What do I see from my Window ? … Now.

Looking out . First evening in Madrid

So this morning I left Madrid to connect with the walk; the Olvidado, the Forgotten Path. It was the name that first attracted me.

Forgetting and remembering is what happens with age. Remembering what has been long forgotten, or ignored, in the charge through life. Walking allows one to go back and review, like a film trailer. Fragments of the past start to connect and a route of sorts emerges .

So what of these first few familiarising days in Madrid ? Looking through lots of windows: our hostal, a few bars facing different streets, the eye of the phone as I frame a picture .

Yes it’s a different culture, an unfamiliar language, and one is forced to really see each object that has been so familiar at home : rooms and beds , food, streetscape, people. Even keys operate differently here. Still the same struggle to open doors that I recall from earlier Spain visits. And always a room is on the third floor with a winding dark staircase to navigate .

Just the bottom stairs here. Long steep dark walk to go
No this isn’t our front door !
Out (remembered the code ) and waiting
We have stairs surprisingly similar . But not half as steep . Cats to trip us up

So I’m wondering what will trip me up here. Metaphorically and literally: walking a new path with just a pack , a compadre, and a rough idea of the path. How fit am I? Will I trip ? Lots of other questions , Maybe, maybe there will be some answers .

Half Sick of Shadows

I’ve had lots of shadowy ideas lately but nothing that grabs. The idea for this blog flashed into my head a few weeks ago as I pushed Diaz , my grandson , along the back of the old Woolstores in Fremantle… Pondering once again about life and it’s different manifestations. The shadowy patterns of past and now moving slowly through my mind . Hence the title . I looked up to be confronted by the graffitied messages and posted adverts on the old walls.

Be happy , mostly

I thought about my other grandchild walking cautiously on the “ rubbery “ sand at the beach last summer. Her description. An apt description of life at times : caution and uncertainty. The under layer , whatever is underfoot, is precarious. Yet we are constantly moving towards an expected happiness. All around are messages of how to be happy: excercise , eat well, meditate, be mindful , buy.

The walls which face me proclaim :Be happy. Be happy, this way to happiness. The dark , conflict -suffused graffiti serves to highlight dire alternatives.

We went to the library later as it started to rain . The same message on some of the shelves.

Like we need a formula for happiness

As if happiness is assured and life equates with happiness . Three year old Ava got it right, I think : Life is rubbery and needs to be walked with caution as the rubber has degrees of thickness , sometimes it’s perished so you can fall through, sometimes the halves are linked by a thin thread. But if you’re lucky , or careful maybe, you can walk on the thick bits and be content for a while.

You’ve got it right , Ava .

Journeying : A Beginning

Sunrise from train window

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 .

Boarding train from San Martin
Let the journey begin . Buena Suerte