Journeying : A Beginning
We’re heading towards Balmasete , via Bilbao Northern Spain. Thoughts not just of the walk ahead ( Too hard this time ? Are we up to the long days and heat , or cold? Maybe I shouldn’t have ditched thermals) . Looking out the train window at the shadowy mountains, another realisation of why we Camino.
I’m on my way to a new path. The pack on my back is all I have for the 2/3/4 weeks of walking . People, familiar places, obligations and jobs have gone . The way ahead is uncertain , unknown . A contrast to my home life whose trajectory is relatively predictable, and brief. On the path it seems like time has expanded, that the future is open ended, possibilities emerging : nebulous and unshaped, but they are waiting for me .
Watching in a Plaza de Matute , Madrid
There’s nothing so ? As the Leaving .
Or words to that effect. And spring is showing its face this morning as I walk along the river .
For ages , it seems , days have dragged drearily and greyly on ( In our short winter ? ) Each day is grey, rain falls, it’s cold and we’re rugged up. Not true really. But this sunshine and flowering appears and life is wonderful . Why am I leaving this brightness, the wide spaces and clear water ?
My garden is coming alive too . I spotted a poppy amongst the forest of tall nearly flowering, sunflowers
I’ve been weeding , and planting cuttings that have been lying around for ages. Do I want to to pull a muscle again 2 weeks before departure? Inside the house we are moving stuff around, taking the unwanted to the Resource Center and various Op shops., and binning. Used / beautiful ? Neither, and it’s gone . All laudable , except we are also juggling remains around to create new liveable spaces . We won’t be here for quite a while , so why ? Cleaning , tidying , sorting; the stuff of life. And re creating and affirming possession .
Is this a sort of “ I’ll leave everything in place in case … “ Anne Patchett has confessed to leaving stickers on her current piece of writing so that a designated person can carry the story , and she maintains that her close writing friends do likewise. Well I’m not so sure about the worthiness of my writing, but I have definitely sorted , culled, copied . And one of the stresses is completing a few pieces before that cut off point of departure .
I guess we need to leave in order to recognise the wonder we already have. There is also, I suspect , a little voice which gets louder as we age , trying to keep us where we are mentally as well as physically . The reluctance may be another strategy to keep us with what we know .
Not just the outside , flowers budding, leaves emerging slowly from dry branches. But once again I like my hotch potch decor, the startling colours on walls, the mismatching furniture , the inefficient corners , even the rafters on the top floor I regularly trip over and Robbie’s jarrah staircase which we have to use many times a day. Slowly walking with hands on the wall . But the light streams in . .
If the beauty doesn’t pull me back from thoughts of another place and another reality, my body attacks with sprains and blisters and newly discovered wrongneses. Then there’s the usual tugs of family : x needs me .
But I’ll ride all this . After all stuff will still be here tomorrow , or whenever I return . Adventure won’t be . Time and Tide wait for nobody
Spider Webs , the Lady of Shallot and Getting Away.
Just look at the webs that are gathering in our house this change of season : these cold mornings and crispy skies as the sun emerges .
The spider when you can see him ? Or her , seems content just to be left alone in it’s web slowly creating a home, a shelter . I wonder though if it ever wants to get out. Does it find it difficult to disengage, untangle itself from woven , clinging surrounds? I reckon it’s daunting both ways – building that web takes hours of physical effort as well as mental agility. But getting out must be nearly as hard, just all that untangling and destroying what took hours to create.
Poor spider
Look what happened to the Lady of Shallot when she left her web, left her loom. Next thing she’s floating down the river , dead . And all for Lancelot who could only fling off “ By God she had a lovely face. “ That was it.
One wonders about the worth of the bid for freedom. Maybe just for an instant between the moving outside and the floating down that river, still looking beautiful mind you, she felt joyful . She’d taken a huge step after years of a dreary room, endlessly spinning.
I do wonder if it’s possible to prop the window open and climb back in . Or keep one strong thread tied to that leg so spider -like one can quickly, invisibly weave a shelter again .
I no longer want to fly away completely.But I would like to get up , move above and see the huge sky again.
Sambasue21 