a bowlful my first morning, took a sip, and my little heart sunk right down into my toes. I suddenly recalled that Gabe, a coworker of mine from Healthy Living who just so happened to make a trip last September almost identical to mine, had warned me about this “tea,” but of course I’d forgotten. In any case, as soon as I began breakfasting at the Silent House, I spent my days drinking endless cups of English Breakfast tea, eating hunks of crisp-crusty baguette, and collecting windfall plums in the churchyard of Ameugny’s beautiful church. A not on plums: Already in Spain, plums had become something of a symbol… I’m still trying to figure out what of. Generosity, I suppose: generosity of the earth and of the human community. In Spain, the ground in July is littered with little golden ciruelas, and at many albergues we pilgrims would be greeted by a basket or a bowl full of them. It is so touching to be offered fruit fresh from the tree, to be told, it’s okay to eat these—don’t feel like you have to sneak around collecting windfalls while no one is looking. Burgundy has those same yellow ones, but the tree in Ameugny was special: deep purple plums just like the ones in Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, green-gold inside, the size and shape of dates and nearly as soft and sweet. Suffice it to say, I was in love. From Friday on, I visited my plum tree every day. By the end of the week, I felt almost at home on the road between Ameugny and Taizé, felt almost the way I do walking up and down the West Shore of South Hero. Of course, there are many more pedestrians and cyclists at Taizé (if you can believe it) than in South Hero. It’s pretty much impossible to walk alone.
The agriculture is impressive along the short stretch I walked several times daily. Unlike the U.S., it feels like every bit of land in Europe is cultivated. In that 1.5 km, one can see horses and cows, a sunflower field, a cornfield, a vineyard, not to mention apple trees everywhere, plums and blackberries, and small garden plots. That said, I found it terribly irksome that Taizé offers nothing in the way of fresh vegetables to its visitors. For lunch and dinner, we’re talking instant mashed potatoes, frozen peas and corn, pasta with canned sauce. Usually, we got one piece of fresh fruit at lunch—an orange, a pear, a peach, perhaps a banana (the whole time I was in Europe, I got excited whenever offered a banana because I never buy them for myself as they are a very poor choice for backpacking, what with the bruising and the squishing). That piece of fruit was far and away the highlight of each day’s meals, and often it was all that I took.
I know, I know, I’m an ungrateful snob to complain about the food prepared and served by volunteers at an entirely not-for-profit establishment. I’m not angry at Taizé; I understand the difficulty of feeding hoardes of people on a minimal budget. What I’m angry at, I suppose, is a global food system—I realize now how global the problem is, that it isn’t just the U.S. although things may be worse here—that simply is not designed to provide all people with real, whole, fresh food. That said, if I had a monastery, we would most certainly be baking our own bread and growing our own vegetables. At the very least. My first few days at Taizé, I longed bitterly for that good “pollo de la mañana” I ate for dinner with Mapi and Andrés, those big rounds of chewy Galician sourdough and wheels of snowy-white soft fresh farmers cheese. It is awfully hard to be spiritually engaged when presented with food that riles one’s political sensibilities. I felt incredibly guilty about buying fresh bread from the bakery while I was in Cluny, and fresh carrots and cucumbers at the supermarket, when eating together as a community is so important at Taizé, but I had to do something. I was about to throw in the towel and fast for the second half of the week—and then I came to the Silent House, and with real tea and real bread, I can weather any storm.
I don’t want to dwell on the food issue for too long, though it is near and dear to my heart, something of which Taizé reminded me emphatically. However, there were other joys and other challenges outside of meal times. After a month of spending much of each day all by myself, I felt very unsteady—more so than usual—in the midst of a crowd. Moreover, the vast majority of guests at Taizé come with family, friends, or as part of a youth group, so the Taizé experience is, for most, a naturally social one. Being solo, and being the introvert that I am, I knew that the sort of reflection I wanted—needed—to be doing was not going to happen if I spent all my time chatting. The prayers were more valuable than I can express. It was important to me to have that structure each day, to have something to do when I woke up, a place to go. And being together in the church, singing, was the right way of being with other people. Having German teenagers kicking their soccer ball into my tent was not. Listening to British kids play truth-or-dare at midnight (after snorting cocaine!) was not. Waiting for girls to finish putting on their makeup in the bathroom so I could have a turn at the sink to wash my one change of clothes was not. Granted—these are learning experiences. I wouldn’t trade my week at Taizé for anything. But it is a mixed bag.
The most powerful experience I took away with me was the Saturday Easter vigil, held at evening prayer. Everyone receives a candle, and the flame is passed around the room, from person to person. Not being a Catholic, I’d never witnessed—let alone participated in—an Easter vigil. The symbolism of the fire, of turning to one’s neighbor to share the flame, is so ancient and so powerful. I couldn’t help but think of Emerson, that line (I think it’s in “The Poet”) where he tells us we are not merely torch-bearers but “children of the fire.” I thought of Prometheus, of Dante. I thought of Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher who believed that fire—change—was the essence of being. And the music! After nearly a week together, we all had a firmer grasp of the words, the harmonies. There was a newfound power in the evening’s prayers. It would be our last evening prayer all together. Most pack up and leave on Sunday morning, and by Sunday evening there is a new wave of guests, so prayers on Sunday evening are once again quiet and tentative as everyone figures out how it’s done. Staying until Monday made me much more aware of the transformation that occurs over the course of one week than I would have been had I left on Sunday with everyone else. It made clear to me how people grow at Taizé. They grow in confidence and in trust, in their ability to listen to one another and to make each voice resonate with all the others. I realized too that the confidence and trust that many discover in themselves at Taizé were exactly what I had been cultivating in myself for the past month on the Camino. Taizé describes its project as “a pilgrimage of trust on earth,” which sums it up so well I don’t have much to add. Pilgrimages take many different forms. What one person finds in four weeks of walking through mountains, another finds while standing in the lunch line.
Having heard other folks speak of the peace and tranquility they find at Taizé, I was truly overwhelmed when I arrived by the immense human bustle of the place: crowded-dirty-cold showers; a sea of tents; mealtimes evocative of summer camp or the Marlboro College dining hall—only outdoors and with about ten times as many people (no tables, just wooden benches, but not enough to accommodate everybody, so every semi-level surface is occupied with diners). After two days of train-hopping, I could do nothing with myself but pitch my tent in the quietest corner I could find, take a cold shower (don’t expect to ever get a truly hot one), and collapse. I didn’t get up until the church bells summoned me to prayer the next morning.
Once again, I felt wholly overwhelmed: the church is a big barn of a thing, with garage doors inside to expand the space depending on the size of the congregation that day. The space is gently lit with small candles in red glass votives and a few soft overhead lights and small stained-glass windows. Everyone sits on the floor: sturdy institutional carpeting, walkways demarcated with masking tape, and there are wooden benches along the walls for those who need them. A good number bring their own prayer benches. Though itb looks nothing like the centuries-old cathedrals I spent the month of July walking through, the acoustics in the Taizé church are amazing—and this of course is the building’s raison d’être. At a Taizé service, there is no “sermon” and no “choir.” The brothers lead chants in every language imaginable, from Latin to Polish to French to English, read a short psalm (short enough to be repeated in numerous translations), hold a five-minute silence (which is never purely silent, thanks to the cooing and muttering babies, and the coughing and sneezing that are inevitable when you have hundreds of people living in close quarters), and close with more songs. Everyone is given a songbook , and everyone sings. Whether or not you are familiar with Taizé services, whether or not you can read music, whether or not you speak any language other than your own, after a few days of repetition the songs begin to make sense. They get easier (even the intimidating Slavic ones!). There are lots of Taizé recordings available, and places all over the world hold Taizé-style services, some more regularly than others. If this has caught the interest of anyone in or near Vermont, the Benedictine monks of Weston Priory, http://www.westonpriory.org/, hold beautiful prayer services, or so I’ve been told… At the heart of these prayers is their participatory nature, the sense of community they inspire, the feeling of hundreds of voices becoming one voice and filling the air. That first morning, the ringing harmonies bowled me over—and I was already sitting down.
The rest of the day, everyone is expected to assist in chores (serving meals, washing dishes, changing trash bags) and attend at least one Bible-study session (I most skipped Bible-study; chalk it up to my Quaker roots, but sitting around with a bunch of other 17 to 29 year olds and talking about God—just doesn’t feel right). And the rest of the time? Walk, sit in the sun, read, sing… There is constant singing in a multitude of languages, accompanied by guitars, hand drums, flutes, recorders, even a trumpet and a saxophone showed up. I can’t tell you how many times, over the past weeks, I have heard renditions of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” nor in how different accents.
The monks at Taizé are also incredible artisans, producing gorgeous woodcuts and pottery. I spent hours drooling over the claywork, the rainbow of glazes, and finally succumbed to the temptation to buy something souvenir-ish—the first time the whole trip! It should also be noted that Taizé is very close to Cluny, a lovely town and home to the ruins of another monastery mucho older than Taizé. (Of course, for me, the name Cluny just evokes memories of the villain in the first Redwall book—anyone follow?) My second day, feeling claustrophobic at Taizé (and miserably underwhelmed by the food—more on that in a moment), I bussed it to Cluny and spent the afternoon wandering, gloriously pack-free for once! There was also an equestrian even going on at the town’s hippodrome so I got to watch so absolutely gorgeous dressage horses and hunter-jumpers. They made me long for the days when I rode…
For those in need of deeper reflection, looking for a challenge or just a little extra peace and space and solitude, Taizé offers the option of spending a week or a weekend in silence. After a couple of days of the exhausting summer-camp atmosphere, I leapt eagerly at the chance and undertook two-plus days (Friday through Sunday morning) in silence. There were already about a dozen women spending the entire week in silence at “Cerisier,” the Silent House in the village of Ameugny, a short 1.5 km walk from Taizé. We three dozen or so joining in for the weekend kept our sleeping arrangements on the main campus due to space constraints (which was fine, since my tent was already strategically pitched in the “Silent Area”—a relative term), but took meals at Cerisier and were welcome to spend our days in the house and its garden or wherever else we chose. Our daily schedule consisted of prayers and meals, the rest up to us—how liberating! I felt like I was returning to my natural state, and the whole experience took on a new light. I felt better about everything. Not to mention the infinitely better food—and by “infinitely” I simply mean real, fresh baguettes in the morning, and an electric kettle to make real hot tea whenever we wanted.
I guess I need to spend a few lines explaining Taizé dining. Now, I’ve always said that I could pretty much live on bread and chocolate, which is just what they serve every morning for breakfast. However, the bread is nowhere near what one hopes for when one is spending a week in France: dry, day-old slices of those pale par-baked baguettes, the likes of which can be found “fresh-baked” at any supermarket in the United States, tasting heavily (to my palate) of commercial yeast and preservatives. To add insult to injury, there is the matter of “tea”: although called tea, what gets served at breakfast is in fact hot instant tea, a la Nestea, artificially lemony and impossibly sweet. I took a bowlful my first morning, took a sip, and my little heart sunk right down into my toes. I suddenly recalled that Gabe, a coworker of mine from Healthy Living who just so happened to make a trip last September almost identical to mine, had warned me about this “tea,” but of course I’d forgotten. In any case, as soon as I began breakfasting at the Silent House, I spent my days drinking endless cups of English Breakfast tea, eating hunks of crisp-crusty baguette, and collecting windfall plums in the churchyard of Ameugny’s beautiful church. A not on plums: Already in Spain, plums had become something of a symbol… I’m still trying to figure out what of. Generosity, I suppose: generosity of the earth and of the human community. In Spain, the ground in July is littered with little golden ciruelas, and at many albergues we pilgrims would be greeted by a basket or a bowl full of them. It is so touching to be offered fruit fresh from the tree, to be told, it’s okay to eat these—don’t feel like you have to sneak around collecting windfalls while no one is looking. Burgundy has those same yellow ones, but the tree in Ameugny was special: deep purple plums just like the ones in Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, green-gold inside, the size and shape of dates and nearly as soft and sweet. Suffice it to say, I was in love. From Friday on, I visited my plum tree every day. By the end of the week, I felt almost at home on the road between Ameugny and Taizé, felt almost the way I do walking up and down the West Shore of South Hero. Of course, there are many more pedestrians and cyclists at Taizé (if you can believe it) than in South Hero. It’s pretty much impossible to walk alone.
The agriculture is impressive along the short stretch I walked several times daily. Unlike the U.S., it feels like every bit of land in Europe is cultivated. In that 1.5 km, one can see horses and cows, a sunflower field, a cornfield, a vineyard, not to mention apple trees everywhere, plums and blackberries, and small garden plots. That said, I found it terribly irksome that Taizé offers nothing in the way of fresh vegetables to its visitors. For lunch and dinner, we’re talking instant mashed potatoes, frozen peas and corn, pasta with canned sauce. Usually, we got one piece of fresh fruit at lunch—an orange, a pear, a peach, perhaps a banana (the whole time I was in Europe, I got excited whenever offered a banana because I never buy them for myself as they are a very poor choice for backpacking, what with the bruising and the squishing). That piece of fruit was far and away the highlight of each day’s meals, and often it was all that I took.
I know, I know, I’m an ungrateful snob to complain about the food prepared and served by volunteers at an entirely not-for-profit establishment. I’m not angry at Taizé; I understand the difficulty of feeding hoardes of people on a minimal budget. What I’m angry at, I suppose, is a global food system—I realize now how global the problem is, that it isn’t just the U.S. although things may be worse here—that simply is not designed to provide all people with real, whole, fresh food. That said, if I had a monastery, we would most certainly be baking our own bread and growing our own vegetables. At the very least. My first few days at Taizé, I longed bitterly for that good “pollo de la mañana” I ate for dinner with Mapi and Andrés, those big rounds of chewy Galician sourdough and wheels of snowy-white soft fresh farmers cheese. It is awfully hard to be spiritually engaged when presented with food that riles one’s political sensibilities. I felt incredibly guilty about buying fresh bread from the bakery while I was in Cluny, and fresh carrots and cucumbers at the supermarket, when eating together as a community is so important at Taizé, but I had to do something. I was about to throw in the towel and fast for the second half of the week—and then I came to the Silent House, and with real tea and real bread, I can weather any storm.
I don’t want to dwell on the food issue for too long, though it is near and dear to my heart, something of which Taizé reminded me emphatically. However, there were other joys and other challenges outside of meal times. After a month of spending much of each day all by myself, I felt very unsteady—more so than usual—in the midst of a crowd. Moreover, the vast majority of guests at Taizé come with family, friends, or as part of a youth group, so the Taizé experience is, for most, a naturally social one. Being solo, and being the introvert that I am, I knew that the sort of reflection I wanted—needed—to be doing was not going to happen if I spent all my time chatting. The prayers were more valuable than I can express. It was important to me to have that structure each day, to have something to do when I woke up, a place to go. And being together in the church, singing, was the right way of being with other people. Having German teenagers kicking their soccer ball into my tent was not. Listening to British kids play truth-or-dare at midnight (after snorting cocaine!) was not. Waiting for girls to finish putting on their makeup in the bathroom so I could have a turn at the sink to wash my one change of clothes was not. Granted—these are learning experiences. I wouldn’t trade my week at Taizé for anything. But it is a mixed bag.
The most powerful experience I took away with me was the Saturday Easter vigil, held at evening prayer. Everyone receives a candle, and the flame is passed around the room, from person to person. Not being a Catholic, I’d never witnessed—let alone participated in—an Easter vigil. The symbolism of the fire, of turning to one’s neighbor to share the flame, is so ancient and so powerful. I couldn’t help but think of Emerson, that line (I think it’s in “The Poet”) where he tells us we are not merely torch-bearers but “children of the fire.” I thought of Prometheus, of Dante. I thought of Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher who believed that fire—change—was the essence of being. And the music! After nearly a week together, we all had a firmer grasp of the words, the harmonies. There was a newfound power in the evening’s prayers. It would be our last evening prayer all together. Most pack up and leave on Sunday morning, and by Sunday evening there is a new wave of guests, so prayers on Sunday evening are once again quiet and tentative as everyone figures out how it’s done. Staying until Monday made me much more aware of the transformation that occurs over the course of one week than I would have been had I left on Sunday with everyone else. It made clear to me how people grow at Taizé. They grow in confidence and in trust, in their ability to listen to one another and to make each voice resonate with all the others. I realized too that the confidence and trust that many discover in themselves at Taizé were exactly what I had been cultivating in myself for the past month on the Camino. Taizé describes its project as “a pilgrimage of trust on earth,” which sums it up so well I don’t have much to add. Pilgrimages take many different forms. What one person finds in four weeks of walking through mountains, another finds while standing in the lunch line.
Jiggity Jog! And a Poem in Six
Home again, home again! Well, to be honest, I've been here since Wednesday morning... But now that the computer is staring me in the face all day everyday, I'm not particularly compelled to use it. I've been putting off this post because I don't know what to say. The first few days back have been an endless session of show-and-tell. Stories come to me at unexpected moments. I'm still unpacking (kind of remarkable considering my bare-bones backpack and my near-refusal to accumulate souvenirs). It's hard to remember what I've said to whom, what I've shown to whom, and what I've completely neglected to share. I'm in the process of transcribing my one hundred-plus pages of handwritten journal onto the computer, so the whole story will eventually come to light. If I can, I'll hunt down a scanner and put up some of my very amateur sketches (a sorry substitute for a camera, although walking without one for the bulk of my time in Spain was, to be honest, quite liberating). For now, to tide us all over, a series of poems written and memorized during my final Camino week--nowhere near a final version, questions and comments are welcome; my poems typically tend toward the verbose so the following is for me uncharted territory:
Huellas
1. Twenty-Five Days
The flies
and the ants
love more than
anything
the sweet salt
blisters
on my feet.
2. What I Carry
Wild mint and sorrel,
dill and chamomile,
a four-leaf trébole,
palabras:
always something
in my mouth.
3. The Most
What I miss
the most:
wild black
raspberries.
4. Hilltop
How quickly the city
turns into the middle
of nowhere! Vice versa.
5. Sense Memory
Mineral savor
of sunscreen,
mineral savor
of sweat.
Everyday
is camphor cream,
coffee, cigarettes.
6. Purity
Clean, unclean:
a matter of degree.
Huellas
1. Twenty-Five Days
The flies
and the ants
love more than
anything
the sweet salt
blisters
on my feet.
2. What I Carry
Wild mint and sorrel,
dill and chamomile,
a four-leaf trébole,
palabras:
always something
in my mouth.
3. The Most
What I miss
the most:
wild black
raspberries.
4. Hilltop
How quickly the city
turns into the middle
of nowhere! Vice versa.
5. Sense Memory
Mineral savor
of sunscreen,
mineral savor
of sweat.
Everyday
is camphor cream,
coffee, cigarettes.
6. Purity
Clean, unclean:
a matter of degree.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
briefly
The last post from this side of the Atantic, as long as all goes according to plan! I'm typing on a horrible keyboard, so this will be short and possibly illegible. I have lots of thoughts onTaize that have accumulated over the past week here, but not the time to type them up. Here's a teaser:
Imagine a giant summer camp--crowded showers, horrible food, noise everywhere, bratty teenagers--only it's in the French countryside and holds Beautiful prayers three times a day. That's where I'm at right now. Oh, and did I mention it's the busiest week of the entire year for Taize? Little did I know... Oh! And the Archbishop or Canterbry is here for a visit! The first and only real sermon I've ever heard, and it's delivered by the head of the entire Anglican church, hah.
I am more thankful for my tent than I have ever been; I think if I were sleeping in "the barracks" I would truly go crazy--they are like albergue times ten. It poured all afternoon yesterday, but the tent remained delightfully dry inside, though by the morning the walls were soaked with the heavy heavy mist that is just now beginning to lift, mist that reminded me so much of la lluvisna every morning in Galicia that it made me long for Spain. But first I have to get home! Then I can start pining for Spain!
I also have a whole bunch of new poetry memorized after this week of doing nothing but leisurely strolls through French villages and laying on the grass in the warm Burgundian sun... some poems of my own, plus a whole bunch by Rilke, Seamus Heaney, etc. I have been a sponge for words lately...
Imagine a giant summer camp--crowded showers, horrible food, noise everywhere, bratty teenagers--only it's in the French countryside and holds Beautiful prayers three times a day. That's where I'm at right now. Oh, and did I mention it's the busiest week of the entire year for Taize? Little did I know... Oh! And the Archbishop or Canterbry is here for a visit! The first and only real sermon I've ever heard, and it's delivered by the head of the entire Anglican church, hah.
I am more thankful for my tent than I have ever been; I think if I were sleeping in "the barracks" I would truly go crazy--they are like albergue times ten. It poured all afternoon yesterday, but the tent remained delightfully dry inside, though by the morning the walls were soaked with the heavy heavy mist that is just now beginning to lift, mist that reminded me so much of la lluvisna every morning in Galicia that it made me long for Spain. But first I have to get home! Then I can start pining for Spain!
I also have a whole bunch of new poetry memorized after this week of doing nothing but leisurely strolls through French villages and laying on the grass in the warm Burgundian sun... some poems of my own, plus a whole bunch by Rilke, Seamus Heaney, etc. I have been a sponge for words lately...
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Feet Back on the Ground
For the sake of posterity, here, for you, is my travel itinerary, and where I am now:
Santiago - Ourense
Ourense - Leon (overnight in albergue)
Leon - Palencia (not Valencia, no)
Palencia - Irun/Hendaia (yes, coming full circle)
Hendaye - Lyon (night train. Leon to Lyon in 24 hours!)
Lyon - Macon (where one takes the bus to Taize, which is just outside the town of Cluny, home to the somewhat more famous monastery.)
So, here I am in Taize. I slept straight through the afternoon yesterday, straight through dinner, straight through to 6:oo am this morning. It is an utterly strange place. But everything for the past several days has felt surreal, as if I'm living in some sort of dreamstate. The passage from Spain to France was strange, returning through el Pais Vasco, retracing my own footsteps, and watching pilgrims just starting out, walking past those yellow arrows that just the other day meant the entire world to me. The Basque country, Spanish and French, really is its own little world, different from everywhere else. On the train to Irun, I was struck by the gritty industrialism of the cities. Insistently, unapologetically ugly. A strange contrast alongside the breathtaking mountains and woods--I think this is part of the appeal. Cities like Leon, which is so beautiflul, so groomed, strike me as false. Not just pretentious but dishonest.
And France? Well, I don't feel qualified to say too much, having only been here a couple days. The landscape is much more like Vermont--rolling hills, the grass and trees more familiar here. It's chilly in the morning, and in the evening--whenever the sun goes away. Damn, give me Spain any day! Likewise the people: not quite as warm. In Spain, I was a pilgrim. I got lots of smiles, waves, friendly conversations. Here, I'm just another sweaty, dirty backpacker with dark circles under her eyes. Taize, of course, is another story entirely--one I'll have to save for another day, since I only have a couple minutes left on the computer.
To those in Vermont: One Week! I'll see you all soon! Much love to all the fuzzy ones especially.
Santiago - Ourense
Ourense - Leon (overnight in albergue)
Leon - Palencia (not Valencia, no)
Palencia - Irun/Hendaia (yes, coming full circle)
Hendaye - Lyon (night train. Leon to Lyon in 24 hours!)
Lyon - Macon (where one takes the bus to Taize, which is just outside the town of Cluny, home to the somewhat more famous monastery.)
So, here I am in Taize. I slept straight through the afternoon yesterday, straight through dinner, straight through to 6:oo am this morning. It is an utterly strange place. But everything for the past several days has felt surreal, as if I'm living in some sort of dreamstate. The passage from Spain to France was strange, returning through el Pais Vasco, retracing my own footsteps, and watching pilgrims just starting out, walking past those yellow arrows that just the other day meant the entire world to me. The Basque country, Spanish and French, really is its own little world, different from everywhere else. On the train to Irun, I was struck by the gritty industrialism of the cities. Insistently, unapologetically ugly. A strange contrast alongside the breathtaking mountains and woods--I think this is part of the appeal. Cities like Leon, which is so beautiflul, so groomed, strike me as false. Not just pretentious but dishonest.
And France? Well, I don't feel qualified to say too much, having only been here a couple days. The landscape is much more like Vermont--rolling hills, the grass and trees more familiar here. It's chilly in the morning, and in the evening--whenever the sun goes away. Damn, give me Spain any day! Likewise the people: not quite as warm. In Spain, I was a pilgrim. I got lots of smiles, waves, friendly conversations. Here, I'm just another sweaty, dirty backpacker with dark circles under her eyes. Taize, of course, is another story entirely--one I'll have to save for another day, since I only have a couple minutes left on the computer.
To those in Vermont: One Week! I'll see you all soon! Much love to all the fuzzy ones especially.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
The Big City
This has to be quick, since the internet in this albergue shuts down at 11:00 pm, so the post won´t do justice to the last couple days.
Suffice it to say, Santiago has a strange, indescribable energy all its own. The other day, walking to Monte de Gozo, not a strenuous walk by any means, but a veritable river of pilgrims, I felt more tired than I have ever felt. All day, the closer I got to the final destination, the fuzzier and swimmier I felt. Like something was sucking all the energy out of me. There were a couple times when I was on the verge of tears for no reason at all.
I collapsed into one of the sterile cement rooms at the IMMENSE Monte de Gozo hostel, and didn´t really move until the morning. The 2 km to the city this morning felt INTERMINABLE, and I won´t even get started on the totally anti-climactic line at the Pilgrims´Office. And now, due to some train complications (namely, no available train to Madrid until August 4th), I am in the city of Leon, on the Camino Frances, awaiting a morning train that will take me back to France. So there you are.
This stretch on the Frances has totally altered my perspective on the peregrino experience, and made me realize how damn lucky I am to have walked the route I walked. I don´t know if I´d make it on the Frances. The people, the commercialism. The hard, bitter part of me could go off on a lengthy diatribe about the means this culture has devised to capitalize on its religion... But I´m too exhausted to do it coherently right now. Much, much more later. Buenas noches.
Suffice it to say, Santiago has a strange, indescribable energy all its own. The other day, walking to Monte de Gozo, not a strenuous walk by any means, but a veritable river of pilgrims, I felt more tired than I have ever felt. All day, the closer I got to the final destination, the fuzzier and swimmier I felt. Like something was sucking all the energy out of me. There were a couple times when I was on the verge of tears for no reason at all.
I collapsed into one of the sterile cement rooms at the IMMENSE Monte de Gozo hostel, and didn´t really move until the morning. The 2 km to the city this morning felt INTERMINABLE, and I won´t even get started on the totally anti-climactic line at the Pilgrims´Office. And now, due to some train complications (namely, no available train to Madrid until August 4th), I am in the city of Leon, on the Camino Frances, awaiting a morning train that will take me back to France. So there you are.
This stretch on the Frances has totally altered my perspective on the peregrino experience, and made me realize how damn lucky I am to have walked the route I walked. I don´t know if I´d make it on the Frances. The people, the commercialism. The hard, bitter part of me could go off on a lengthy diatribe about the means this culture has devised to capitalize on its religion... But I´m too exhausted to do it coherently right now. Much, much more later. Buenas noches.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
After a little bit of research, I learned that the best way to get myself to Santiago is not via Palas De Rei (which, from the Primitivo, means a lengthy and unlovely stretch por carretera), but rather to continue on the Primitivo through the mountains, through tiny poblaciones, to the city of Melide (where I am right now, using the free computer room en la biblioteca).
Yesterday was knockout beautiful: I was camped a little ways outside the city of Lugo in the churchyard of Santo Mathías, stopped at the wonderfully kind bar in Burgo for mi desayuno, and kept walking another 30-some kilometers through incredible hills and mountains and villages until I reached the town of Merlán, up in the mountains some 12 km outside of Melide. I was almost out of water, and on the lookout for a fuente, or a brook, or a friendly-looking house where I could fill my water bottles before camping out for the night.
Well, I walked up to a ramshackle little house, with chickens and dogs in the front yard, and a big rainbow flag saying PEACE, and a promising looking faucet. I asked if I could grab some water, and of course I could, and before I knew it, I was inside drinking rooibos tea, looking through the Nomad Log, the pilgrim´s logbook that Mapi keeps. Because, as it turns out, this was la casa de Mapi (Maria Pilar)--a rather under-the-radar refugio (I had no idea it existed unti I walked up to it). So here I am in this incredible little off-the-grid house, with a generator and a woodstove, nothing more than a single room, a kitchen, and a loft, and--as it tends to do in Galicia--it starts to rain. And I am offered dinner, and a shower, and a place to sleep in the loft. And I settle myself down to contribute some poems to the Nomad Log (and a four leaf clover). I slept warm and safe and dry and happy. I woke up late, after a late night of wine and music while waiting for the chicken to cook (yes, chicken for supper--my vegan morals have flown the coop). Un montón de gracias a Mapi y Andrés para una noche inolvidable.
All in all, an incredible night. Magic happens on the Camino, as long as you let it. I don´t plan my days. I don´t carry I guidebook. I follow the flechas and the conchas. I trust myself, and I trust each day to unfold as it is meant to. It´s worked for the past four weeks, and I suspect it´ll carry me through another two days.
Yesterday was knockout beautiful: I was camped a little ways outside the city of Lugo in the churchyard of Santo Mathías, stopped at the wonderfully kind bar in Burgo for mi desayuno, and kept walking another 30-some kilometers through incredible hills and mountains and villages until I reached the town of Merlán, up in the mountains some 12 km outside of Melide. I was almost out of water, and on the lookout for a fuente, or a brook, or a friendly-looking house where I could fill my water bottles before camping out for the night.
Well, I walked up to a ramshackle little house, with chickens and dogs in the front yard, and a big rainbow flag saying PEACE, and a promising looking faucet. I asked if I could grab some water, and of course I could, and before I knew it, I was inside drinking rooibos tea, looking through the Nomad Log, the pilgrim´s logbook that Mapi keeps. Because, as it turns out, this was la casa de Mapi (Maria Pilar)--a rather under-the-radar refugio (I had no idea it existed unti I walked up to it). So here I am in this incredible little off-the-grid house, with a generator and a woodstove, nothing more than a single room, a kitchen, and a loft, and--as it tends to do in Galicia--it starts to rain. And I am offered dinner, and a shower, and a place to sleep in the loft. And I settle myself down to contribute some poems to the Nomad Log (and a four leaf clover). I slept warm and safe and dry and happy. I woke up late, after a late night of wine and music while waiting for the chicken to cook (yes, chicken for supper--my vegan morals have flown the coop). Un montón de gracias a Mapi y Andrés para una noche inolvidable.
All in all, an incredible night. Magic happens on the Camino, as long as you let it. I don´t plan my days. I don´t carry I guidebook. I follow the flechas and the conchas. I trust myself, and I trust each day to unfold as it is meant to. It´s worked for the past four weeks, and I suspect it´ll carry me through another two days.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
paso a paso
I am in the walled city of Lugo this afternoon, and on my way out as soon as I finish my errands. Have I mentioned that cities don´t sit well with me? The traffic, the trash, the noise, the bad air... The thought of Santiago itself actually intimidates me quite a bit, just thinking about finding the post office, the train station, etc, etc. Not to mention the crush of people it will surely be. I am much, much happier out in the middle of nowhere, walking with my own thoughts and birdsong.
Galicia is treating me well so far. Lots of soft dirt trails that remind me more of Vermont than anything I´ve come across so far: big trees, little brooks. But instead of shelters there are chapels and hermitages! The mornings start chilly and thick with fog, which burns off to reveal a hot blazing blue sky that lasts until 10:00 pm or so. The late evenings have me on a strange sleep schedule. Not to mention the fact that I never sleep well in albergues, so every time I stay at one, it throws me for a day or two. One thing I´m looking forward to when I get home is real sleep!
If all goes according to plan, I´ll be in the big city itself the morning of Saturday, August 1st. That´s just three more days of walking! I´ll then be spending a week at the Taize monastery in France, which will hopefully provide some reflecting and recuperating time.
Galicia is treating me well so far. Lots of soft dirt trails that remind me more of Vermont than anything I´ve come across so far: big trees, little brooks. But instead of shelters there are chapels and hermitages! The mornings start chilly and thick with fog, which burns off to reveal a hot blazing blue sky that lasts until 10:00 pm or so. The late evenings have me on a strange sleep schedule. Not to mention the fact that I never sleep well in albergues, so every time I stay at one, it throws me for a day or two. One thing I´m looking forward to when I get home is real sleep!
If all goes according to plan, I´ll be in the big city itself the morning of Saturday, August 1st. That´s just three more days of walking! I´ll then be spending a week at the Taize monastery in France, which will hopefully provide some reflecting and recuperating time.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
less than 250 km to go!
Thank you, Asturias, for dirt roads and ¨real¨trails! Less asphalt and fewer cars. However, the rain yesterday has turned some areas into LAKES of mud, which leaves me dreaming of some nice dry pavement. The rain did something else interesting too: it made one of my toenails fall off! I guess I could have seen it coming; I got a blister under the nail last week or so, and once the blister subsided there was a funny space between nail and toe... Yesterday´s ceaseless downpour softened it up and soaked it right off. A very odd sensation, no pain, kind of like losing a tooth actually. It hung on by a thread that I had to snip. I´m curious to see whether it will ever grow back. For now it´s slathered in antibiotic and wrapped up in moleskine and waterproof tape.
On to less-disgusting items. I stayed last night at maybe the best albergue I´ve yet encountered, in Bodenaya. Run out of a private household by guys who are ¨amigos del camino.¨ After a long day of wind and rain, arriving to a warm house with wood floors and clothelines and a shower and people offering you a glass of wine--it´s like some sort of dream. And the best part, perhaps: only three other peregrinos, so super-quiet sleeping, practically private quarters. But above all, such a warm, welcoming, friendly place. I´ll have to write a full post on albergues at some point; they´re a source of endless fascination for me. I should note, however, that I´ve only spent roughly one third of my nights in albergues. The rest of the time I am either in my tent, or under the portico of a church or chapel (possibly my favorite way to sleep, especially on muggy nights, when those cold stone floors feel so nice--plus, you can sit and watch the stars come out).
Besides the rural-ness and the incredibly kind and amiable people, the other lovely thing about the Primitivo (as opposed to continuing along the coast) is the influx of new pilgrims. Many start their journey in Oviedo, and at this stage many folks are still fresh and excited, talkative and full of plans, not yet battered and weary. The energy is so different, and I suspect it´s doing me a lot of good. Also, the vast majority of folks I´ve met on the Primitivo are from Spain, so practically all my conversation has been in Spanish. (When there is a more international mix, conversations tend to default into English or fracture according to nationality.) Apparently, an American who can actually speak a foreign language is practically unheard-of here; I´m like some very rare species that no one has ever encountered. I get a lot of surpirsed looks and kudos. So, mil gracias to all my former Spanish teachers; I doubt I´d be here without y'all!
On to less-disgusting items. I stayed last night at maybe the best albergue I´ve yet encountered, in Bodenaya. Run out of a private household by guys who are ¨amigos del camino.¨ After a long day of wind and rain, arriving to a warm house with wood floors and clothelines and a shower and people offering you a glass of wine--it´s like some sort of dream. And the best part, perhaps: only three other peregrinos, so super-quiet sleeping, practically private quarters. But above all, such a warm, welcoming, friendly place. I´ll have to write a full post on albergues at some point; they´re a source of endless fascination for me. I should note, however, that I´ve only spent roughly one third of my nights in albergues. The rest of the time I am either in my tent, or under the portico of a church or chapel (possibly my favorite way to sleep, especially on muggy nights, when those cold stone floors feel so nice--plus, you can sit and watch the stars come out).
Besides the rural-ness and the incredibly kind and amiable people, the other lovely thing about the Primitivo (as opposed to continuing along the coast) is the influx of new pilgrims. Many start their journey in Oviedo, and at this stage many folks are still fresh and excited, talkative and full of plans, not yet battered and weary. The energy is so different, and I suspect it´s doing me a lot of good. Also, the vast majority of folks I´ve met on the Primitivo are from Spain, so practically all my conversation has been in Spanish. (When there is a more international mix, conversations tend to default into English or fracture according to nationality.) Apparently, an American who can actually speak a foreign language is practically unheard-of here; I´m like some very rare species that no one has ever encountered. I get a lot of surpirsed looks and kudos. So, mil gracias to all my former Spanish teachers; I doubt I´d be here without y'all!
Sunday, July 19, 2009
siguiendo la gran flecha de la creatividad...
Today I leave the coast and turn inland, following el Camino Primitivo through Asturias to join el Camino Francés in Palas del Rei. I´ve been juggling for several days whether to continue via el Norte, or take el Primitivo. From everything I´ve been told about el Primitivo, it is possibly the most beautiful route to Santiago. More woods, more mountains, and no more seaside resort towns. So off we go--I said I wasn´t going to plan too strictly, and this is precisely why.
PS: Knee feeling much better the last day or two. I still walk like an abuelita, but at least now it looks worse than it feels! (I sent a package of things (e.g. my broken camera) ahead to the Post Office in Santiago, so I don´t have to carry the things I´m not using. Best 5.00 € I ever spent!
PS: Knee feeling much better the last day or two. I still walk like an abuelita, but at least now it looks worse than it feels! (I sent a package of things (e.g. my broken camera) ahead to the Post Office in Santiago, so I don´t have to carry the things I´m not using. Best 5.00 € I ever spent!
Friday, July 17, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Well, I´m siting here icing my mala rodilla (bad knee) with a block of frozen spinach (which I plan on eating later with this little bottle of balsmaic salad dressing they gave me on the airplane.
Did I ever mention how, on my rescheduled flight, they put up front in the business class?! Well, they did. I had a whole giant seat that reclined fully, and they gave us nearly-real food... I actually slept on the plane. An amazing experience.
But back to Spain: I am very close to halfway! Santiago is 400-some km away. I am in a not-very exciting town called Unquera, on my way out of the Cantabria and on to Asturias (which I´ve been told is much more beautiful and less tourist-y than the beach-resort locura of the Cantabrian region).
The weather has held out nicely: only one day of rain in the past week, I think. And in a way, the rain offers a nice reprieve from the sun sun sun.
The pavement walking certainly gets to my knee more than anything else. But don´t worry, I have all the good stuff: a knee brace and arnica gel and yes, some ibuprofen too...
Off we go!
Did I ever mention how, on my rescheduled flight, they put up front in the business class?! Well, they did. I had a whole giant seat that reclined fully, and they gave us nearly-real food... I actually slept on the plane. An amazing experience.
But back to Spain: I am very close to halfway! Santiago is 400-some km away. I am in a not-very exciting town called Unquera, on my way out of the Cantabria and on to Asturias (which I´ve been told is much more beautiful and less tourist-y than the beach-resort locura of the Cantabrian region).
The weather has held out nicely: only one day of rain in the past week, I think. And in a way, the rain offers a nice reprieve from the sun sun sun.
The pavement walking certainly gets to my knee more than anything else. But don´t worry, I have all the good stuff: a knee brace and arnica gel and yes, some ibuprofen too...
Off we go!
Friday, July 10, 2009
chica loca que camina sola...
Even more than in Vermont, people are shocked to see me walking alone. Taken aback. I get asked where my boyfriend is, where my friends and family are, etc. etc.
How to explain that it just wouldn´t be the same with compañeros? I think and speak almost entirely in Spanish (except with Germans, who always want to talk in English)--and I´m pretty sure this wouldn´t be the case if I were walking with other Americans. As it is, I am not insulated from the world around me. I´m sure this is what folks find so troubling. But it´s exaclty what makes traveling valuable. I´ve fallen in love with Spain--especially the rural areas of the Basque region--in a way I have never fallen in love with another country before. I could see myself LIVING here...
Other thoughts: the bicyclists are more loco than I am. I don´t want to imagine churning up these hills on a fully loaded ride. Damn. It´s like watching an amateur rendition of the tour de france or something (no wonder the Spaniards kick such ass in the tour!).
Also: Spain is coffee not tea, dogs not cats, and wine not beer (well, quite a bit of both, actually, but, you know...). I´ve fallen into a terrible--terribly satisfying--espresso habit, the coffee is just so damn good everywhere, it´s hard to walk without it. So here I am, living my dream of living off of bread, chocolate, and coffee. There are panaderias everywhere, so I´m going through a loaf of bread every day or two, not to mention apples from the fruterias, and some verduras y tomates, and vino (muy barato!), and some sheep-milk cheese, oh! And yesterday I tried pulpo (octopus) for the very first time! The nice older German man I spent all day leap-frogging from Portuagaletes to Castro Urdiales offered me some at lunch, and it´s hard to say no to generosity. It was good. The best part was the paprika-laden olive oil it was cooked in. So here I go, putting aside all my ideals in the name of experience (and a bottomless stomach).
How to explain that it just wouldn´t be the same with compañeros? I think and speak almost entirely in Spanish (except with Germans, who always want to talk in English)--and I´m pretty sure this wouldn´t be the case if I were walking with other Americans. As it is, I am not insulated from the world around me. I´m sure this is what folks find so troubling. But it´s exaclty what makes traveling valuable. I´ve fallen in love with Spain--especially the rural areas of the Basque region--in a way I have never fallen in love with another country before. I could see myself LIVING here...
Other thoughts: the bicyclists are more loco than I am. I don´t want to imagine churning up these hills on a fully loaded ride. Damn. It´s like watching an amateur rendition of the tour de france or something (no wonder the Spaniards kick such ass in the tour!).
Also: Spain is coffee not tea, dogs not cats, and wine not beer (well, quite a bit of both, actually, but, you know...). I´ve fallen into a terrible--terribly satisfying--espresso habit, the coffee is just so damn good everywhere, it´s hard to walk without it. So here I am, living my dream of living off of bread, chocolate, and coffee. There are panaderias everywhere, so I´m going through a loaf of bread every day or two, not to mention apples from the fruterias, and some verduras y tomates, and vino (muy barato!), and some sheep-milk cheese, oh! And yesterday I tried pulpo (octopus) for the very first time! The nice older German man I spent all day leap-frogging from Portuagaletes to Castro Urdiales offered me some at lunch, and it´s hard to say no to generosity. It was good. The best part was the paprika-laden olive oil it was cooked in. So here I go, putting aside all my ideals in the name of experience (and a bottomless stomach).
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Ando y ando y ando.
I have less than seven minutes before my internet money runs out, so I´ll be quick...
I´m in Gernika for a couple hours, doing errands. I try not to spend longer than a couple hours in any city because they´re stressful and nowhere near as pretty as el campo. I´ve spent all but one night in my tent. Last night I stayed at the Cenaruzza monastery, had my first shower, dried my soggy clothes, etc.
I´ve walked through sheep pastures, past ancient churches, through clouds and eucalyptus groves, across beaches, and on several highways, old and new. Rain, sun, Spanish, English, French, Euskadi... More later. Time´s up!
Besos a todo.
I´m in Gernika for a couple hours, doing errands. I try not to spend longer than a couple hours in any city because they´re stressful and nowhere near as pretty as el campo. I´ve spent all but one night in my tent. Last night I stayed at the Cenaruzza monastery, had my first shower, dried my soggy clothes, etc.
I´ve walked through sheep pastures, past ancient churches, through clouds and eucalyptus groves, across beaches, and on several highways, old and new. Rain, sun, Spanish, English, French, Euskadi... More later. Time´s up!
Besos a todo.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
In Limbo
Guess what! I'm stuck! At home, at least, but stuck nonetheless.
After spending the entire afternoon at the Burlington airport waiting for the thunderstorms to clear, the powers-that-be finally decided to give up on delaying my connecting flight to JFK and just cancel it all together. They gave me a brand new ticket for a flight leaving tomorrow morning. Oh, and the BEST part? I now have a SIX HOUR layover in New York.
I honestly cannot remember the last time I flew without a hitch. Maybe I never have. The airline gods don't smile on me, but based on the stories I heard from fellow fliers today, it seems they don't smile on anybody. The morning flight to JFK was also canceled today, due to mechanical problems; you can imagine how inflamed the folks were who've been trying to get out of Vermont since 7:00 am and now have to wait another night. Let's just cross our fingers that the sky stays clear long enough for me to get in the air.
A million thanks to Tina for the intrepid shuttling today in the face of thunder and lightning, wind and rain.
It's odd being here. I had myself prepared myself psychologically to be sleeping on a plane tonight (not that I ever really sleep on planes) and dealing with time zones and trains and languages-other-than-English tomorrow. But instead I'm here, making dinner and tea as usual, playing with Puppy (who was so excited to see me, little does he know...), and being more aimless and lazy than ever, because I'm in airline limbo!
On the bright side, I did find this really cool lobster-shaped magnet on the sidewalk outside the airport. Poor dear, he's missing one of his antennae.
After spending the entire afternoon at the Burlington airport waiting for the thunderstorms to clear, the powers-that-be finally decided to give up on delaying my connecting flight to JFK and just cancel it all together. They gave me a brand new ticket for a flight leaving tomorrow morning. Oh, and the BEST part? I now have a SIX HOUR layover in New York.
I honestly cannot remember the last time I flew without a hitch. Maybe I never have. The airline gods don't smile on me, but based on the stories I heard from fellow fliers today, it seems they don't smile on anybody. The morning flight to JFK was also canceled today, due to mechanical problems; you can imagine how inflamed the folks were who've been trying to get out of Vermont since 7:00 am and now have to wait another night. Let's just cross our fingers that the sky stays clear long enough for me to get in the air.
A million thanks to Tina for the intrepid shuttling today in the face of thunder and lightning, wind and rain.
It's odd being here. I had myself prepared myself psychologically to be sleeping on a plane tonight (not that I ever really sleep on planes) and dealing with time zones and trains and languages-other-than-English tomorrow. But instead I'm here, making dinner and tea as usual, playing with Puppy (who was so excited to see me, little does he know...), and being more aimless and lazy than ever, because I'm in airline limbo!
On the bright side, I did find this really cool lobster-shaped magnet on the sidewalk outside the airport. Poor dear, he's missing one of his antennae.
Scattered Mush
Overnight flight takes off in six hours. The reality of where I'm going and what I'm doing hasn't soaked in yet. Or else I'm so fully saturated, after thinking about and planning this endeavor for more than a year, that all of this is just the next natural step.
Milo put some cute little claw-holes in one wall of my tent (clever me, pitching it in his yard), so I patched those last night. Cleaned out my foul-smelling water bottles. Did a final load of laundry. All I've got left to do is jot down some last-minute addresses.
The following website offers a thorough stage-by-stage description (in Spanish) of the route I'll be taking:
http://caminodesantiago.consumer.es/los-caminos-de-santiago/del-norte/
I keep getting questions about what I'll be reading this summer, what books I'm taking. Due to their weight, I won't be taking any full physical books--although I have a list of about two dozen that I wish I were reading right now--except for a beautiful Moleskine journal that Jeanette gave me to fill up. In place of books, I have pages and pages of poems that I've copied out. I have a couple dozen altogether. Why such a conservative selection? My plan is to memorize as many as I can. Most of them are pretty short. Good traveling poems.
Poets come in clusters for me--I go through phases, anywhere from a few months to a year or two, during which I end up completely immersed in the work of one or two writers in particular. In high school, it was Frank O'Hara and Theodore Roethke; then Bertolt Brecht (yes, the poems) and Walt Whitman; in college, my biggies were Wendell Berry and Adrienne Rich; these days, it's Rainer Maria Rilke and Tomas Tranströmer. Rilke possesses perhaps the richest, lushest, most articulate spirituality of any human being I can think of. And Tranströmer, whose language is sweetly spare and worldly (a much better candidate for translation than Rilke), provides a perfect counterpoint to Rilke's loftiness. Here's a Tranströmer poem, translated by Robert Bly:
Not to say that Tranströmer and Rilke are my only poets right now. I'm always spending time with a few others on the side. So I'm bringing as well a few by Gary Snyder, Seamus Heaney, Antonio Machado, Octavio Paz, Wendell Berry, and Paul Muldoon. I'm on a bit of a guilt trip about not including any women, but I'm not reading any women poets at the moment.
All right, back to the more earthly concerns of laundry and breakfast.
Milo put some cute little claw-holes in one wall of my tent (clever me, pitching it in his yard), so I patched those last night. Cleaned out my foul-smelling water bottles. Did a final load of laundry. All I've got left to do is jot down some last-minute addresses.
The following website offers a thorough stage-by-stage description (in Spanish) of the route I'll be taking:
http://caminodesantiago.
I keep getting questions about what I'll be reading this summer, what books I'm taking. Due to their weight, I won't be taking any full physical books--although I have a list of about two dozen that I wish I were reading right now--except for a beautiful Moleskine journal that Jeanette gave me to fill up. In place of books, I have pages and pages of poems that I've copied out. I have a couple dozen altogether. Why such a conservative selection? My plan is to memorize as many as I can. Most of them are pretty short. Good traveling poems.
Poets come in clusters for me--I go through phases, anywhere from a few months to a year or two, during which I end up completely immersed in the work of one or two writers in particular. In high school, it was Frank O'Hara and Theodore Roethke; then Bertolt Brecht (yes, the poems) and Walt Whitman; in college, my biggies were Wendell Berry and Adrienne Rich; these days, it's Rainer Maria Rilke and Tomas Tranströmer. Rilke possesses perhaps the richest, lushest, most articulate spirituality of any human being I can think of. And Tranströmer, whose language is sweetly spare and worldly (a much better candidate for translation than Rilke), provides a perfect counterpoint to Rilke's loftiness. Here's a Tranströmer poem, translated by Robert Bly:
From March '79To be honest, I didn't stumble upon this one all by myself. David Abram uses it as an epigram to one chapter in his lovely book, The Spell of the Sensuous, which I re-read last month because I've been thinking a lot about language in the nonhuman (more-than-human) world. Birdsong, bee-dances, dogs leaving little messages for one another at the base of trees. In other translations of "March '79," the word language is used instead of speech. At first, I liked that Bly chose speech instead, as it evokes the physical act of conversation. However, today I'm leaning back toward a preference for language, which also evokes the corporeal aspect of our words--language comes from the tongue. But it also comes from Latin, and I suspect Bly was opting for the Germanic. Even so, language has broader connotations; speech, to me, still feels bound in the way words is. I guess that's the Adrienne Rich in me: each of us has his or her own speech--or voice--but I'm still dreaming of a common language.
Being tired of people who come with words, but no speech,
I made my way to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words.
The pages free of handwriting stretched out on all sides!
I came upon the tracks of reindeer in the snow.
Speech but no words.
Not to say that Tranströmer and Rilke are my only poets right now. I'm always spending time with a few others on the side. So I'm bringing as well a few by Gary Snyder, Seamus Heaney, Antonio Machado, Octavio Paz, Wendell Berry, and Paul Muldoon. I'm on a bit of a guilt trip about not including any women, but I'm not reading any women poets at the moment.
All right, back to the more earthly concerns of laundry and breakfast.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Caminante
I can't stop thinking about that Antonio Machado proverbio (or is it a cantar?):
No one has ever said they didn't pack enough. But we all have bits and pieces we wish we'd left behind.
Caminante, son tus huellasIn English, roughly, off the cuff:
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.
Walker, your footprints areInevitable, eh? I can never decide, when I read Proverbios y Cantares, whether I'm left feeling darker or lighter. There's a hopelessness--"there is no road..."--a sense of loss, but not quite loss, or not a painful one... a shedding, perhaps? The road is something we leave behind us. Every act of creation is an act of leave-taking. To give something, anything, to the world, we first have to learn to let go. So there's the answer, I suppose: I feel lighter, not heavier.
the road, and nothing more;
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking the road is made,
and when one turns, looking back,
one sees the path that one
will never again set foot upon.
Walker, there is no road
save for foam trails on the sea.
No one has ever said they didn't pack enough. But we all have bits and pieces we wish we'd left behind.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
What, Pray Tell, Is a Pedestrienne?
Several months ago, I picked up a book, entitled The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson, as a birthday present for my mother. She hasn't read it yet, but I gobbled it down in a matter of days. It's a delightful book, one of the better birthday presents I've given in recent memory. And it was Nicholson who introduced me to the pedestriennes. In Chapter 3, "Eccentrics, Obsessives, Artists," Nicholson discusses the professional walking phenomenon that took the world by storm during the 1870s.
http://www.runtheplanet.com/resources/historical/womens-history.asp
And for a more detailed social and political history of pedestriennes, read this 1999 paper by Dahn Shaulis (who also happens to be quite an excellent poet):
http://planetultramarathon.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/
As enjoyable as Nicholson's writing is, The Lost Art of Walking's primary concern is just that: the art of walking. Although he's a treasure trove of historical curiosity (the works of sculptor Richard Long, a conference of psychogeographers in Manhattan, the story Werner Herzog's midwinter walk from Munich to Paris in order to visit actress Lotte Eisner whom he had heard was on her deathbed), Nicholson is not too interested in examining the politics and ideology of walking. Shaulis' article does a much more thorough job of that.
I suppose walking will always be a more political act for women than for men. There are added risks involved, and added stigma to overcome. You have no idea how many people say to me, with great shock, "You're walking alone?" Not just when I'm out overnight, either: even on dayhikes, people are surprised to see a woman alone in the woods. I wonder why people don't react with the same sort of surprise and anxiety when I walk alone in, say, Burlington. Would they worry if I were walking alone on the streets of Manhattan?
There's a good memoir, In Beauty May She Walk by Leslie Mass, about what it means to be a woman alone on the Appalachian Trail. It gets a bit "inspirational" at times, a bit Oprah for my taste, but posesses a good deal of wisdom nonetheless. Let it be known that I haven't cracked the cover of a single Camino memoir yet, and don't plan to until I finish (I do welcome recommendations!). I had hardly read a word of backpacking literature when I set out on the Long Trail last summer, but when I got back, I was desperate for books to read, for words that would help me make sense of my experience. Experience first, theory later.
For a brief period in the nineteenth century female walking was a serious sport and a serious business. Large crowds turned out to watch, and successful women earned a great deal of money. Even so, it was an activity that had something sleazy and daring about it: pedestriennes weren't much better than actresses. It was only a passing fad, however. It was superseded in due course by the more exciting, and even more daring, sport of female bicycle riding, and some of the successful female walkers made an easy transition from two feet to two wheels. (76)Now, the pedestriennes' undertakings were decidedly not your typical walk in the park. Nicholson describes at length the exploits of professional walkers, both male and female. The most famous, perhaps, is Captain Richard Barclay, a Scot, who set out to walk 1000 miles in 1000 consecutive hours--and did so in 1859, on a set course of a single mile in Newmarket, Suffolk. Several women in the States followed suit twenty years later, and took to walking record-setting numbers of quarter-miles in quarter-hours. Exilda La Chapelle (which, for the record, is a wonderful name) walked 3000 quarter-miles in 3000 consecutive quarter-hours. Not only is that a lot of walking, it's a lot of walking without sleeping. Pretty hardcore. For more hardcore walking women, this is a very nice timeline:
http://www.runtheplanet.com/
And for a more detailed social and political history of pedestriennes, read this 1999 paper by Dahn Shaulis (who also happens to be quite an excellent poet):
http://planetultramarathon.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/
As enjoyable as Nicholson's writing is, The Lost Art of Walking's primary concern is just that: the art of walking. Although he's a treasure trove of historical curiosity (the works of sculptor Richard Long, a conference of psychogeographers in Manhattan, the story Werner Herzog's midwinter walk from Munich to Paris in order to visit actress Lotte Eisner whom he had heard was on her deathbed), Nicholson is not too interested in examining the politics and ideology of walking. Shaulis' article does a much more thorough job of that.
I suppose walking will always be a more political act for women than for men. There are added risks involved, and added stigma to overcome. You have no idea how many people say to me, with great shock, "You're walking alone?" Not just when I'm out overnight, either: even on dayhikes, people are surprised to see a woman alone in the woods. I wonder why people don't react with the same sort of surprise and anxiety when I walk alone in, say, Burlington. Would they worry if I were walking alone on the streets of Manhattan?
There's a good memoir, In Beauty May She Walk by Leslie Mass, about what it means to be a woman alone on the Appalachian Trail. It gets a bit "inspirational" at times, a bit Oprah for my taste, but posesses a good deal of wisdom nonetheless. Let it be known that I haven't cracked the cover of a single Camino memoir yet, and don't plan to until I finish (I do welcome recommendations!). I had hardly read a word of backpacking literature when I set out on the Long Trail last summer, but when I got back, I was desperate for books to read, for words that would help me make sense of my experience. Experience first, theory later.
Friday, June 19, 2009
In Keeping with the Theme of Being and Doing
I just read this essay by a writer named Tess Gallagher called “The Poem as Time Machine,” published in 1979. She has this paragraph that really fascinates me, although I’m not sure I entirely agree with her:
The “future-sustaining emblems” to which Gallagher is referring are those symbols of stability, those structures such as marriage, family, and career that we have traditionally deemed significant and used to define ourselves—and which we are now losing. And the “the point of all possibilities” is Gallagher’s term for how time works in a poem:
So the poem helps us to inhabit the moment, not just pass through it into the next one. It gets back to trees, too: deeply rooted, stretching outward and upward, and eternally here. The tree can’t help but fully inhabit every moment. And that inhabitance, for us humans, is not a matter of eliminating regrets and failures and promises and expectations (and self-criticisms and hesitations), but of incorporating them—realizing their significance without turning them into idols, without becoming fearful or worshipful of our personal affects (I’m getting all Spinoza here). Writing a poem is about carving out a space for the “I,” with all its impurities and flaws, to inhabit.
I like all of that and find it almost satisfying. But I still think that “what we do and make” is at least as important as “what we are.” In poetry and in life more broadly. Because poems are something we make, concrete objects as far as I’m concerned, requiring labor like anything else, I’m troubled by the notion of our words existing on some separate plane of pure being removed from doing. And I suspect that isn’t even what Gallagher is after; she herself describes how language moves in and out of life. And I like idea of the poem as a sanctuary: the “small arena” one makes in which to cultivate the “now.” What really bothers me is that one line: “the captivities of what we do and make.” Do we really spend enough time genuinely doing and making things to be held captive by them? I think our captivity as a society has more to do with a lack of doing and making.
So often, the tasks with which we are burdened—in school, at work—are not integral. Genuine doing and making—growing and harvesting plants, building shelter, making clothes, clearing trails—are, like the crafting of a poem, ways of expanding the “now,” of bringing together those “disparate and contradictory elements in life” and allowing them consequence and meaning. This has to do with the meditative aspect of repeated motions, but also with the thought and care and skill involved. We spend so little time accomplishing necessary tasks, doing our own work. What I want is more of a recognition that poetry, writing it and reading it, is not a purely inward process, not entirely a process of the “I” but something more worldly, more expansive, more engaged, and more corporeal. “All forms will pass, matter alone remain”—from Wendell Berry’s translation of a poem by Pierre Ronsard. If poetry were pure form, that line would be terribly sad, fruitless and futile, a sort of “Why bother to write?” The line survives precisely because there is some matter at the heart of the poem, some craft, some consequence.
Gallagher is right to say that we ache for consequence, and that poetry can help to satisfy that ache; but her explanation of the origin of our ache is off. Being and doing need not be a case of either/or. In truth, we need more of both; and in any act of creation, we find both wrapped up with one another. What I want to work out is not how to keep doing from subsuming being, or vice versa, but how the two sustain each other—how each gives the other—gives our lives—meaning.
It may be that the poem is an anachronism of being-oriented impulses. It is an anachronism because it reminds us ironically that we stand at the point of all possibilities yet feel helpless before the collapse of the future-sustaining emblems of our lives. This has reduced us to life in an instantaneous “now.” The time of the poem answers this more and more by allowing an expansion of the “now.” It allows consequence to disparate and contradictory elements in life. The “I,” reduced to insignificance in most spheres of contemporary society, is again able to inhabit a small arena of its own making. It returns us, from the captivities of what we do and make, to what we are. (115)
The “future-sustaining emblems” to which Gallagher is referring are those symbols of stability, those structures such as marriage, family, and career that we have traditionally deemed significant and used to define ourselves—and which we are now losing. And the “the point of all possibilities” is Gallagher’s term for how time works in a poem:
the point at which anything that has happened to me, or any past that I can encourage to enrich my own vision, is allowed to intersect with a present moment, as in a creation, as in a poem. And its regrets or expectations or promises or failures or any suppositions I can bring to it may give significance to this moment that is the language moving in and out of my life and my life as it meets and enters the lives of others. (107)
So the poem helps us to inhabit the moment, not just pass through it into the next one. It gets back to trees, too: deeply rooted, stretching outward and upward, and eternally here. The tree can’t help but fully inhabit every moment. And that inhabitance, for us humans, is not a matter of eliminating regrets and failures and promises and expectations (and self-criticisms and hesitations), but of incorporating them—realizing their significance without turning them into idols, without becoming fearful or worshipful of our personal affects (I’m getting all Spinoza here). Writing a poem is about carving out a space for the “I,” with all its impurities and flaws, to inhabit.
I like all of that and find it almost satisfying. But I still think that “what we do and make” is at least as important as “what we are.” In poetry and in life more broadly. Because poems are something we make, concrete objects as far as I’m concerned, requiring labor like anything else, I’m troubled by the notion of our words existing on some separate plane of pure being removed from doing. And I suspect that isn’t even what Gallagher is after; she herself describes how language moves in and out of life. And I like idea of the poem as a sanctuary: the “small arena” one makes in which to cultivate the “now.” What really bothers me is that one line: “the captivities of what we do and make.” Do we really spend enough time genuinely doing and making things to be held captive by them? I think our captivity as a society has more to do with a lack of doing and making.
So often, the tasks with which we are burdened—in school, at work—are not integral. Genuine doing and making—growing and harvesting plants, building shelter, making clothes, clearing trails—are, like the crafting of a poem, ways of expanding the “now,” of bringing together those “disparate and contradictory elements in life” and allowing them consequence and meaning. This has to do with the meditative aspect of repeated motions, but also with the thought and care and skill involved. We spend so little time accomplishing necessary tasks, doing our own work. What I want is more of a recognition that poetry, writing it and reading it, is not a purely inward process, not entirely a process of the “I” but something more worldly, more expansive, more engaged, and more corporeal. “All forms will pass, matter alone remain”—from Wendell Berry’s translation of a poem by Pierre Ronsard. If poetry were pure form, that line would be terribly sad, fruitless and futile, a sort of “Why bother to write?” The line survives precisely because there is some matter at the heart of the poem, some craft, some consequence.
Gallagher is right to say that we ache for consequence, and that poetry can help to satisfy that ache; but her explanation of the origin of our ache is off. Being and doing need not be a case of either/or. In truth, we need more of both; and in any act of creation, we find both wrapped up with one another. What I want to work out is not how to keep doing from subsuming being, or vice versa, but how the two sustain each other—how each gives the other—gives our lives—meaning.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
A Puppy and a Poem
The greatest challenge, it turns out, might be tearing myself away from this place. And here's why. His name is Milo, he's been with my family for a week and a half, and will be ten weeks old tomorrow. The photograph does not do him justice. For some more unbearable cuteness, go to YouTube and watch a fawning proud-parent video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE2MABtzxoU&feature=player_embedded
Milo is not much of a walker yet, but hopefully he'll figure out that the road isn't too scary, the leash not too uncomfortable, and new places not too terrible. For now, his favorite pastimes are hiding in the tall grass, napping in the sun, and wrasslin' with anyone who will get down on the ground with him.
One can't help but feel a bit of separation anxiety every time one leaves home without this little fellow. (My mother has her fingers crossed that she'll win the lottery so she can quit her job and stay home with him all the time.) If I can barely tear myself away for an afternoon, how am I going to manage six whole weeks? He'll be well taken care of; younger brothers (fellow puppies?) Aaron and Colin are on summer vacation, so Milo will have no shortage of playmates and guardians. I just don't want to think about how much growing he will have done by the time I get back... Honestly, though, I'll be happy when he's a bit more grown up. His legs need to get a little longer and we need to build up his confidence about new places before he can go on hikes with his people. For now, we're still working on teaching him that the car is not a bad place to be.
Do I have any non-puppy-related thoughts right now? Perhaps. I am hard at work memorizing poems, a habit I've fallen out of over the past year or two. I promised myself when I walked the Long Trail last year that I would recite poetry to myself as I walked, but that fell utterly through the cracks. This time around, I'm getting serious. I have several pages of shortish poems by other people (Rilke, Gary Snyder, Seamus Heaney) as warm-ups, and I'll bring some of my own stuff, too. Here's my first effort, a little one by Snyder:
There are those who like to get dirty
and fix things.
They drink coffee at dawn,
beer after work
And those who stay clean,
just appreciate things,
At breakfast they have milk
and juice at night.
There are those who do both,
they drink tea.
I'm fairly certain I fall into the latter category. Tea is the only thing I can't seem to go a day without lately. The beverage of choice for folks who can't decide whether they are do-ers or be-ers.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Earth and Sky: First Camino Meditation
Traveling at Home
Even in a country you know by heart
it's hard to go the same way twice.
The life of the going changes.
The chances change and make a new way.
Any tree or stone or bird
Can be the bud of a new direction. The
natural correction is to make intent
of accident. To get back before dark
is the art of going.
--Wendell Berry
To learn a new land through the feet. To have sun hit the skin at a different angle. To watch stars emerge from different, unanticipated parts of the sky. People ask me why I'm going to Spain and this is the best answer I can give. So, this Camino de Santiago, this Way of Saint James: Is it about the journey? the destination? Is it about adventure? self-discovery? discipline? sanctuary? Yes to all of these, and no. The art of going: maybe that's all I'm after.
I've been thinking about pilgrimage for a long time; once I get an idea in my head, I'm not one to let it go easily. The Camino de Santiago is rich with metaphor. Saint James was a martyr, his body said to have been miraculously transported to and interred in northwestern Spain, where he preached. Centuries later the hermit Pelayo was led by a star to Santiago's tomb. And to this day we walk to the Field of Stars, Compostela, seeking...something.
James and his brother John were known together as the boanerges, the sons of thunder. Fiery spirits, troublemakers, the thunder-boys make appearances throughout mythology: Castor and Pollux for the Greeks; Magni and Modi, Thor's sons in Norse mythology; similar deities show up in Cherokee myths; according to Peruvian belief, every set of twins is born of thunder and lightning.
I find myself thinking of the thunderbirds who show up in many Native American mythologies, and then of peregrine falcons (thus named during the middle ages when they were captured not as fledglings straight from the nest, but in flight on their migratory "pilgrimage"). There is something awesome and almost incredible about migrating birds of prey; all bird migrations hold some special power, but especially those of raptors...
For most birds, migration is a leap of blind faith, an instinctive urge over which they have no real control. The curlew does not "know," in a conscious sense, that coconut palms and placid atolls await it in Tonga or Fiji--it can sense only an urgency to fly in a certain direction for a certain length of time, following a path graven in its genes and marked by the stars. --Scott Weidensaul, Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory BirdsAnd so we're back at stars, el campo de stelle. I wonder if we humans don't share some of those migratory instincts. Give all the sociopolitical, psychospiritual explanations you want; perhaps the basic longing is for the going. Evolution: "to make intent of accident." We go where we're drawn. We keep what works.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
