Suadade: This bit of regional dialect was passed to me by my Dad (Tom) while we talked yesterday. thanks pop! Go ahead and read the Suadade article. It’s short and will be useful to your reading of this post. Also, it’s an awesome concept that puts a name to what I often feel. I love the painting by Almeida Júnior, too. Click me –> Suadade

And if you really want to go for the multiple approach method (it’s the Evergreen way) here’s a sampling from the jazz station I’m listening to as I type all this:

“A Nightingale sings in Berkely Square” by Stan Getz

If Stan Getz doesn’t work for you find a song that fits the mood of misty nights and elctric lights.

I’ve been here in Santiago for nearly a week, and Newton’s first two laws make themselves known. A body in motion wants to keep going, a body at rest wants to stay at rest unless of course outside forces come into play. Which they always do. So I don’t know what Newton was on about (kidding, mostly).

I had planned to leave yesterday from the damp and cozy (strange combo yes?) Roots n’ Boots albergue with the rest of my class mates. Our next and ultimate destination is the coast of Finisterra, the end of the ancient world, stewed in Pagan and Galician tradition.

During this time in Santiago we met for three days to swap stories and engage in writing and reflecting. Professor Bill encouraged us to relax into our writing and play with our ideas in small groups. The point was not to edit drafts but to polish a few “germs” (sentencesto) into “gems that fit”. That is, fit what the writer wishes to truly convey to the reader, and not what the writer feels like they wish to write. This type of collaborative, reader powered writing I find to be a refreshing and powerful tool for writing. “There is not plaigiarism amongst friends” Bill says. Assuming everyone in the group has the courage to be revealing, and the willingness to play with their ideas without attachment, the results lead to words that sing a little song rather than mutter along.                                               

As I geared up to leave town and begin the walk to the coast Newton’s external forces make themselves known. I see emails from Sally and Jeff, a couple from New Zealand. We had walked many days together and they would be in town that evening. So I stayed. And we laughed, and chatted, and discussed and ate and drank.

Then I ran into Claire (NZ too) from two weeks prior and we laughed, chatted, discussed and ate and drank.

This morning I ran into Hannika (Holland, I don’t have a picture with her) and we laughed, chatted, discussed, and ate and drank.

I have kept a list of people that have been guides to me on the Camino, whether they were aware of their agency or not. All of the folks listed above are people inscribed on this list, none of them I thought I would see again and all of them I found in Santiago. So that’s why I’m still here and why I don’t regret in the least that I’ll have to bus (instead of walk) to the coast. Being able to meet my guides again is the same as the collaborative writing exercise, work done and done well in the dismantling of the walls that border the useless no-man’s-land gulfing our lives.

There is so much that I could write. But I won’t. In the attempt to recall every conversation there is an essence of the experience that hardens and becomes the borders of a story replete with beginning, middle – end. Too easy to make the thing into a story that morphs and warps at the edges of what happened to justify bootstraping itself into a parsed blob of writing. I do believe the power of a meeting can be (nearly) captured by the pen. However I do not currently have the time or fortitude or skill to even try at that type of creation.

So… as I’m not up to the task I’ll ask for your help in writing the conclusion. I suppose I’m asking as much as a writer can, I am asking that you Imagine your own ending, Imagine a guide from your own life and you will know what I cannot capture here in writing. Think to Suadade, that untranslatable feeling and all its nuances that elude the tongue but the heart is comprised of.

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Imagine someone in your life, someone whom the very thought of causes you to catch your breath short. Their image, their starlit smile in your mind causes you to press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and squint to keep welled the tears that congregate on the brim of each lid. Imagine that you can hear the echo of their laugh now. You are laughing again, dancing again, talking as the sun sinks low again in the ancient throes of know and be known. Imagine the impact of their words, their body, their spirit. Imagine the love they caused within you, the pain of not being able to express this love, and the exultant joy of breathing now the whole miasmatic cloud of feeling life…

…ease out of your imagination and look around you. You don’t see your guide standing across the room or napping on the couch, but you could have sworn they were there with you. Is that them making noise in the kitchen? The sound of their bare feet on the wooden floors slashed by the afternoon sun? No. But all the same they have visited and once more bestowed their gift to you without any hesitation, though you may never see them again. Finally, do not imagine but know that you too are this, this guide, to someone else… whether or not you have any idea at all.

Animo