To not break anything
Risking my life in the past couple hours, nearly passing the night on the freezing meseta. I knew a few months ago when I heeded Rilke, "You must change your life," that it was either Iraq or something else. And the only thing I thought Hemingway had to teach me (before reading For Whom the Bell Tolls) was "Live all the way up." Iraq would have meant not only threat to my physical life (of that I have little concern) but of my spiritual life (the moral vacuity of war). My photographer Johnson and I had our Iraqi translator lined up, ready to go, but we did not. I chose peace, a march across Spain in January, utterly alone in the world, with only my own thoughts to drive me crazy. And here I was with another choice. Stop with the sun two inches off the horizon at the town a K or two to the left, or continue along the Roman road to see what we could find, with no sign of settlement on the h0rizon. My MP3 was playing the same four songs over and over, a Pogues "Ratatattat," followed by a Sugar Hill or something "25 years old, my mother god rest her soul," then a Beth Orton "put a little love in your heart, come on," then a Mozart piano piece, which every time it played I was convinced would be the last thing I would ever hear of music and I didn´t mind.
I would find an embankment to block the wind, would curl up in my sleeping bag, put on all the shirt and my sister´s Haverford sweatshirt and nicked sweater and maybe tie a shirt around my head for warmth and wait for the rains that would kill me. As I walked I took a digital photo of the impending dark and the lunacy of my decision. I made a digital farewell recording to my nephews, telling them my recklessness wasn´t the only choice, just one choice, that they could find the safe route from others. There was nothing but an empty plain I was heading into. Like eastern Montana, I thought, with a very distant snow-covered mountain range. Still, my chances were pretty good in my lame purple sleeping bag, right?
Some lights appeared on the horizon. Were they Leon, 25k away? Impossible to tell, just that I wouldn´t reach them for a few hours at least.
Finally, nearing pitch back, with no flashlight nor map (intentionally, as only Chris McCandless would understand), I came upon a village off to the left a kilometer, paused, crouched to rest the weight on my back, took off the headphones, there was no decision-making capacity left, but something said play it safe. Maybe it was having spilled that manifesto of risk that allowed it. I headed left. Trudging through puddles and mud into an empty village with a cat wailing with diabolical need. Black-toothed woman pointed me to the bar. Bar with two men, pointing me to a refuge. Refuge manager tending her 90-year-old parents. There is a tipping point in the size of a town that will look after you. A few hundred. This one was 100, meaning people shepherded me around, would not leave me to freeze. The last town, Sahagun, they would have without a blink.
At the bar, the well-dressed men were impressively immune to the game show on TV. The man with the cravat pivoted away from the screen. When the man in the middle, in a frayed wool blazer, cracked a joke, it was the man in the cravat who cackled uncontrollably with laughter, the man on the left stone-faced. The theory of proximity didn´t apply, since the cracker was pointed toward stone-face. (See explication of theory, or just go to stand-up show and see if you laugh more than during showtime at the apollo.)
Suddenly, the bartender walked in. It was a spitting image of Mark Davis, cub Valley News reporter. Except in WAS Mark Davis. I stared at him and waited for the typical banter. I was stunned when he started rattling off some Spanish. "A las quatro media..." he said. I knew he was right, coo-cooing with his baby behind the bar, instead of searching the TV screen for impossible dreams of poonani. And yet what was I doing here? Not looking for poonani, of course, but for the spiritual guidance melange of the land and my limits pushed. Why wasn´t I behind a bar with a baby of my own?
I had but one objective for the night. To drink an entire bottle of 12.5% red wine without breaking anything. There was an incredible red sausage on my plate, two eggs, bread tasting sweet, a noodle soup, it was all too much ecstasy to answer the man´s questions across from me. He was wearing a fatigue jacket labeled "Harvard, California," was about 75, made a money sign when I said United States.
"Who´s that?" I barked to the man in the cravat, of the wasting away hospital patient on TV.
"He´s a Basque, protesting with a hunger strike. Why don´t they talk to the family members of the 25 people he killed!"
"He´s going to die," I said.
"Yes, tomorrow," he said.
"Kaput."
"Kaput, yes, good!" he said.
I would find an embankment to block the wind, would curl up in my sleeping bag, put on all the shirt and my sister´s Haverford sweatshirt and nicked sweater and maybe tie a shirt around my head for warmth and wait for the rains that would kill me. As I walked I took a digital photo of the impending dark and the lunacy of my decision. I made a digital farewell recording to my nephews, telling them my recklessness wasn´t the only choice, just one choice, that they could find the safe route from others. There was nothing but an empty plain I was heading into. Like eastern Montana, I thought, with a very distant snow-covered mountain range. Still, my chances were pretty good in my lame purple sleeping bag, right?
Some lights appeared on the horizon. Were they Leon, 25k away? Impossible to tell, just that I wouldn´t reach them for a few hours at least.
Finally, nearing pitch back, with no flashlight nor map (intentionally, as only Chris McCandless would understand), I came upon a village off to the left a kilometer, paused, crouched to rest the weight on my back, took off the headphones, there was no decision-making capacity left, but something said play it safe. Maybe it was having spilled that manifesto of risk that allowed it. I headed left. Trudging through puddles and mud into an empty village with a cat wailing with diabolical need. Black-toothed woman pointed me to the bar. Bar with two men, pointing me to a refuge. Refuge manager tending her 90-year-old parents. There is a tipping point in the size of a town that will look after you. A few hundred. This one was 100, meaning people shepherded me around, would not leave me to freeze. The last town, Sahagun, they would have without a blink.
At the bar, the well-dressed men were impressively immune to the game show on TV. The man with the cravat pivoted away from the screen. When the man in the middle, in a frayed wool blazer, cracked a joke, it was the man in the cravat who cackled uncontrollably with laughter, the man on the left stone-faced. The theory of proximity didn´t apply, since the cracker was pointed toward stone-face. (See explication of theory, or just go to stand-up show and see if you laugh more than during showtime at the apollo.)
Suddenly, the bartender walked in. It was a spitting image of Mark Davis, cub Valley News reporter. Except in WAS Mark Davis. I stared at him and waited for the typical banter. I was stunned when he started rattling off some Spanish. "A las quatro media..." he said. I knew he was right, coo-cooing with his baby behind the bar, instead of searching the TV screen for impossible dreams of poonani. And yet what was I doing here? Not looking for poonani, of course, but for the spiritual guidance melange of the land and my limits pushed. Why wasn´t I behind a bar with a baby of my own?
I had but one objective for the night. To drink an entire bottle of 12.5% red wine without breaking anything. There was an incredible red sausage on my plate, two eggs, bread tasting sweet, a noodle soup, it was all too much ecstasy to answer the man´s questions across from me. He was wearing a fatigue jacket labeled "Harvard, California," was about 75, made a money sign when I said United States.
"Who´s that?" I barked to the man in the cravat, of the wasting away hospital patient on TV.
"He´s a Basque, protesting with a hunger strike. Why don´t they talk to the family members of the 25 people he killed!"
"He´s going to die," I said.
"Yes, tomorrow," he said.
"Kaput."
"Kaput, yes, good!" he said.
posted by Thon at 12:49 PM
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