Walked 26Km
When I walk, the first day my mind jumps all over the place. It's the (my?) mind's default mode, but I only notice it because I'm walking. I observed my thoughts: my mother and my sister are coming to Spain in November, I haven't spoken with my father in ages, I left this one thing undone at work and today we're having our sync, random embarrassing thought from years ago. Waning and waxing ambivalence of the plans with V. Wanting to go to Barcelona to pick up my drum because Andrés is leaving to live in France. My knee hurts in a way in which it hasn't hurt before. I'm getting fat again because I'm replacing weed with alcohol. Yadda yadda.
How do I escape all this? I remembered the exercise I invented while high on the day I forgot my keys inside the house. I inhaled four steps and exhaled four steps. That's too short, I progressively increased the length of my breathing until I got to eight in and eight out. Then I started speaking to myself out loud. Forming complete sentences, avoiding this shortened mentalese language that happens in my mind. Little by little the mind quieted down and I started noticing my body, subtleties in my gait, the sensation at the tip of the fingers.
When I arrived to Saint Gilles I found the auberge closed until 3pm. I had two hours to waste. I went inside a boulangerie and pointed at the things I wanted (a slice of pizza, a bottle of water and a coke zero) to the beautiful attendant who could have been a model (I wonder why women seem more beautiful when you travel). The slice of pizza was a snack, when the supermarket opened at 2:30 I procured the ingredients for two hearty salads which feed me for lunch and dinner. Then I checked into the auberge.
Andy was already there, a Swiss man I had met last night, at Arles. The receptionist said to me "see that man with the red shirt over there? he's a pilgrim too". For a moment I doubted whether I should talk with him. I wasn't feeling too social (I was perhaps too sober), but I chose to engage. We spoke about the camino and its lessons. I didn't regret it. Today he was very kind and translated a lot for me, because we are four people in the auberge, and he's the only one who speaks English (the rest are French speakers).
I knew what I was getting into by coming to France, seeing French pilgrims struggle with language once they get into Spain, and I wanted a taste of that too. The difficulty of communicating your needs with whatever meager means you have. It's also a relief not being endlessly spoken to and instead I eavesdrop the conversation, trying to make out something—anything I can understand.
I'm currently lying in bed and its 10:06pm. I have nothing else to write about. Until tomorrow>