I felt stuck. Not just in the literal sense, but I hadn’t made a great sequence of movements since I began my work in France. London didn’t really count. It seemed more like a vacation where I arrived by air, drank beer, and spent more money than I’d wanted to. Usually, I’m much more, well, cheap, but perhaps making some extra cash on the road working long hours in the middle of nowhere with sick kids made me go a little stir-crazy, I don’t know. Anyways, I fueled my splurging spree by going to see the musical ‘Wicked’ in the West End, buying new shoes, and spending close to the same amount in cocktails in the up-and-coming and very bohemian Brick Lane neighborhood. The museums were free, of course, and I thoroughly enjoyed my days spent at the Tate Modern Museum of Art finally seeing Marcel Duchamp’s urinal and spending the afternoon looking at the Mummies of Ancient Egypt with a Croatian girl who taught me just as much about Ancient Croatia. Mostly, though, London just made me want to buy overpriced things, want to eat overpriced food, and in general, want things I was forgetting I really didn’t need.
Don’t get me wrong. London was fun, but upon my return to southern France, I really didn’t know where my trip was taking me. I had begun to make progress in regards to what exactly I wanted out of this trip, and life in general, while in Rotterdam. I was under the impression that progress was progressive, but I wasn’t feeling progressive at all, quite the opposite actually. I was plagued with doubts, worries, and fear. Even worse, I wasn’t even sure what I was doubtful, worried, or afraid of. The only internal struggle I could identify was in regards to whether I should continue to travel or whether it was time to plant some seeds in Amsterdam and begin a program that was seemingly tailor-made for me. Both had their advantages and disadvantages, but I was tired of waking up in the same place with a different decision every day. One day, I woke up, walked out to my balcony, and looked out over the provincial French city of Rodez tucked away in a little valley. I felt like the small city- sheltered, comfortable, and sleepy- in a sort of dazed stupor.
Nervously, over a few cups of coffee and too many cigarettes, I tugged on my bracelet; a silver ID style with my name and an engraving on the back that read “de tus compañeros” with the date 2 June, 2006. It was a gift from my classmates in Spain I’d been given at my going away dinner over three years ago. I’d started to wear it a few months before I left after pulling it out of my jewelry box for the first time in three years. I came across my old first communion cross my mother gave me and attached it to the bracelet at the same time. I didn’t think much of it when I started wearing it again, but in that moment there seemed quite a clear reason I was so strangely drawn to putting it back on again after discarding it as too flashy in the past. Remembering an old friend who had done the Camino de Santiago and told me about the life-changing experience she had, I suddenly knew what I had to do. Knowing what you have to do can often be the hardest part, I realized, and the rest seems all downhill from there.
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March 1st, 2010 at 23:54
[...] Taken from my journal on The Camino de Santiago: [...]