Rain, and home cooked veggie pasta. 30 km to Astorga tomorrow.

“What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whether we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.”

Thoreau, Walking

“Your up and your down and your up and your down,” goes Moby as I try to keep up with Brendan, a cop from Australia, doing pause pushups.

Peony

Marilyn Chin

Why must I tell you this story, O little one
You’re just a bud-of-a-girl, who knows nothing

Now you are full-faced, bright as sun
Now you open your skirts pink, layered, brazen

Suffering is alchemy, change is God
Now you droop your head, heavy with rust

Sit, contemplate, what did Buddha say?
Old age, sickness, death, no one owns eternity

Detach, detach, look away from the sun
Let your petals fall aimlessly

Don’t despair, little one, we are done

“Pepper, cumin, oregano…” Izzy looks cautiously at another spice. “curry? uh…fuck it…just fuck it” she dumps it into a pot of rice and veggies.

In Viatoris, sunny, short walk, with suprises all the way in. Verweile Doch.