- Oct 3, 2022
- 6 min read
Oh, forgot to say. The day continued, even after my grand internal climate epiphany. It rained a lot. It was hot a lot. Then cold a lot. Y’know, as it is in Bipolar Light County.
One problem (of many, as you know) with weather like this is where to eat, especially when there are no bars open for 20 kilometers. I’d been hungry for about an hour when I finally gave up my dream of finding refuge in a church and instead settled for the semi-cover of a dilapidated stone shed between La Llega and Priesca. Thankfully, I’d picked some Nasturtium about a half hour before, so had a pretty good lunch to look forward to with the rye bread and sardines I’d bought in Colunga. Also, about three kilos of dark chocolate with almonds. That’s basically all I eat here. Fish, bread, chocolate.
So you can imagine peppery greens are welcome when you find them. I sat down and started making my sandwich. Felt so pleased with my foraging skills that I took a photo.
See my new friend in the background? We hung out for about a half hour as the rain whipped the sides of our Royal dwelling. He had huge balls but still wouldn’t come within five meters of my still-sitting appearance. I try not to take these things personally.
Making it to Villaviciosa was hard. Many kilometers. Lots of asphalt. I felt like a first blister might be appearing between my toes. What the fuck. I took off my raincoat for about the seventh time that day and sweated along miles and miles of sun-drenched pavement.
But I eventually arrived at Albergue Del Congreso, where Waffles greeted me with a wave from one of the many park-facing balconies. I joined him, two Dutchmen and a riotous North London girl for some drinks (them), tea (grandma aka yours truly) and gossip (all). The Camino truly is like high school a lot of the time.
I wish I could say that this gorgeous sight remained true for the night, alas, when I returned from dinner my lush private four-bed overlooking the park had turned into a creepy semi-private four-bed overlooking the park, now shared with a pot-bellied, middle-aged hairy German in underpants. Sharing a dormitory with twenty strangers is way better than sharing a dormitory with one stranger, let me tell you that much.
The next day it rains, and rains, and rains. But I’ve learnt from my previous attempt to trudge through 25mm days. No more. The German has gone so I pay for another day at Park View Inn and stay in bed until ten. Then I slowly make my way out onto the shiny wet streets and find a cafe.
At eleven, it’s peak breakfast hour for the Spaniards. Maybe they’ve eaten earlier, I don’t know. But at eleven they fill the steaming cafeterias, drinking frothy coffees and sharing glazed pastries. In a corner, a TV blares out ALERTA! BANDAS JUVENILES! The bar staff all seem like they’ve worked here forever and love it. The oldest man brings me a piece of tortilla in a huge, soft bun and looks me deep in the eyes – not even in a creepy way! – as he wishes me buen provecho. The bread is delicious. I listen to the TV, Spanish family gossip, the whirr of the coffee machines and the constant clanking of cutlery at the bar.
Egg and potatoes. How could I forget. I eat fish, bread, chocolate, and egg and potatoes.
I stay in the cafe and read, then go to a great place where they teach IT to kids and let me use a computer for free. I email tumblr about my blog being listed as explicit, and they reply in two minutes apologising and saying it’s back up. It’s not. Not after two minutes. Not after ten. Not after two hours. I email again, but receive no reply.
Oy vey. Just when I found a name I like.
Anyway, I keep writing, first these diaries and then a vague outline for two thirds of the ayahuasca novel. I eat back at the hotel, where the new batch of pilgrims have arrived from their walk. They’re all soaked. I chat a bit and then go to my room (now shared with three normal-seeming people) where I read some more of How to Be a Free-Range Human on how to find what you love and make it your work etc.
Though it’s appealing, my inner critic is throwing a hissy fit about how simplistic it all seems, which inspires me to write a scene from the novel about an exuberant and naive character giving a similar workshop to a group of cynical depressives. It turns out funny but also feels like it captures the very real desire in us for solutions like these to work, to yield absolution from the incomprehensible grind that constitutes daily life for the majority of people. Getting things like this down on paper in the form of scenes where people talk and do things is the best thing about writing for me. I don’t really understand it any better than I did before, but just stating the problem makes it easier to bear. Like Chekhov said:
The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.
And then, sadly, I check my email. I’ve received a reply from the publisher I sent my latest novel to. It’s a no thanks. Which is not surprising. They’re Sweden’s biggest publishers. They must get sent hundreds of manuscripts a week.
And yet. There had been hope. Like there always is, when I finish something. There still is. There are other publishers. But with the extinguishing of this particular hope-flame goes also the excitement I’ve been feeling the last few days about the new project. The idea that I can write, should write, belong in writing.
What I hear this email saying is that I don’t. That I’m a fool to spend so much time on something nobody wants. That maybe, like a teacher once told Donna Tartt, I’d be better off selling shoes.
Bleurgh. I’ll bounce back from this. I always have. But for the moment, it throws me back to pre-Camino depression. What I want doesn’t want me. I’ve wasted my life. It’s too late for anything.
Of course. I can always take that feeling, and give it a voice. That I’ll then give to a character in the next novel.
Outside, the rain keeps falling. I get a photo from Fake Vegan, of him and Waffles in the albergue I was originally going to go to today. I get mad FOMO. New pilgrims arrive and want to hang but I stay in bed, reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed as the skies grow darker outside my window.
Though I’ve read the book before, it’s so good I forget I’m sad. I get an idea. I put away the book and write about the idea. Another character begins to speak. And suddenly, I feel like life matters again. I feel like I matter. I even think, what does it matter if I publish things when just writing them can give me this much joy?
As Instagram can read my thoughts, they support me with posts like these:
Nonetheless, the voice is still there. No matter how many times I pretend like the road is life and only processes matter it is always there, in the back of my head, whispering: “Once you write this book. Then, then you’ll finally be worthy of love.”
And I didn’t even have a particularly fucked-up childhood! How do normals do it?
Maybe what I’m here to do is walk until I’m like a kilometre outside of Santiago and then just take a bus home. Maybe that’s the lesson I have to learn. To finally stop pushing for a result, the illusion of a goal, of completeness. Is that what Buddha would have done?
The difficult thing is to let go for real and not just cause you think it’s what you have to do to get the thing you’re pretending to let go of getting. Cause if I was writing the story of my life I’d 100% make it so I had to accept total defeat in order to win. And just that awareness kind of makes it impossible to let go for real.
Thankfully, I am snapped out of this anxiety-go-around by a friend from England texting, so the rest of the afternoon I video chat with her, with my sister and her kids, and with my dad. My friend’s baby has just got her first passport and it’s adorable. My seven year old nephew, who’s also my godson, lets out the cutest, most disappointed groan when he learns I won’t be back for “three whole weeks.” And me and my dad laugh until we cry about the fact that half the visitors to Guemes thought I was Father Ernesto’s indoctrinated bitch when I translated his lecture, about the wasted pilgrim who storms into the dormitory “to piss” in the middle of our call, and about the middle-aged German who greeted me in his underpants the night before.
These are the things that really matter. Not publication.
Thank you, Insta 💁🏼♀️
