Blisters.. Ampollas if I didn’t miss the right Spanish translation

After a long busy week, I headed north to Alexandria for a break. Sitting on the hammock in my friends’ garden, my eyes caught a scar on the back of my feet. I bent to see what it was. Simply a scar left from the blisters that hit my feet during the Camino. I did not see it well recently.

Wow, am recalling memories here! Memories of night blister-treatment circles, arranged by pilgrims with some interesting music and bottles of wine, while everyone is treating their feet to stand up for another long walk next morning.

We used to sit and share medical tools and tips. Some would suggest using Compeed plastic plasters, others suggested normal plasters, and some even suggested just leaving them alone. Wear 2 socks, no just one wool sock, ok don’t take a shower in the morning to keep them dry, put Vaseline, put benzoyl …aaaaah what should I really do ???

It was a very confusing experience cause all what you want was to wake up and walk the next morning, but the precious thing about it was how you got to understand your body and what it needed more than ever. You totally disregard all what you read and what you were told, and create a personal way of comforting yourself according to how you studied your body by midway.

Just recalling the tons of posts about wearing a hiking shoes or hiking boots and some suggested athletic ones, at the end I used my sandals most of the way.

The blisters experience, taught me how to tolerate some pains to achieve a goal, starting from too much complaining, that many of you would remember me always complaining from my blisters, into believing that they became another credential that a pilgrim would receive aside from the ones stamped on the camino passport! I bet there were real stamps that cannot be faked.

Today I wish these scars would never leave my feet as they carry a lot of memories. Today I am wondering how many pilgrims are looking at their feet and remembering the good days through these scars, although many ladies worked on removing them in Santiago before going back home, but they have all their right and our blessing ….Buen Camino 🙂

Sherif, Cairo.

 

Well , there is a close up of the strange veggie.  It’s been sitting in water on our table for a few days now and I am totally fascinated by it.  Notice how the big cone shapes are laid out in spirals and lines of the cones are orientated in two different patterns, both spirals.  And then on those cones the smaller cones that cover those are laid out in this interlocking pattern of intersecting spirals.  So cool.  And then on these little cones the same thing occurs in miniature.  And maybe on and on.

This is the same interlocking pattern that is in the layout of the sunflower seeds on the sunflowers in Spain that we walked endless kilometers through.  Look at the pics.  And this is the pattern that is used on some of the great old cobble stone streets in the cities there.  Remember?  I’ll have to look through my photo album for that.  Kelly was always taking pics of the walking surfaces.    Last Sunday we had Will and Jasper  (www.greenmanfarm.com) over for dilly dally and din din and Will put a name on that phenononym, calling it an interference pattern.  Well, we will just have to Google that.

So, recently, I in a post I was describing Rebecca’s tapas as rugged.  That was just a word that shot out of my brain on first glimpse.  It was because she had some delectable goodies on the plate but some were standing up giving it this great 3-D look.  My tapas are always very lounge -y.  Like the little slices of cheese and the olives are having a little dilly dally of their own after a long day in the frig.  Very relaxed but maybe slightly giddy just because they enjoy each other’s company.  I’ll have to Google “lounge-y tapas”.

OK, since I like to do things in threes, I’ll have to mention some good Camino reading that I was doing last evening.  There is some great stuff on this blog:  aviatrixKim.wordpress.com  .  Two things that I looked at that were really good were: 8 Ways to be a Kinder, Gentler Pilgrim and  you Might Be Pilgrim If: .  Yea.

And final note that Ken my awesome Apple guy and general all around good guy (has wooden bead rosary hanging out of his pocket) stopped the flow of spam into this site.  It is a miracle!  I was getting over two hundred a day and worse than that some  were getting to be like old friends.

OK, you lounge-y tapa characters, I love you immensely, shoot me a comment once in a while.  I might be able to find them now that the spam is gone!  You’re the best, Felipe.

 

Yea, I have to admit that my personal Camino has been a little rough lately.  And I know that is the way it is and I need to be present, keep walking and it will flatten out again.  Right, that is the way it is set up, that nothing lasts forever.  Laura says that we need Patience (always capitalized now).  I have to quit kicking the Coke machine looking for faster results.  So look back to October 23rd to see the post about the Coke machine appearing out of the fog if you have forgotten.

So, yesterday, my stars were really lined up I guess, and a great day appeared out of nowhere.  The trail flattened out for the time being and I had a great time with great people.  Yea, the old great people thing again.   We need to hold each other close as it is amazing how much good influence we can exert on each other.

So, it started out with a Skype with Gracie in London.  It was a short one because I needed to run off to Seattle for my big chemo treatment day.  She is such a Sweetheart and never fails to get me going.  Then at the hospital my doctor, the receptionists, the schedulers and the bevy of great nurses never fail to give me the chuckles.  So, I got about five hours in a comfy chair while the strange chemicals go coursing into my 175 pounds.  But I always bring stuff to do and drink coffee and take advantage of the time to work on the blog or work on a book or try to flag down a nurse that has computer savvy to get some free advice.  Then I get done at 4:30 and jet out of their to beat the worst of the afternoon rush.

So far so good, right?  So I get to the ferry and I get to cut into the line because I have a pass from the hospital (special depensation).  And who do I run into but my old hunting buddy John who is incredibly talented as a writer, song writer, musician and other stuff.  He is our resident fisherman poet who I never get to spend enough time with.  So I got a half an hour to do just that.  And he starts telling me about his latest song that he wrote about Ebola.  Only John could pull something like this off tastefully. So that was great checking in with him.

So, I make it home and Rebecca has whittled out some great looking tapas which I characterized as rugged and she laughed.  She laughs a lot.  And she brought this strange new veggie home see pic.  I’m calling it Intergalatic Broccoli. It has the most amazing geometry based on the spiral.  And some try to tell us that there is no God.

So we have venison in mushroom sauce by Rebecca and a glass of red and the phone rings and it’s another of my favorite people who like John the fisherman poet, is  Stephen the cowboy chef.  So, he says, ” Lucky, I just made this deer liver pate and I’m bringing it over so you can check it out.  Are you going to be there?”  Man, my stars are members of the Indiana University Marching Band.

So, no coincidences right?  It’s all in the plan, right?  Just have to be Patient and let things unfold, right?  Something that we learned on the Way of St James, right?  Hold me close, love, Felipe (aka Lucky).

 

 

A pic Kelly took and I can’t remember where it was but a church yard.  I stared at these artifacts for a long time.  Together, a baptismal vessel and a sarcophagus, bot

h chiseled out of stone.  The real thing.  Nice little tableau of life, well the beginning and end anyway.  And what about the in-between?  After we acknowledge God, love Him and your neighbor, is it possible to have too much fun?  Really?  Well, let’s just say that we on our section of the Camino tried our best!

(I just want to say that the sarcophagus though plain and looking oh so final had a loving feature that I observed.  You can’t really see it because of the angle of the sun but  the area where the head goes is raised in a little pillow so the occupant will be comfortable resting there.   Sweet don’t you think? )

There are points where a casual observer would think that we were having too much fun. How about a few things that I could come up in a minute: the sunflowers, the swallows, the Eagles, the roses.  The picnics.  The free wine fountain, the tapas, the wine with every meal. (The waiter would bring you wine almost automatically but you had to ask for water.). This lead to the evening when we were actually louder than the Italians.   The nuns smiling, the priests blessing you continually, the s

ky blue and the wheat golden. Excellent company to pass the kilometers. We did laugh a lot when we weren’t crying. Sunrises, sunsets, clouds to shade us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, I am having way too much fun writing this.  And I am sitting in the comfy chair at Swedish Hospital getting my chemo treatment.  Love you all immensely, Felipe.

 

 

 

 

I have been fighting  the good fight against spam for months now and maybe I will get on top of it with some help.  My password is somehow all screwed up and I can’t get to anywhere that can change the situation for me.  But hopefully I will be able to get my Apple guy to untangle the mess that I have made.

So yesterday I looked through almost 300 comments that have stacked up over the months to check if any of the spam had gotten in there.  And I scanned through and discovered all these great comment that people had written and for whatever reason I hadn’t read them.  And therefore I haven’t replied to these great comments.  So I am sorry for that because it might have sent the wrong message.

Just want to say that since I have this iPad, home computer and cell phone it doesn’t mean by a long shot that I know what I am doing.  In other words I know enough to be dangerous.  Please forgive my ineptitude as it may at times send the wrong message.

OK enough of that.  To totally change the subject, we had Will and Jasper Forrester over yesterday for dilly dally and dinner.  Very fun.  So Will, a wonderful artist,  had done a portrait of me for a show which is a collection of Vashon mentors (old guys).  The drawing is very cool with me in my Camino cap and sunglasses and in the background is a map of the northern Spain.  Very cool.  Thank you Will for including me.

Alright, have to go walk in the rain.  Love you guys, Phil.

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine: if a

Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,

as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor

of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans

death diminishes me, because I am in-

volved in Mankinde; And therefore

never send to know for

                                        whom the bell tolls; It

tolls for thee.

JOHN DONNE

Somewhere east of Burgos is a monument at the top of a mountain marked 1937 or 1939 for men killed in the fighting there during the Spanish Civil War.  Maybe more of a hill than a mountain but the important thing is the monument and what it stands for.  I was waiting to run across some such rememberance along the trail.  I had read Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” twice by then and roughly I knew of the story of the war.

And near the monument are three or four picnic tables were Kelly and I had some food and rest.  While sitting there I noticed a wooden fence with a gate close by so I walked over to investigate.  Inside the fenced area is an area about fifty meters by four meters that is bordered by rocks and beyond a interpretive display.  So I continued in to see the display.

What was going on was that it was a gravesite or actually a former site.  The information described the project done in the early 1980’s of digging up the 104 bodies that were there and running DNA tests on them to identify the remains.  So the bodies were IDed and returned to the families in their home towns.  All the little and big towns that you had just walked through or were going to shortly had someone or more.  The project took place shortly after the death of Franco, the Fascist leader of Spain that died in 1979 when finally the country returned to normalcy.

So last week I started to read the Hemingway book to get me in the mood for this topic. Just wanted to include it somewhere as it was a part of our walk and this is the appropriate day.  Not exactly cheery but a story of reconciliation which is a good thing. Love, Felipe.

 

OK, just have a few moments this morning before I have to jet off.  Rebecca is back from here trip to the East Coast to see Osian, the new Grandboy.  Have a few thoughts to share:

So, the Good is that Rebecca is back so that I don’t have to wander around unsupervised, Gracie is doing her homework, Sherif  and Cherry are sending great material to supplement the blog and we are thinking of each other.  Yea.  The Camino goes on, right?!!

The Bad is all the spam that is coming into the blogsite.  Fortunately, I have an appointment with Ken my Apple guy on Monday.  I just have to keep from getting over run till then.  It seems so easy to fix but somehow my password is all screwed up and I can never….  Well, Ken knows.  I’m counting on you buddy.

That leaves the Ugly which is this blog.  Well, not really really ugly but it needs some different things happening.  The TGIF is terrific.  Sherif # 2 introduced us to poetry.  I think that is poetry of some loose form.  Nice.  And I think that we are going to do, are you ready for this, Spanish recipes.  Not just any, but ones that I have proven good ones.  I think that we will start with Alida’s flan recipe which I have made twice now.  So, yea.  That’s my proposed solution to the Ugly.

Also, also, also I just realized that this post right here is number 200 since we started out back in May or June, can’t remember offhand, it’s been so long.  That is something to celebrate!  I’ll raise my coffee cup to that,”Salud!”.   Love, Felipe.

Dust, mud, sun and rain

is the road to Santiago.

Thousands of pilgrims

and more than thousand of years.

Pilgrim, who calls you?

What hidden force draws you?

Neither the fields of stars

nor the great cathedrals.

It’s not sturdy Navarre

nor the wine from La Rioja

nor Galician seafood

nor the Castillan fields.

Pilgrim, who calls you?

What hidden force draws you?

Neither the people along the way

nor their customs.

It’s not the history and culture

or the cockerel in Santo Domingo de La Calzada

nor Gaudi’s place

nor the castle of Ponferrada

I see it all as I pass along

and it is a joy to see,

but the voice that calls me,

I feel more deeply still.

The force that drives me

The force that draws me

I am unable to explain.

Only He Above knows!

 

(Sherif just said at the beginning of his email the question, “Remember?”)

 

 

 

So, my Camino partner Kelly ( aka Kel, Padre, the Walking Supermarket) came to dinner last evening.  And as usual, things got up there on the sillymeter.  Before I go into that we had a great meal with tapas at one end and flan at the other.  You know, I went all out for the guy.  Vacuumed the new carpet and everything.  And it was game seven of the World Series and we checked that out.  I held it to one glass of wine, just in case my doc is reading this.  Kelly went a little over that.

Anyway, the whole meal was as Spanish as I could get to from here.  And at some point the conversation got around to memorable meals on the Camino.  Well, don’t all conversations wind up going there given enough time. ( I think that I am on to something there.)  Anyway, it got down to flies.

There is this great old joke where the perturbed customer asks the waiter, “What is this fly doing in my soup?”  And the waiter peering down to get a closer look very politely says, “I think he is doing the backstroke sir!”    hahaha.  That’s the kind of stuff we were up too.   And really how are you going to have an authentic August style Camino meal without a few jokes and a few flies. So then the idea came up of canned flies, right?  Why not, indeed.  For the really authentic presentation this would be a nobrainer.  Well, and we had kind of a no brainer thing going by that time, as you can see, so it was an all good situation.

So yea, we got the film crew and Annie coming next month.  They told me that they are coming about eight times now so we are throughly warned.  So, I just want to let them know that we here are still in great Camino party shape and will match anything that they can bring!  Yea, we can’t wait to see you guys!!   Love, Phil.

 

Good morning.  I’m running a little late here on this but here I am.  Just wanted to dilly dally with you for a few moments.

One thing that is on my mind is my hunt this year.  I’m allowed one deer this year and we have plenty here on our island.  It is great habitat for them and they thrive.  But I have this rule with myself that if I shoot one and can’t recover it then my hunt is over.  Technically I could still hunt since my tag is still valid.  But with myself I don’t get another chance.  It is supposed to make me more serious about the process.  So this is what happened two evenings ago.  I hit a nice buck and after much looking couldn’t locate him.  This happens once in a while to everyone but it doesn’t help the disappointment.  And then the next day a bunch of my neighbors were out looking and still nothing.  Well, ultimately in nature nothing is wasted as this will provide coyote and raven food.  But still.  I just wanted to tell you about my world.

So, also, I am communicating via messaging with a lovely person that is doing the Camino right now.  I am so jealous.  She is at the albergue that Paulo Coelho is associated with now.  Does anyone know where that is?  She has suffered a great lose recently and has physical issues that are challenging.  I admire her courage and am sort of holding her hand electronically as she goes.  Please pray for us.

Also, Matthew from the Netherlands has checked via email with Kelly and myself.  So that is tres cool.  If anyone needs his email I could get that to you.

That was three items but I’m still going.  A wonderful man came and walked with me and my son Wiley on Monday.  He happens to be blind so it was interesting working with that.  I learned so much.  I think that he will come back on a regular basis.  Tres cool again.

Let’s see, maybe I can squeak out one more thing.  Sherif has provided some material for the TGIF so we are covered for this week.   Thank you buddy.  I know that I have asked some people specifically for help on this but that doesn’t mean that anyone can’t contribute.  Just pretend that we are having our afternoon tapas and a glass of wine or a brewski after a long walk and we are passing my iPad around and you are writing about your day.  Maybe you have a rememberance, suprise or epiphany to report for all our benefit.

Have to go.  It is sunny out and I need to take advantage of that.  Adios, Felipe.