Entry One

It is more difficult than I expected and a lot lonelier too. I’m sitting in Pamplona on my bed and I feel sad. These last three days have been very cheerful yet physically draining. My entire body hurts. My skin is burnt to a crisp, my hair is fried, my lip is bubbling with a sunburn, my collar bones are rubbed down painfully by the friction of my backpack, my skin hurts, my shoulder and back are tight, my feet are sore, blisters and pain. But it’s not the pain that bothers me–it’s this empty feeling in my chest. The Camino is one of my dreams, and I keep thinking about giving up. I don’t think I actually would because I know this feeling is not permanent, but I just want to cry.

Anyway, I the past few days I have been too busy to be sad. I walk all day, all morning, and drink wine with fellow pilgrims in the evening.

Zhbiri was magical. Wine and bread across from the river on the old Italian man’s blanket that Sonny said must have fallen in love with me at first sight. It was probably true, you should have seen the way he looked at me and then proceeded to offer me everything he owned, all his wine and food, and a spot on his blanket that would soon be his bed.

“This is his bed,” Sonny translated to me from Italian to English. She was German but spoke many languages and was an English teacher, so her English was perfect. She looked to be in her early 30s but had a spark of youth in her eye, along with a sense of wisdom that can only be attained by living. 

“He has invited us both into his bed, I suppose,” she said.

“What a nice situation for him,” I joked back.

Sonny told me about how she loved the Camino because when you walk with others, they all let their guards down and open up much much faster. They do not wear facades because they do not have the energy either, and the conversation goes in interesting ways. It gets deep very fast. I liked this way of thinking, although I prefer to walk alone and let my thoughts disappear into the wind.

There was Alberto, the feisty Italian boy. He works in marketing at some energy company in Milan. He told me he liked it, but I got the feeling he was trying to convince himself. All he wanted to do was move to New York City, but this was not possible for him as his English was is good enough and he needed his master’s.

Macarana was the Spanish girl from Seville. She only walked a few days and then went back home. I think maybe her problems were not solvable by the Camino.

Colin, the 49-year-old blabbering Irish lad. He spoke a lot about a lot, but mostly about how important conversation was. I wanted to tell him that perhaps he should focus less on how the conversation is going and more on the conversation itself.

He told me I was quiet, which always rubs me the wrong way. I said, “You are not,” and this also rubbed him the wrong way.

“Do you have a problem with that?” He asked me, and I said no, that I thought we were simply making observations.

“Do you have a problem if I’m quiet?” I asked back, just to make sure he understood that this question could go both ways.

Of course not, he said. But apparently, there are bad people, and it takes longer to see someone’s true intentions if they hold back (according to him. I don’t know what he getting at. Well yes I do but it as stupid.)

Alberto said that perhaps quiet people just need a bit more confidence. I said that some of the more insecure people are the loudest because they need to make up for what they lack with the attention of others. And I told Colin it’s more interesting to have people of different sorts and varieties, loud and quiet, introvert and extrovert, and to want to morph everyone into your own expectations of an interesting people would be to make them all the same and in doing so killing anything of interest or uniqueness about them. He didn’t really have anything to say to that.

—this was all in zubiri

When I was walking back to my hostel from Jesus Y Maria albergue in Pamplona after drinking wine with a bunch of peeps I happened to run into Colin again. He mentioned he had issues going on at home (which I had overheard in a phone call he had earlier) and that he was thinking he may just go to a hotel on the ocean and relax. I said perhaps he would not be busy enough. He commented on how our conversation was going (again). I said you can get a lot from a short, pleasant conversation. He said that a good thing about the Camino is that people who don’t get along usually make amends along the way.

I thought perhaps he thought we were at odds. Well, the night before, I said seafood didn’t bring me any pleasure, and he asked “what does give you pleasure?” in an off-putting sort of sexual innuendo way, so maybe we were at odds. I didn’t hold it against him, though.

I think he really took a liking to Sonny. She wasn’t conventionally attractive, but when you held her attention, you felt pretty good about yourself. That has a certain kind of power to it. They also bonded over their alcoholism and borderline alcoholism, so there is that.

I also met a French boy, Tebo, on the trail with his dad. We climbed a hill together to see a church that was actually closed. We did not talk much, but I felt like he was an interesting person. He looked like the “bad boy” with long hair from Stranger Things, but held a more pleasant attitude. He had asked me if this was something I wanted to do for a long time, and when I said four years, he looked surprised. I think he may have only been there because his father thought it would be a good bonding experience for them. His father Gayton was fascinated by everything, taking pics of everything. They made a very interesting team. I later ran into him in Pamplona and said it was good to see they made it. (Although they def could have easily lapped me).

See how much has happened, and it’s only been a few days? And now that I’m staying back and all these people are moving forward, I will have the chance to be around a new crowd and meet even more pilgrims with diverse, fascinating backgrounds, with interesting things to say. Perhaps my loneliness is a blessing for I will go searching for salvation in strangers and this will lead to more interesting conversations.

Oh, I also met an Argentinian girl last night named Carolina (Caro). She was doing the Camino for two weeks and then doing a meditation retreat after in Spain, then she will move officially to Spain to work–a very exciting in between moment in her life. Oh how I love those pauses. I really liked her and we exchanged #s, so I hope we can stay in touch

Maybe I will pull an Ernest Hemingway up in this bitch.