Downtown

(I'm next door.)

My hair is getting greasier,
Wax, actually, rubbed in thick—
Had to be sharp for downtown work,
Had to briefcase dance, the downtown jerk.
Just kidding, I enjoy full days,
Gets me out of bed, forces finding ways
To make the most of minutes
And stay productive,
What is luck? Trying to find me
But the buck’s seductive.
Want to teach private school next fall,
Only want my back against a chalkboard wall.

Wacker Drive photo by sgoralnick.
Technorati Tags: Chicago, Teaching, Temping, Rhyme, Money, Work

Citizen Journalism

I want to rig up a typewriter
A light post and a scrolling screen
Mounted atop the light post where the
Light used to be
And place it on a West Utica
Street corner and
Let people peck and type with one or
Ten fingers, spilling
What’s left of West Utica,
Lighting the words on the sign.
And maybe we can find a way to
Save what they say
Because they say people
Have a lot to say.

Details of jockeying
For tables at spaghetti night,
Brewery chopper parking and staring
Contests with cats.
Cans of deicer turning blood back from fingertips,
Bosnian refugees and Italian pride,
Sudanese credit.
Plans for townhouses, empty factories
That don’t seem so big after all.
And how if we could get
Just
One
Rapper
In a Utica jersey, things might finally start
To pick up.


Photo by Mojesto

Technorati Tags: Utica, Citizen Journalism, Pro-Am, Typewriter, Upstate, Word of Blog

Westchester, 1

Trying to make sense of my past.

Nature Preserves

Hard-won dollops of land, polka-dotted with horse dung, bounded by dirt roads and residential parcels given names, trailheaded with gray weathered map cases, scored by cross-country skis in winter, domesticated with benches and wooden fences maintained by someone, cratered by exposed foundations and root cellars dug by the same people who built the thousands of stone walls.


Photo by geekone
Technorati Tags: Westchester, Nature Preserve, Katonah, Mt. Holly, Pound Ridge, Trails

After Work

Rocked out forty hours in the Loop,
Final eight wrapped in a navy suit.
The El gives views within apartments lit
By shaded lamps or candles, here I sit
Rolling, elevated, up the track,
Prejudging drunken fratboys in the back
Of our car, they brought on a pole—
Showing off the evening’s goal.
It’s Friday night, how to pass the time,
Suggestion creeping up my spine
Stops at heart and brain, more exists
Than mixing up a vodka-liver twist.
But soon as I rustle, restless, I’ll return
To puking in the bathtub—Colgate form.
Knowing’s half the battle, used to say
The G.I. Joes on TV, here to stay
Memories of childhood fun,
No responsibilities save one:
To keep the wonder open, burning bright,
Hence reevaluation of Friday night.
Camino-style, trying different lives
(Could quip ‘bout cycling wives)
And not knowing which holds my future, day or night,
I keep Ecclesiastes’ verse in sight.
Might be Proverbs, no Bible scholar here
But I remember a window, crystal clear,
Just sitting, little chilly, on the couch
Beneath its open shutters, looking south.
Inertia floods the head with where you’ve been,
Upon stopping short a moment, eye within
Turns naturally back, I’d like to think,
But I’m lacking moments on the brink
Of species-wide potential, but I’ll try
To find a tiny scrap of answer, again, why
I’d like to live a million different ways—
And of this suit? There’re numbers on the days.


Photo by ElectricSprout
Technorati Tags: Chicago, Poetry, Rhyme, Colgate, Wonder, Alcohol

Point C's

Seth Godin talks about Local Max, Point C and Big Max. Evelyn Rodriguez talks about the same, relating it to pilgrimages, both real and metaphorical. I'm with her 100%.

Here are three Point C's from my Camino:

1.

I was already well behind the other walkers when I left Tosantos. Although I'd enjoyed a long breakfast and conversation, I'd also used my Spanish to make a bus reservation for a Dutch woman going home with tendonitis. My brain was primed for failure. The cold drizzle and empty trail didn’t help.

The pain behind my knee began as I descended the Montes de Oca. As the pain got worse, it hijacked my thoughts. I feared not finding a bed in Agés. I feared having to rest for a day or two. Within minutes, I’d convinced myself this was the start of a condition which would keep me from ever reaching Santiago. I prayed for a way off the mountain and I prayed for a stick to help me.

I forgot about wanting a stick and they appeared. Walking sticks, leaned up against the trail marker. Stripped of bark and smoothed, they washed my head clean. I returned to thinking only about the day’s goal: a bed. The stick that would carry me the rest of the way literally volunteered itself by falling away from the others. This stick brought me closer to something. And as I left the mountain and the forest behind, a wind let me know everything would be OK by how it made the grass move. Not bending, not swaying—playing. I made it to Agés and slept in a fairytale cottage.

2.

The flat and endless wheat fields of the Meseta can lure a walker into complacency. Leaving Agés, I wasn’t there yet. The stick got me to Burgos. There I took a rest day and bought a knee brace to help the tendons. The next day, San Bol, pure magic. And then promptly into the dark.

I left San Bol late, as I had done from Tosantos and Agés. The best refuges set a breakfast with coffee, pastries, and more importantly, cheer. This day brought me close to heat stroke, but not quite there. Gifts of chocolate and an apple, plus two liters of water when I needed it most, kept me moving. It could have been counted as a warning for what to look out for, if I'd only known. Arrived in Itero de la Vega just before the shops closed and avoided hunger by chance.

The next day I might have been unconsciously trying to make up time, walking fast. Whatever it was, I got my first blister.

And in typical first-time-no-clue fashion, I decided to pop said blister late in the day with distance still to go. This led to acute pain with every step. Nothing like the throbbing and heat of overworked muscles. This pain was repeated tetanus shots under the toenail. I decided to stop for the night at the next town, Villalcázar de Sirga.

But: 1) This town had no refuge. 2) This town had no cash machine. 3) I had no money.

I met a man from France who told me he had a room in a casa rural, a rented house and I could split it with him. A good enough deal. In the cathedral, a friend (bound for the next town) loaned me money for the room. We shared the house with an impromptu couple.

Soon, the owner came by. He said we could share the room but we couldn't split the price. This doubled the cost of my bed. I was back in the hole. It got later. The owner suggested I walk across town to the four-star hotel and try to get money there. Obligated, I set out at 10pm through dark streets to find the hotel and make a deal.

I walked slowly, hoping not to wake the blister. Eventually found the hotel and went inside. Without much negotiating power, I agreed to pay the owner a commission plus his cost to Visa in exchange for a charge to my credit card, the amount of which he'd give me in bills. After paying for the ability to pay, I walked back to the casa rural and paid.

(This wasn't very different from most of the towns on the Meseta. Pilgrims are a captive clientele, the towns are small and price gouging is rampant. Highway robbery on Europe's oldest highway.)

After a much later than usual night, I arose later than usual the next morning. Four kilometers down the road, Carrión de los Condes and the start of the longest empty stretch of the Camino. Seventeen kilometers without water.

Most people sleep in Carrión, get up early and finish the seventeen kilometers before the sun gets angry. I slept an hour down the road, woke up late, and began the empty stretch at 11am. Sitting duck.

The blister pain became muted, replaced by fatigue. A new flavor of suffering. I ate lunch just after the halfway marker, squatting in the shade of a bush in dry streambed. Soon after, the delirium began. As noted, I dug through a costume box of thoughts, trying all of them on. Luckily I stuck to the path, putting one foot in front of the other. I made it to Calzadilla de la Cueza around 4pm.

After a few more hours of irrational behavior, I found myself vomiting on the front steps of the only restaurant in town. Heat stroke or not, this is clearly Point C.

Then things started getting better again. I made some notes of the experience. I found out I like dried figs. I made a new friend, Jean-Francois, an actuary from Quebec traveling for a year on a severence package and giver of the figs.

And even though there was much pain and disappointment in the next few days as well--a slow, lonely post-puke day, a late arrival in Reliegos, baby steps the morning after from overworked-Achilles pain--things were good, I ate well and found old friends in León. Ascending further and farther, I climbed off the meseta, first to Astorga, eventually to Big Max Rabanal and the monastery.

3.

Possibly my lowest point of all came the day before the biggest max of all. My longest day preceded my arrival in Santiago. Never has my body been so exhausted as when I arrived at Monte de Gozo. There was heat and there was dehydration. I have no idea why I didn't vomit. I was ready to. I'd like to credit a fine extracurricular education as the only reason I kept my food down, but I was probably just too tired to puke.

What I like about this point C, what was near absent in the first and grudgingly present in the second, is faith. I knew I'd be in Santiago the next day, if I had to dig my fingernails into the pavement and pull.

I gave up on my sandwich--an amazing sandwich--gave up on thinking, didn't shower, didn't care for my feet, didn't change out of my clothes. I don't even think I took out my sleeping bag. I just put my body in a horizontal position, set my alarm and accepted my fate. Even if that meant aiming for the wastebasket beside my bed in the predawn hours.

And when I woke up, things were good. I'd passed through Point C in my sleep. It was early, but I had to keep going. I put on my boots, headed out, crossed the bridge into Santiago and let it all begin to sink in.

Photo Credit: Machuca

Technorati Tags: Pilgrimage, Camino de Santiago, Spain, Walking, Hardship, Point C

P.S.- This post wasn’t without a point C of its own. Somewhere around when I added the Technorati Tags, the first third of the post disappeared. Gumption near zero, I at least had a way to put the loss in perspective and rewrote it.

Trip Awards

I am posting these with hopes that someone, somewhere might relate to something listed below. A lot of this references the day-by-day posts, still more sets up future character sketches. But for now, I'm just putting it out there, as is:

Golden Heart Award: Anja, Casa de Anja, Agés
Adrenaline Injection: Vomiting on front steps of restaurant
What Was I Thinking Giving Away Fruit Award: 17k empty stretch
Best Interpretation of Eddie Murphy’s Delirious: Pulling into Monte de Gozo
Sweat Lodge Award: Top bunk in Viana
Hottt Heartburn Nights: Los Arcos, top bunk
First Blister Popped: 6k outside Villalcazar
President of Camino de Santiago Blister Buster’s Assn: Stefan from Munich
How Did I End Up Here? Award: Chapel in the attic of Tosantos refuge
Native Moment: Isabel’s nude with inner tube pool jump, San Bol
Divine Intervention: Meeting the walking stick, Montes de Oca
Extended Siesta: El Burgo Ranero, till 5:45pm
Top Secret Business: Orange drop, Reliegos
Rocky Moment: Finding Stefan’s note, leaving San Nicolas
Theme Song: Ultreia
Someone Grabbed My Pen Award: Bell tower in Grañón
Friendly Rivalry Award: Roncesvalles vs. St. Jean
Didn’t Know What He Was Getting Into Award: Gary, South Africa. Runner Up—Barcelona DJ in Leather Sandals
Depth Charge Award: Two nights in Rabanal at monastery
Power Day Award: Rabanal to Ponferrada
Hobbit Trail Award: Climbing from Villafranca to La Faba
Ralph Waldo Emerson Award: Elia from Burgos (walking home), “The truth is, people are a lot freer than they think they are.” 2nd—Gabriele w/stroller
Iron Chef Award: Monks at Rabanal. 2nd—Marcel with perfect pasta timing as I arrived in Rabanal. 3rd—Red pepper pasta, me, Nájera.
I’m Only Here ‘Cause I Have To Be Award: Navarette private hostel
Now That’s Home Cookin’!! Award: Sidería Luis, Astorga. 2nd—French garden party, Burgos
Grandma Knows Best Award: Veronica, Paris Brit, strategic chocolate giver
Everything the Bible Warns You About Award: Miriam, Ribadiso
Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World: The Sun
Wrong Season Award: My black-sweatered shoulders. 2nd—Pollen like snow in Burgos
Stand By Me Award: The Walking Stick & R.I., it's craftsman
Angel Award: Jose Luis, Tosantos
Cartoon Character Award: Gold-tooth Gabi from France, “Tré Bon!”
Much Stronger Than The Rest of Us: Giuselle, 74 year-old tumor-beating French woman
Advancement of Learning Award: Parroquial Albergue, Ciraqui
The Sage: Brendan, North Shields, UK
You Never Know Who Has Kids Award: Miguel from Germany
Precocious Pilgrim: Andreas, 2 years old, Italy
How It’s Done Award: Blues & dark chocolate, Sarria
Life Is Good Award: Waking up to Marley, Estella.
Water Bottle Roulette: “The Black Hose”, Amenal
“Eh, tio!” Award: Tio Pepe orange en route to Reliegos, saved my spirit
Ok, No More Excuses Award: Andreas, Germany (Gotham Writers’ Workshop)
David Cross Doppelganger: Jean-Francois, Quebec
Monopoly Man: Scott from Idaho, real-estate tycoon and mall-on-bridge builder
The Whole Way Award: Magda, Belgium (continually crossing paths from Zubiri to Santiago)
Banned in 38 Countries Award: My shorts (unwashed the entire time)
Didn’t Quite Make It Award: Razor. 2nd—Army sweater, ditched in Zubiri
Dead Weight Award: Month’s supply of contacts
Unprecedented Display of Spirit: The Achilles tendons (Nathalie’s first, mine second)
Holy Trinity Award: Grañón>Tosantos>Agés
Learned My Lesson Award: Over-exuberance at the Fountain of Wine, Irache
Jim Carey Uncontrolled Facial Features Award: Adan, Poland
Has To Be Undercover Award: Bradi, Poland
I Can See Where They’re Coming From Award: Pays Vasco
Best Friend: El Camino
Big Shiny Smiles Award: The vonBeckman twins, Ingrid & Noelle
Highway Robbery: Casa Rural, Villalcazar
Anti-Ambassador Award: Italian bikers
Forgot About That Award: Having a massive, carry-a-pocketful-of-tissues headcold the entire time
Fish and Loaves Award: My checking account
AKA Award: El Bambino del Camino
You Could Say That Award: “Vision Quest”, Jed via email
Awkward Trailmate Award: 50+ Czech students
Los Latinos Award: “Las Flechas!” trio, Sarria to Santiago
Death-by-Shakira Award: The café I’m sitting in, Fuco Lois, Santiago
Cow Kicked Over The Lantern Award: On rooftop with Jordan and Medhi, Granada
Surprisingly Absent Award: Funk-deprivation rashes
Smackdown Award: Beta Micoter Antifungal cream
Trench Warfare Award: Radio Salil Cream
Is Dr. Seuss the Founder? Award: Farmacusí S.A.
MacGyver Award: Vaselina Pura
Go-Getter Award: Mountain at 6:30 a.m., leaving Villafranca
Lost Somewhere Way, Way Back Award: Personal Hygiene
Temporary Ego Eliminator Award: “Georgia On My Mind,” Logroño
Outrageous Statement Award: “Big, beautiful and curvy” –Brendan’s t-shirt, Viana
Déjà vu Award: Lavacola to Santiago
Tightrope Reserved For Hunter S. Thompson Award: Monte de Gozo w/exhaustion
Scary Side of Spirituality Award: Knights Templar at Monjarín [And, bonus]: Why You Gotta Say That? Award for California Quake/Tsunami Scare
Secret Stash Award: Computer room in El Burgo Ranero. 2nd—Lavacola school computers
Abusive Relationship Award: La Meseta
Locus of All Possibility: Finisterra
Crusher of All Preconceived Notions, Even Putting Loss of Virginity to Shame: El Camino
Unsung Hero Award: Safety pins
Madison Avenue Would Be Proud Award: Brazil, the brand
Saw The Best and Worst Of Award: National stereotypes
Never Have I Ever: Gotten up in the middle of the night to piss so much
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Free at last!” Award: Astorga to Rabanal
Nationalities I Was Assumed to Be: English, Irish, Canadian, Italian, Israeli, German, French, Spanish, U.S. (correct)
Great Music Honorable Mention: San Bol; break en route to La Faba
Ancient Vibes Award: Tosantos Chapel singing. 2nd—San Bol chapel.
Starting Parting Words: “Let it happen. When you just let it happen, that’s how you end up in Santiago.” –bespeckled Roncesvalles hospitalero, in candlelight.
Thoreau Prize: Carola from Germany
Evangelist Award: Figs
Morning Glory Award: Principe Cookies
Awkward Encounters Award: Santiago Bus Station
Human Zoo Award: Casa Manolo, Santiago
Middle School Dance Award: My Facial Hair, where the moustache, the burns and the beard get close but never hold hands
Milk Carton Award: David, Boston (lost without a trace)
Don Juan del Camino Award: Victor (Sara—un beso; spraypainted everywhere)
Business As Usual Award: Santiago
Full Metal Jacket Award: Roncesvalles bunkhouse
Moral Dilemma Award: Santiago Bus Station beggar
Milk Carton Runner Up: Dick from Holland, last seen with mammoth blisters
Sandwich Artist Award: French couple, Grañón
Bow Down Before the One You Serve Award: English language
Powered by Entropy Award: Cigar-smoking French woman
Surprised I Can Kind of Understand Award: Why people join monasteries
World’s Greatest Travel Agent Award: God
Long-lost Friend Award: Being Awake at Night
Better Than They Make Him Out To Be Award: Early morning
Resistance Is Futile Award: Dandruff
Most Often Overlooked Award: Dirty glasses
Oreo Award: Knee brace/sock tan. 2nd—Watch tan
Planet Kryptonite Award: Calf muscles.
Should Only Be Used By Females Award: Showers. Runner Up: Spandex