My morning began at 7:12 a.m. My eyes opened beneath a quilt-work of eye boogers. My head, still on its pillow.
My eyes first caught the sight of a rosary, lying on my nightstand. The rosary was given to me by a nun, a few villages back. The rosary bears a hieroglyphic-like symbol on it. I have no idea what this symbol means.
The first thing I heard upon arising was a choir of human noise. This is the Camino de Santiago. The symphony of morning sounds within a Camino hostel or albergue is a concert of shuffling, thumping, squealing, thrumming, ticking, flopping, and multiple conversations, simultaneously taking place, in 7,000 international languages.
A soprano section of backpack zippers. A tenor section of rubber soles, squeaking like the boys’ basketball team on a gymnasium floor. A bass section of bodily orifices, clearing themselves in the form of nose blowing, throat purging, sniffing, spitting, sneezing, coughing, grunting, moaning, and of course, explosive flatulence.
I spent the morning fiddling. I was sitting in bed. Icing both legs. Playing
my fiddle with a mute attached to the bridge. My wife was still sleeping. Her tan is deeper brown than most pilgrims. Her unspoken Creek ancestry is showing.
Medical professionals recommended two days' rest for my wife’s idiot husband inasmuch as his calves look like water balloons. I told my wife to keep walking the Camino without me. I would catch up eventually—even if I had to take a bus.
She told me to, quote, “Go to hell.” Unquote.
So we have become fixtures in Rabanal Del Camino, a town with barely enough residents to form a baseball team.
Each morning, the village empties itself of pilgrims, and the cobbled streets are empty and there is nothing to do but fiddle.
This is…