“Lintzoain and Basque Country” Not My Camino, Ch 11.

Posted on January 20, 2025 by stacyandjohn

The road from Roncevalles was lovely, and we met a bunch of folks who made the trail lighter. Stacy hooked up with a trio of ladies from Colombia and I found some folks from England who were taking pictures of the same stuff I was. And step by step, as the mountains became hills we watched France become . . . well, not Spain, but Basque.

The Basque present a problem for me as I am a former Professional Smart Ass and they are unusual. The unusual are cat toys for the Smart Asses of the world. If you stick out of the crowd in any way, we will make fun OF you, ABOUT you and AROUND you. And no culture is more unusual than the Basque. Even their language, ‘Euskara’, is in a separate linguistic group all to itself. Linguists have no idea where it came from. Which is fine with me, and none of my business to boot. After all, foreign is as foreign does when one is the foreigner.

Now, I have been to Hong Kong. I’ve seen the jungles of Panama. I have walked the streets of London in the night, and have seen the temples and palaces of Angkor Wat. I have even been to Shreveport, Louisiana, so the strange and unusual is no stranger to my eyes. But it was not until I witnessed a Basque waiter perform a cultural tradition that removed all the bubbles out of a carbonated drink that I truly knew what foreign was.

Basque cider, ‘sagardoa’, is a great beverage that Stacy and I had been enjoying as we walked the hills and sparse woods of Basque country, a smallish semi-autonomous region of North Eastern Spain that runs from The Pyrennes in the East to Logorno in the south and Bilbao in the north. Then Stacy was introduced to the proper Basque form of pouring the Cider. The drink is poured from the bottle at a great height, adroitly and elegantly by a waiter specially trained to create a five foot stream of sagardoa right into your glass! Thus removing all carbonation from the drink whatsoever. There is even a cute little device that many tables have to create this effect, if no efficient Basque waiter is available.

The Horror. The Horror.

I love carbonation, and consider the deliberate removal of bubbles to be a crime against nature itself! Who were these Basque?!?!

As we Camino’d along, every town we passed through had a Basque Pelota court, which resembled a large version of a New York-style handball court. And this curious form of the cross was common, and usually over a door.

The ‘drops’ on the ends of the cross’s arms are an early form of the now official icon of the Basque people, the ‘Lauburu’, as pictured below.

Screenshot

Many Traditional Basque homes have a decorated or inscribed lintel stone over their door, often employing Lauburu of various styles and forms. These are called Alataburu, and they are wonderful pockets of art and creativity as you walk the winding streets of some of the oldest villages in Europe. Here is where I began to fall in love with the doors of Spain. Here’s a few…

  • The first of many Hand shaped door knockers, some have wedding rings, some don’t!

That evening we checked into Posada El Camino albergue in the town of Lintzoain, and discovered the other side of the albergue experience. This was not a corporate hotel, we were in a person’s home. We were greeted at the door ( remove your shoes and poles!) by a lovely couple who welcomed us graciously and even found a way for us to save a couple euros by combining laundry with another guest.

That evening we joined two other guests from South Korea and Czechoslavakia for a home cooked meal that washed away all the memories of corporate food and flat cider. During our stay, Stacy’s amazing Spanish came into play as she was a huge help to one of our fellow pilgrims. As a reward, we were served some Anise home brew liquor called Patxaran, and we melted into that warm place of peace and humanity that only comes from the feeling of strangers becoming friends.

That night, the thunder came. And there were no claps, or bangs or sudden cracks. The thunder of the Basque was a constant roll, that never ceased or paused. I had never heard such a thing, this constant and unremitting roiling roar, loud and unashamed. The thunderstorms of my youth back in Texas came and went like a tornado, fast and terrible but gone in minutes. In Lintzoain the thunder kept rolling, and rolling and then speaking. I could see the Basque in the sound of their thunder, a constant defiant uniqueness: not born of whimsy or reactionary pride, but of this place, these mountains and valleys, where thunder comes and does not leave. After a while, even the terrible roll of the thunder became a friend by it’s familiarity, and I slept unafraid.

My dreams were wild and active. Yours will be too.

Buen Camino.

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Stop Blowing already.

Posted on January 7, 2025 by stacyandjohn

It took me two days to figure out whether or not I liked the new Bob Dylan movie.  I didn’t. And not because it isn’t a solid, well made film.  It is. Hell, twelve years ago, it might have been acclaimed as great.  But because we are at the dawn of Trump’s second term, “A Complete Unknown” is a piece of shit.  

Now I when say piece of shit, I am being literal.    ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a lump of pre-consumed matter that looks like yummy yummy fudge.  Nothing in this film is original or untried: the plot, the narrative structure, the method which it is told, even the actors are safe and bankable pieces of candy.   Everything is post-digested, audience tested and completely safe.

It’s a very attractive movie.

The Halo effect is a psychological term which describes how folks ascribe positive attributes based on a general impression; pretty people seem nicer.  We do this with artists.  Great and amazing artists are assumed to be great and amazing in everything they do.  They’re not.   Quite often they are total assholes in everything but their art.  Or worse, they are completely and totally normal.  Bland.  Everyday.  Their shit stinks just like everyone else’s.   

And that is the quality of Stench that arises from this movie.  ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a visual painting about the History of All of Us trying to make a History of Bob Dylan.  And in the end, there is none.   There’s an old saying in comedy, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, then it’s a duck.   If after a half century of making art, if Bob Dylan still has nothing to say, even in his biopic that he approved, then the man has nothing to say.    

It took me a while to realize that the character of Bob Dylan never says a single word about any of the issues of his time.   We see Pete Segar in court defending the music of  Woody Guthrie to a Conservative political establishment, but Mr. Zimmerman never speaks a syllable about any of the numerous political and social issues of the time.   Dylan is historically famous for this quietude, and it is a huge problem in a biography when you don’t know what the subject of your biography is thinking. The film makers solve this problem by using the ‘Walk Hard’ Narrative formula that can turn a drunken idiot into a nobly suffering laconic hero.  The use of black characters in the narrative typifies this.   We see Bob bravely dating a Hip looking black chick, but the only other black character in the movie is a fictional bluesman.  A man surrounded by folk musicians in 1964 and a not a single word about Civil Rights?    It proves that every character and plot point about this movie, is nothing but a tool to make Bob Dylan….well, cool.  

Yeah, cool.  ‘A Complete Unknown’ turns Robert Zimmerman into the goddamn Fonz.   An empty leather jacket that silently whacks machines to make them run properly.    An Icon that struts about, receiving acclaim from strangers who have never actually seen the Fonz fight.   He never did, you know.  The Fonz never threw a punch on a single episode of Happy Days.  And neither did Dylan.  

Dylan versus Corporate Music is the biggest lie in this movie.  Dylan is corporate music.  Dylan is establishment.  Dylan is Conservative.  Dylan is an Industry to himself.   Rebels don’t get Nobel Prizes, trusted servants do.    And even this movie doesn’t try to make the claim that Dylan gives a rat’s ass about politics or anything else other than making music.  And that is not okay with us.    We cannot let a person that makes things we love just be a person.   They have to be bigger than life, better than everything, super human.  

The truth is Bob Dylan is just a songwriter.  Not a prophet, not an angel, not a Folk Icon, not a rock God, he’s a guy who is great at writing songs.   And we, as desperate members of a dying civilization, want to pump him full of meaning and transcendence and all those other beautiful things that we want in our lives and cannot have because we can’t write Blowing In The Wind.  

And if we hadn’t just elected a known liar, criminal and rapist as president this movie might be just a well made film.  But because this movie lies, obfuscates, deceives and then makes money from this deception, just like our politicians, it is excrement.  Not simply un-needed, but a wasteful product of the uber-wasteful Age of Cool.  A flickering symbol of what we have let our society become; an empty leather jacket banging at old machines trying to make them work. 

In the end, I agree with what Bob Dylan’s silence about his own life seems to say: fuck Bob Dylan. And hey there Bob, if in 2025, you still don’t want to speak, all I can do is sing your own song back at you…..

PS—-Edward Norton is a total badass.

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Influencer, ‘Fluencer, Flooser, Fluzer.

Posted on December 21, 2024 by stacyandjohn

I once had a mind altering experience with some rose colored glasses. Literal ones. I put ’em on one summer day and went tooling about the city with my artsy pals, looking for trouble and Muses to inspire us. After a while I forgot I had them on. After another while, I remembered I had them on and realized I had been still ‘seeing’ colors, (green grass , blue sky) despite the fact that the rose colored glasses I was wearing was making everything, you know, rose colored. I got freaked out, because when I took them off I had no real assurance that everything wasn’t actually blue or purple or fuschia but I was just perceiving everything as different colors because I didn’t know better. Everything in the Universe could be just different shades of fuschia! GAH!

In the end, reality is not as important as how we perceive reality. And that is why I’m an asshole.

I’ve been working on a film script about TikTok/Instagram Influencers and fell into a series of Co-Centric Mental Circles that blinded me to the fuschia-colored reality of my perceptions. I began by watching all I could about the most famous Influencers, especially the scandalous ones. Three hours in, I had a great Blog Post Theme on the whole thing connecting the Influencers with the mud pits at Rennaisance Festivals, school ground fights and the Mob of ancient Rome. It was great, and I was gonna tell you all about it in three part harmony with feeling!

And then, I saw that I had become one of the circles I was condemning. Influencers aren’t just fueled by Likes-N-Views, they are kept alive by the sea of clever condemners like myself, all pointing out how awful it is and finding new and better literary devices to express this awfulness. It is safe to say there are as many videos about Influencers as there are Influencer videos. Which are which? Where is the line? And what is gained by adding another Irma Bombeck/Dave Berry ‘aint’ it crazy’ Column about it all?

“None at all, kid” Says the old guy behind the desk while blowing cigarrette smoke across the pages of the newspaper in his hand.

“Yeah, I know. You never tolerated a cliche or bullshit.”

“Kid, are you kidding a kidder? It’s the newspaper business. All you have to work with are cliches and bullshit. Doesn’t mean there ain’t truth in there. But ya better wear gloves.”

“But you always sounded fresh and real, while lying it out plain…”

“Shut up. Look, I wrote what I saw. I was a flat-above-a-tavern-youth, and didn’t get farther than that.”

“Bullshit. You were world famous.”

“No kidding? I didn’t know that.”

“What would you have written?”

“Written? About what?”

“About this whole influencer thing. What would you have written?”

Mike Royko puts down his paper and looked right at me with a set of eyes that had stared down Richard J Daley. “That’s the wrong damn question. You’re writing it. What do people need to read about it?”

Screenshot

And that’s why I’m an asshole. That question made me understand that I was the problem. Just like you. What do people need to read about it? Nothing. Not another word. You and I don’t need to read anything to help us understand how our addiction to Self Observation is destructive. We know. We simply aren’t in enough pain to do anything about it.

Folks don’t change a comfortable pattern unless they have to, unless it Hurts if they don’t. Most of us, though shocked, chagrinned and dismayed at the world aren’t hurting or suffering from it. Not really. There are people suffering a lot, but they are so busy trying not to suffer that there is little they can do to get at the root of their troubles. If you are reading this, then you are one of those who has the time to get to the root. Maybe you are trying, maybe you think you are trying, Me? I’m trying not to be part of the problem, but that Gen X rationalization has lost it’s power to salve.

I could do more. I don’t. Because I’m comfortable. And it is biologically dumb and evolutionarily backwards to give all that up for some other people I’ve never met.

And now is the time for dumb. Now is the time to go against evolution. Now is the time to reject comfort, refuse prosperity and to reject the easy life based on the suffering of others.

But, I’m an asshole because I’m not doing that. After all, I’m not stupid. I’m comfortable.

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Why Oliver Cromwell still matters: an amateur book review.

Posted on December 12, 2024 by stacyandjohn

I have just finished reading Ronald Hutton’s 2022 biography of Oliver Cromwell, ‘The Making of Oliver Cromwell‘, and enjoyed it immensely. But be warned, this ain’t no regular biography.

Neither is this:

Hutton does something with the story of Oliver Cromwell that is a gift for an enthusiast but dangerous for a newbie: he skips the obvious stuff. A classic biography is not his goal. In his introduction he discusses his desire to have Oliver Cromwell better ‘contextualized’ than recent historical analysis has allowed. And he delivers! Throughout the book, every word, every action of Cromwell’s is seen through the customs of the day and the manners of the civilization around him. Hutton does this adroitly, without the Word Weight that such examination usually brings. Hey, we all love details, but we already have an Antonia Fraser, thank you very much. Ending the book after the first round of the Civil War, in 1645, the eponymous period itself, is a great decision as his early years are surrounded by the most mystery and therefore need the most help by the kind of contextualization Hutton’s promotes. Further, the story of the English Civil War is just too damn big to tell in one book or one narrative. It’s clear Hutton has read the same tragic results of attempting this as I have. Secondly, he’s a solid historical writer, skilled in the art of re-weaving the phrase, ‘and then a guy said some other guys did something’, which counts for about half of all Historical writing.

As a fan of Oliver Cromwell’s story, I have read a number of his biographies. You have to. One of the best parts of his legend is how many deliberately biased accounts of Oliver Cromwell were written upon the restoration of Charles II as king of England. There was a rush amongst the scholars in the 1660’s to prove they did not support Cromwell by writing deliberately false histories attesting to Oliver’s abiding villainy and evil Satanic nature(not an exaggeration). When added to the hagiographies written during Cromwell’s reign as Lord Protector, the truth gets murky as hell.

In addition, The English Civil War is the beginning of popular propaganda in the form of ‘broadsheets’: hastily printed one page newspapers, with only the news that the faction who published it wanted you to know. There was even a ‘Soldiers Bible’, which was a pamphlet containing only the Bible verses a good Puritan soldier needed. The English Civil War was the cradle of modern Disinformation. That’s the first reason why Cromwell still matters.

The second reason is that many folks have forgotten what a bad idea it is for Government to be involved in religion. I won’t waste time describing why. Read a brief account of the English Civil War and tell me choosing battlefield generals by what kind of Communion they prefer in Church is a good idea.

The third reason is to see how much a single good person can do, even in a time so messed up that Government and Religion were more involved than Talyor Swift and Travis Kelce.

Oliver Cromwell? A good person? Yup. I said it. Even Hutton, who actively shoves all evidence for Cromwell’s duplicitous nature Down Stage Center concedes he was not, at the very least, the villain all the supporters of the Aristocracy would like us to believe.

The fourth reason Cromwell is important is right now is captured by the fact that every reader of Irish decent is pissed off that I called Oliver Cromwell a good person. This is because Cromwell put down a rebellion in the Land o’ Eire and then supervised what can only be called the rape and plunder of the entire country. The third or forth time such a rape and plunder had been forced upon the Irish. Cromwell did it because he believed all Ireland was full of Evil Satanic Catholics who were murdering protestant woman and children. He believed this because this is what he was told for two decades.At no time was Oliver Cromwell walking around thinking, “Bwahaha! I’m being so evil and awful, let’s go take away the land and rights of the Irish! I hate how peaceful and content they are with their lives! Quick, go punch that kitten in the face!” But somehow, things had got to the point with Disinformation, he was able to rationalize the de-Irishing of Ireland while at the same time inviting the Jews back into England and weeping over the death of his own children.

Now replace Ireland with Israel. Yeah. Clio is a hell of a muse.

There’s a aspect to Oliver’s character that I love, which Hutton brings out clearly in his summary of the man. Cromwell was a student. Before he was a puritan, before he was a businessman, before he was a member of parliament, before he was a soldier: he was a student. Hutton points out how when Cromwell makes a mistake, he never makes that same mistake again. From his early conflicts over local land use to mistakes on the battlefield, we watch Cromwell learn as he goes! He accomplishes this at least partly from his literacy, which is a new thing for the as-yet-still-tiny middle class of England. Hutton proves that Cromwell had at least two bibles in his possession, as he quotes from both the King James and the earlier Geneva Bible in an early letter. Quoting extensively from the Bible was one of Cromwell’s best oratorical weapons. We also know he studied printed accounts of the successful tactics of Gustavus Adolphus and applied the successful general’s tactics with much success. Remember, Cromwell never had a single day of formal military training, and yet was undefeated as a commander. Books rule! Oh, unless they are full of lies about Irish Catholics…sigh.

Oliver Cromwell’s effective use of the printed and spoken word, and let us be honest, his effective Manipulation of those words, is something we must study as deeply Cromwell would have studied us.

All this history is repeating itself right now. The story of Cromwell will better prepare you for it.

The Making of Oliver Cromwell by Ronald Hutton can be found in your library and numerous places that aren’t A*****. Professor Hutton also has lectures on Youtube, check ’em out!

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The Eagles of Napoleon.

Posted on December 10, 2024 by stacyandjohn

As we emerged from the Mega Hostel known to the faithful as Orreaga, we walked past the local church that proudly refused communion to non-Catholics. Then by the watery morning light, we followed the Yellow Scallops Sigils into a lovely forest of medium sized trees that told me I should be quiet for a while, and to listen to what their leaves had to say. I hadn’t seen a forest quite like it before, and I basked in the sweet peace of cool greenness that a kid from South Texas rarely felt. One tree especially seemed noteworthy, or at least our trail thought so.

See? Kind of a bad ass, right!? All gnarled, grumpy and defiant right there in the middle of the path! It’s knobs and odd angles tell us it’s been messed with, chopped at, perhaps fully regrown from a stump’s remains. He’s the kind of tree I could stop and listen to for a while. When you put your hand on the it’s bark, you can feel all the life it’s seen, all the pilgrims, all the people, even Napoleon’s Eagles, the Imperial French army, probably walked around it’s trunk on the way to Pamplona. Yeah, I’m into trees. Love ’em. It may have something to do with being raised in a place with so few of them, but the feel of bark on my palm always soothes me. People, on the other hand….

Sadly, many of my fellow pilgrims did not heed the trees’ desire for sacred silence. After all, there are sitcoms to talk about. It turned out we left a little late in the morning, and so hit the trail at it’s most populous time. There were clumps and groups and crowds of folks who were traveling together, and a few single travelers who would latch on to groups or form groups of their own. And all these pilgrims talked and chatted as clumps, groups, crowds and unified singles are wont to do. Bleah. Humans. Gross. And you don’t have to take my word for it… tell ’em Kelsey!

But don’t worry too much all you animals lovers, the mornings are the only time you will feel crowded on the trail. After sunrise and before 8 am is when most folks get out the door. But everyone has a different pace and takes different rests, so the crowd never lasts…unless you want it to!

Happily, the Camino holds space for all kinds of socializing. Whether you’re a Chatty Cathy or a Silent Sam, the only thing you have to say, is ‘Buen Camino’. It’s the traditional greeting between pilgrims and after a few days you will begin to hear it in your dreams. When it is said to you, answer back ‘Buen Camino’, and then you can then shut up all you like, satisfied that your duty to etiquette is fulfilled and Miss Manners will not frown down upon your visage. Stacy and I made a number trail buddies for a few stops and chose to be blissfully alone for a few as well.

Socializing at the albergues is entirely different. There, your options will be defined by the space. In the huge, hundred-or-more-bed-albergues there are many ways to hide among the crowd and avoid the pressure to socialize. But in the albergue that is a family’s home, and it’s just you and three other people, there will be nowhere to hide. That being said, I have never seen any guest ‘forced’ (passively or directly) to socialize or participate in group activities.

Now, I want to be clear, the Camino Santiago is not a walking tea party of Chatting Cathy’s and Bragging Johns. Nor is it a procession of stony-faced puritans mutely trudging along whilst contemplating sin and suffering in an unjust world. In fact there is no homogeneity of any kind on the Camino. Even amongst the Spanish, who are the majority nationality of pilgrims, there is no common demeanor; just ask the Catalans and the Basque. You are going to meet all kinds of people who like to talk and don’t like to talk in every way conceivable and inconceivable…..

…but I do know what it means.

It’s easy to worry about trying to get along with so many people, so many customs, so many worldviews. And there’s a lot of ways to hike a trail.

You see this section of the Camino was going to be our first real day on the Camino. Previously were were so occupied with surviving the winds of the Pyrenees and Evil Corporate Dinners that there wasn’t any time for chitting or chatting or any other trivial social nonsense. But now, as the rosy fingers of dawn spread over Roncevalles, my desire to listen to the leaves rustle in the soft morning wind was foiled by a cluster of Australian women sharing their hard opinions about bacon and the best white wine.

I’m not a big idle chatter kind of guy. After all my years in the Arts and as a Clergyspouse, I still consider it to be work. In addition to my loathing for small talk, the things I actually like to talk about are politics, sex, religion, comedy and arcane points of History. There’s not a lot of takers on those topics, and frankly, why should there be? Those topics are nuts. And what kind of jerk doesn’t like sports!? I am aware I’m damaged. It was a lifetime of Improv comedy and comic book consumption that destroyed my patience for mundanity: I’ve read too many amazing stories and made up too many skits and jokes to find pleasure in talking about mortgages or the bloody Chicago Bears’ kicking game. Screw that, tell me about the time you cheated on your girlfriend with a parking lot attendant. Or war, or death, or The Firesign Theater, just don’t waste my time with the mundane!

Just I was busily thinking of more reasons about how right I was to hate pointless chatter, we came out of the woods and onto a road lined by wide fields with a village in the distance. As I looked up into the sky, an eagle soared up and then past all of us, a mere 40 or 50 feet above our heads. And then another eagle followed right behind him, and then two more swooped in hot on his tail feathers. The hell?? Suddenly, the sky above us was full of Spanish imperial eagles racing past us, clawing the air with their wings, screaming with the lust for the hunt as they headed up to the mountains.

The Eagles of Napoleon!

There is an eagle sanctuary in the village, and they release the birds in the morning to go and hunt. We were lucky enough to have witnessed it at the perfect time. I didn’t even attempt a picture. There was no way to capture it. I was genuinely astounded to have seen a flock of eagles, and I laughed aloud and then just started talking about the Eagles of Napoleon, the eagle-shaped standard that each of Napoleon’s armies carried before it as they marched across Europe, including this very road upon which we were standing! The people around me seemed to appreciate the story, though a little startled at my enthusiasm, but I found I didn’t really care about their reaction too much.

I have always considered the presence of a hawk to be personally significant as they have come upon me in various startling ways over the years. Now, a flock of friggin’ eagles blows past me like a parade of portents. What the hell am I supposed to interpret that as? The Romans had a whole system for it called Augury, but I ain’t Roman and this ain’t Rome.

I then realized that I wasn’t Mind-bitching about the other chattering pilgrims anymore. I had something more important to think about now.

The truth was, I always did. So, I thought about that for the next few miles.

Buen Camino.

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Images taken on the Camino path from St Jean to Orisson.

Posted on December 6, 2024 by stacyandjohn
  • The wire is wrapped by the rubbed-off fleece left by the passage of many Basque sheep.
  • Ancient shelters built to protect shepherds from sudden lighting storms. We saw a number of these throughout the Pyrenees.

All photos by the author.

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Some News About the View On Views.

Posted on December 1, 2024 by stacyandjohn

There’s a fond misconception that words lie. They don’t. Words are completely innocent of all wrongdoing. Even the shitty ones ( such as ‘irregardless’). This is mostly true because words are not sentient and have no free will to do anything at all, especially something as intellectually complex as to comprehend the meaning of truth and to express its opposite. It takes years for humans to learn how to do that despite the fact that we fart (which was the original reason for the very first lie). Watch this kid try to lie.

See? It’s tough. First you have to grasp the concept of “Mommy,” then you have to understand “Chocolate,” then you have to understand “private property.” Then you have to understand, “Screw Mommy, I’m eating her damn chocolate because she was dumb enough to turn her back on her Snickers bar.” Words can’t do that. They can only have that done to them, and that can only happen when words are shared.

Yeah, that’s when it gets weird; when you have to share your words with other people. As long as your words are just in your head, there’s no trouble whatsoever. But once you have to tell someone something, then you have to trust that they know what you mean when you say “I want Chocolate,” or “let’s get dinner,” or “Let’s go climb a mountain.” The wise among us will always ask, “What kind of chocolate?”, or “What would you like to have for dinner and when?”, and “What exactly do you mean by ‘Mountain’?” We have learned from experience there is room for interpretation.

Because, after climbing up and down one of the Pyrenees, when someone says the word “Mountain” to me, it will mean something different for me than it used to. More seriously, for a man who has dated many women and enjoyed his efforts, the passive mention of the word “sex” brings smiles and Warm Puppy feelings. The same utterance to a survivor of sexual assault will freeze the mind and harden the heart. Same word, different ears hearing it. Nobody is lying, nobody is wrong. Different opinions, difference experiences, different views.

This is the other part of the Buddhist teaching about “Views.” All of that confusion between thought and word, all of that subjectivity, all of that mis-interpretation, all of that strife that occurs when two people cannot agree on the definition of ‘freedom’, are all due to Wrong Views, and all views are wrong (eventually).

Buddhist teachers use the term Views a lot, and they do not like them. On the surface, this is bizarre, as the very person saying they don’t believe in views seems to have a very Buddhist View of things. There’s a whole one-eighth of the Eight Fold path called “Right View,” right? Right! And as you smugly tell the Monk that, they will then agree with you, but they would replace the word “bizarre” with the word “Dharma.” Here’s how Thich Nhat Hanh translates Dharma (from the oath for a Bhodhishattva in the Mahayana tradition ) to describe the correct view about Views:

Nonattachment to Views
[We will be] aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions, we are determined to avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. We are committed to learning and practicing nonattachment to views and being open to others’ experiences and insights in order to benefit from the collective wisdom. We are aware that the knowledge we presently possess is not changeless, absolute truth. Insight is revealed through the practice of compassionate listening, deep looking, and letting go of notions rather than through the accumulation of intellectual knowledge. Truth is found in life, and we will observe life within and around us in every moment, ready to learn throughout our lives.

This is deep stuff, and it’s not something that is fully presented to students until some prep work is done. It has to be admitted that on the surface it sounds like total bullshit. You can hear the stereotype Hippie cliche, his accent reeking of patchouli oil whilst chastising society, “Hey, man, I don’t waste my mind with any of those Views, man. Opinions only cloud the perceptions, Dude. I’m trying to free my mind from all that Groupthink, Man. . . . You wanna take a hit?”

But Buddhists do not replace “Views” with nihilism or libertine-ism. Buddhists are also not misanthropes, wildly hating and despising worldly ways: we call that “Aversion,” and it is a danger we are taught to be aware of as we rid ourselves of its opposite, “Attachment.” In street terms, you can’t love it, and you can’t hate it, you just gotta live with it. But it’s really the Non Attachment, the action, that matters. It’s not letting your happiness and peace of mind be dictated by the fact that it’s not just a mountain, but that a mountain that has to be 8,789 feet above sea level, covered in pine trees and have Julie Andrews singing on its grassy slopes for it to be a Mountain. Non attachment is essential, because as a Buddhist, the very last step before entering Nirvana is to dis-attach from your desire to enter Nirvana. Yeah, really. That’s the actual teaching of the Buddha. Kinda messed up, right?

I think the best way to think about it is the transformation of the spiritual process from Noun to Verb. Things are not the point, what is done with the Thing is. And it doesn’t matter what the Thing might be. Our Verb, our actions, must be in charge of our minds and process; not the things, the Nouns, themselves.

The Schoolhouse Rock Sutra! Can you Dig it?

A lot of what I felt, and was going to feel, trudging up and down the Pilgrim trail were thoughts brought from other places, previous conceptions about what Up means and what Down meant. What the Top of the Mountain meant, what The Bottom of the Valley meant. What achieving a goal meant, what failing to achieve a goal meant. Views. Views and opinions about things. What’s right and what’s wrong, what’s Good and what’s Bad. And lemme tellya, exhaustion is a great aid in ridding one of superfluous Views. Tired feet will encourage non-attachment better than a two-hour sitting with the Dalai Lama.

My big fear with the non-attachment to views was about my perception of beauty, my sense of wonder. I thought I would lose that feeling, but that doesn’t happen. All that space left emptied from attachment thoughts have been filled with nothing but positive things. That lovely ability we have, to be moved, to feel, to transcend this dust of us: that is our true self, that is where our baseline is, our zero bubble, our valley and our mountain.

I want to close with some Views. 36 Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai, to be exact. Alla’y’all have seen at least one of these, the Wave, which was one of the 36 prints Hokusai finished and first published as a collection in 1832. Each one is a view of Mt Fuji, and each one is different. I hope you can take some time to sit with them. And let me know what you think about all this. I’d love to hear your views. 😉

Buen Camino.

Next Post: The Eagles of Roncesvalles!

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Coming Down is Harder

Posted on November 19, 2024 by stacyandjohn

After climbing up a whole mountain I was hoping for a certain cliche to appear before me. Actually, I was praying for that cliche, longing for it! Which is dangerous, as cliches are the core of bad writing and sloppy thinking. But that mountain we walked up was huge, man! I mean it was a real mountain, an official mountain made official by the Mountain Measuring people! And this wasn’t a gentle slope covered in moss and daffodils. This bugger was rocky and foggy and sheep-y and windy. And now, my mountain being travassed, I wanted to slide down that easy trail of candy canes, gilly flowers and happy walkin’ that comes with sliding down instead of trudging up; you know, like in The Sound of Music and all those songs I sang in the Boy Scouts. Val-Do-Ree, Val do Rah, Baby!

The cliche I wanted to be true was “It’s easier coming down”.

Did it happen for me, Jonathan?

Yeah, coming down the mountain is a actually major pain in the ass, the foot and mind. The trail taking you off the Pyrenees has sections that are composed of shale stone which has been shattered and sharpened by the elements into a path that resembles a road of huge stone knives, blades up, and we have to walk down and through them And, of course, it rained, so the stone-knife paths were also slick with mud. When we were walking up the mountain, we just trudged, we plodded. We moved along almost mindlessly only having to concern ourselves with putting one foot in front of the other. Here, you had to pay attention where every footfall was going. That mindless uphill plodding would cost you at least a bloody knee or more likely a fall down the slope that didn’t have much to stop your fleshy body except nature’s own Ginsu knives jutting towards heaven. Constantly having to negotiate where to put your feet is as exhausting as the walking itself; this was an interesting discovery. Further proof that constant thought can be as exhausting as constant physical motion.

Now, I don’t want to misrepresent, the path had many lovely stretches unbesmirched with dangerous passages. And I will talk about those later, but between all those nice parts was the glaring Camino Leccion we all learned: Coming Down is harder.

And then I thought about my own struggles with addiction, and my friends and family who had struggled with similar demons. Coming down is not only harder, in fact Coming Down, is the only thing that matters.

I would even say that coming down the mountain is more important than getting to the top. Yeah, that’s tight, man! I typed that! Think about it. First of all who gives a shit where you’ve been if you can’t tell them all about it, right? So getting back is at least half of it. But it’s the most important half. Consider this: You go and do this amazing thing, huzzah. You’re great. But on the way back you slip on a sheep’s turd, fall into a crevasse and die. That automatically makes you a schmuck. It would be better if you died on the way up, because at least you wouldn’t have ‘Wasted’ a huge amount of effort just to go splat at the bottom of a hole. Nothing mars the honor of an assent nobly attempted, but a descent screwed up can rob you of all the glory attained at the assent.

It reminded me about the stories a friend would tell me about recovery from substance abuse. She worked in a private Psych hospital, and saw folks falling off that mountain a lot. My own experience is similar. When it comes to addiction, it’s not the Quitting, it’s the Keeping On Quitting. And that’s every day, every damn day, jack. Every good day, every bad day, every old friend offering you a hit, every boss yelling at you, every traffic jam, every disappointed wife looking at you and asking why you don’t have more money, every tingle of the skin that sings to you about how good it felt when, how better it felt when, how easy it is to……

Lots of knives, stone knives, with the edges up. But’s still better than living high…

But every step matters. We have to think on every footfall, and that’s exhausting, so here’s a last song from us, the nigh ruined, to those who see us falter.

We sure would appreciate it. Buen camino, y’all.

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The Biggest Albergue in the World! meh.

Posted on November 2, 2024 by stacyandjohn

Stacy and I came out of the Pyrenees, wind blown and exhausted. So exhausted that the walls of the Roncevalles Orreaga albergue which loomed over us like a 1960’s Hammer Vampire film didn’t impress us. They should have, and on any other day that ancient Eleventh century building’s brutalist demeanor would have sent our American sensibilities oohing and aahing like crazy. But today, we just wanted a bed.

Everything about the Orreaga was huge, Cavernous and Corporate.

Capitalization Note: I over capitalize. I know this. Stacy makes fun of me for it, as she should. But I need help to convey tone, as I am mainly a vocal person. I have cut back, but I’m gonna keep adding an Extra Big Letter now and then because it’s right for me, and that’s the only way I can keep my faith with you, the reader.

Orreaga was Corporate clean, Corporate arranged, Corporate staffed….with an odd difference: the company that runs the place decided to have all the people who checked you into the rooms be senior citizens. And Dutch. Because we were at only one part of the huge line to check in, we didn’t realize the homogeneity of the staff until we were climbing upstairs, with Stacy bemused and me pissed off. All of them, Old Dutch folk: some of whom could not speak English and others just enough Spanish to push pilgrims on to the next part of the check in process. And that process must be followed!!

THE CHECK-IN PROCESS—All Pilgrims soon learn to quickly and efficiently remove their hiking shoes and poles and place them in the room provided, which is separate from the rest of the albergue. No exceptions! Over there! Now! Please! Por Favor! There! Go! The corralling is very important as shoes and hiking poles are the biggest source of dirt, and keeping all that trail dust out of the rooms is essential for a clean communal experience, especially when there are 336 people arriving and leaving every day. Orreaga is an early stop on the Camino, so a lot of us had no idea what we were doing, or even if we did, it was still confusing to navigate the same process in an entirely different space. The longer you do the Camino the quicker you find The Room, wherever it may be, to put your shoes and poles away. Learning to see the same systems in different environments is one of the gifts the Camino provides.

Here at Orreaga, the Process is a cross between a security line for an American rock concert and Ellis Island. The Dutch Grey Panthers were having a great time, herding us along and barely bothering to understand us. They all seemed to know each other, and shared little laughs and jokes among themselves in a relaxed, jovial atmosphere…which made my Spidey-Sense tingle. Relaxed? Jovial? The old folks can’t be working. . .they must be . . . volunteers. Oh no! my inner customer sobbed. They don’t have to give a shit. But then the awake part of me relaxed completely as my expectations plummeted to a comfortable nothing. Ahhhhh, now there was nothing to get tense about. This was going to suck, there’s nothing we can do about it, and we’ll all get through it. There’s a line from a Matthew Broderick movie I think about a lot at moments like these.

But things did not go as terribly for us as they did for Matthew and his lizard. The Wal-Mart Door greeters of the Camino got us to the the desk, and we were given our bunk assignments. We were staying on a co-ed floor with about a hundred other people. Our alcove held two bunk beds and four smallish storage units. Across from us were two young men who worked for the Spanish National Police Force; which is not their National Guard, or their FBI or their ATF as we discerned after some cautious conversation. They’re a damn national Police force. Like city police, but National. I suddenly recalled I was walking in a formerly Fascist country, got nervous and stopped asking questions.

Our football field-sized room was open-aired, with cubicle like separations between each four bed space ending about five feet from the ceiling. We got cleaned up in the gender separated communal showers and hustled ourselves to get to our assigned table for our dinner. We had been given tickets for our Pilgrim Meal, with the time and the location of one of the three available rooms printed on them. Upon receivership of the Golden Tickets, we were told to not be late, as there were no other options for food in the area …Spider Sense tingle! 300 people a night and NO competition for that dinner dollar? Not even a couple small super pricy Snails-n-crepes bistros to leech off the One Percenters on the trail? That’s deliberate. Someone is paying someone else for the privilege of this monopoly. And I would wager the kickback/charity donation to the local magistrate was more than the money spent on a year’s supply of the dinners that was flung at us that night.

This would be our fourth Pilgrim Meal, which is a Camino food tradition offered by a thousand different bars, cantinas, restaurants and albergues all along the route. The Pilgrim Meal is obtained only by the presentation of a current Camino passbook. It’s always prix fixe menu with maybe a few basic options. Vegetarian options seemed to be consistently available. The most common menu item I saw in 2023 was the ‘1/4 chicken or pasta with red sauce’. Wine was always available for free or near free prices, and happily the wine generally tasted better than free wine usually does. However, our subjectivity was skewed when the Camino gave us the gift of starting out Pilgrim Meal journey with a low bar of quality. Very Low. Limbo low.

The meal we were served was the worst I have ever had. And let me be clear, I do not mean the food was not prepared to my liking, I mean the food we were served was not to ANYONE’s liking. Hunger was the only sauce in that room that night, and it ran out quick. The fish had the head, tail and some scales still poking out of the crust it was ‘fried’ in. The papas fritas were frozen french fries that tasted more like freezer than potato. The chicken seemed to have come from a flock raised and trained to cosplay Charles Dickens characters. The wine made us understand the ole’ Texan Hondo Crouch’s aphorism “the cheapest thing is the cheapest for a reason: know that reason.” The dessert was that plastic cup of ice cream you got in the second grade, and it was served still hard-frozen plucked from from a cardboard box that’s pushed on a battered plastic cart through the over-crowded room and then dropped on the plates in front of us with a sad clatter of hopelessness, a hopelessness the guests soon shared with the servers.

And that was the part that made me mad. The folks working that room, serving that sad excuse for a meal knew how bad the food was, and there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Every damn night those poor people have to disappoint every single customer they get. Nobody wants to go there, nobody is happy when they leave. No sane individual would make this choice to do this job in this manner for themselves or others, but somehow a Corporation can.

Stacy and I were going to experience a lot of cheap pilgrim food down the trail, and some of it was great, some was just basic, and some was crappy. But never were we served such a plate of Hopelessness, Carelessness and Least Possible Effort as we were at that dining room in the Orreaga. And I want to stress that the workers there bear no blame for what they are forced to do. There is incompetence in the world…oh my yes, there is abundant incompetence . . . but these folks working the dinner room had no options. The area we were in was remote, with few employment opportunities, and there was a pungent level of suck to the food that makes it clear it sucked before it even arrived at Orreaga. And from my own experience, when you have to serve crap you better serve it fast, don’t make eye contact and close every possible window of complaint: that isn’t bad service, that is the only way to work when you cannot do a damn thing to better the product you are providing.

How large does a Corporation have to get before it can achieve this level of incompetence? How many people agreed to the decisions that created the meal in front of us–with each person knowing they were manufacturing a dinner they themselves would never stoop to touch? How many people need to be in a group before the actual needs of the people become less important than profit? How big a group do we need to be in before people not in our group can be safely considered less than ‘Us’, and therefore less than human?

Comparing the grim visaged Spanish ice cream flingers to the jovial Dutch seniors gave one something to think about, another insight into processes and environments, perhaps. Is this a form of European carpetbagging? Same system, different environment? Thank you Camino.

But I would like all of you to think about people who have to do crappy things to make a living, from a fast food fry cook to an Eviction-serving lawyer. Now, it is possible to be a genius fry cook serving kick ass healthy and delicious food and it is possible to be a humanitarian lawyer who trots the globe freeing the unjustly jailed….but we’re not talking about them. When you have to do something you know is wrong, pointless or just poor quality every day it whittles down your humanity. It makes it hard to make good decisions for yourself, it makes it hard to trust other people and it makes it hard to trust the world. I had a job like that for a while. The horror of it is hard to explain. It’s both so small and so large at the same time, like a scream from the bottom of a coal mine. A man with nothing to lose is dangerous enough, but a man who makes the world a worse place 40 hours a week— and knows it— becomes worse than dangerous, they become numb.

Buen Camino.

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The Climb to Roncesvalles

Posted on October 19, 2024 by stacyandjohn

I am a history nerd. Folks like us are usually called Buffs, as in History Buff, but I am not a “buff” when it comes to history. A buff is a passive little thing that can be blown away with the breath of a whim. Me and History? Hah! Buff be damned! I’ve read more history books than you’ve had hot dinners. I had my World War II phase in the seventh grade. I own a first edition Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches with comments by Thomas Carlyle. I have read and annotated the complete eleven volume The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant—for fun!! I find Toynbee facil, Thucydides a hoot and sincerely believe Antonia Fraser should have a statue built of her in every single history department in the planet.

I do not shout out this bombastic list of hyperbolic claims to impress you, but to impress upon you that my understanding of historical events and patterns, though amateur, are not that of a “Buff.” I have blissfully spent hours, days, years with the lives of the past, the histories of the dead, and I have had the honor of speaking for them, often in their own words, on stage. It is an honor I took very seriously, and I still do. My natural-born biases for nation, states and all frankly all -Isms has been worn to a barely perceptible nub by that bliss. Who you served does not matter to me: how you served them does. The grave does enough judging already.

So when I get to walk the same path that Napoleon’s army took into Spain in 1807, it’s not just a thrill. It is me feeling the cardboard-soled shoes of conscripts pushing on day after day carrying forty pounds of gear, in terrible uniforms, a ridiculous hat and all on hard bread and half rotted meat if they were lucky. It’s also the lice crawling on skin that has not seen soap and water for months. It’s your own teeth falling out and then being replaced by other teeth found in the mouths of dead soldiers, but only the really shiny ones. It’s being trained to fire three rounds a minute and to march straight into enemy musket and canon fire time after time, all while shouting “Vive L’Empereur!” while carrying aloft the 9 foot tall eagle-topped Standard of your Army. It’s being part of a group that has conquered the world, but all you want that day is to steal a bottle of wine from any peasant you can, and to go to sleep on something that isn’t a rock. All while marching to Roncesvalles

Roncesvalles.

And Roland was here, the famous knight that fought a rear guard action under Charlemagne that saved the Christian army from destruction back in 778 CE. Most pilgrims are more into that, but I find the historical provenance of the legend weak at best. Me? I’m marching with the men. I’m marching with Napoleon.

Well, actually, me and Stacy are in a van crammed with seven other pilgrims heading up the exact same path we hiked yesterday, which was surreal. A busy season on the Camino made it necessary for us to spend the night back at St Jean, and then be driven to the spot where we left off hiking to once again continue on foot. As we sped down the road we had just hiked, the only real frame of reference I had was seeing your life flash before your eyes. The memories were so fresh, and so foreign, and then watching through the van window as all the places you were just plodding upon are now whizzing by . . . it was disjointing.

Side note-the third best thing about traveling is you get to use all the words you’ve always wanted to use. Disjointing. Yum.

When the van stopped at the Sarcastic Virgin and we were released into the wild, it was like walking out of a dream of having déjà vu, but Stacy smiled her heart-smile at me, so I knew I still existed, and so we hit the road and continued our Camino. And then the Pyrenees shit on us.

In order to have a Natural Psychedelic Experience there are number of conditions that must be met. First, do not take acid or ‘shrooms; that’s Nature’s job. Next, you must disorient yourself, which means getting lost, getting foreign, getting away from all your stuff, getting away from all the roles you play in life back home. Then you walk straight up a mountain until you are tired as hell. Then, you do a return and rewind trip the next day because straight lines are fascist, and progress is not linear, and you get really tired some more. Another key component is being distance blind. We had no idea how long this walk was going to take. Later we would become experts at knowing when our feet had walked one mile, five miles, ten miles, but early on in the Pyrenees we had no concept of distance. Stacy and I had only hiked flat, long paths during our training, so as the wind kept battering us we had no idea when the end was going to come. And to complete your Natural Psychedelic Experience, put yourself in a place where A Big Fat Dose of all-Natural Mother Nature can whack you in the brainpan.

The weather the day before had been nigh perfect. Cloudy, cool, just a little wind. Today, the ghosts of all the soldiers who had ever shared this trail rose and cried out as one to the God of the Winds. They asked that his sack which holds all the mighty gusts and pernicious zephyrs be opened and emptied upon these ignorant pilgrims, who know nothing of true hardships! And lo, he did. As we walked the winds began to pummel us from all directions, but mostly it seemed, head on. Right at us. Right at my face. If I turned to the left, the wind smacked me there. If I glanced to the right, the wind was waiting for me. Now, being from Chicago I am familiar with the Asshole Gust: that particular type of wind that comes from nowhere and blows your umbrella upside down, or knocks you over when you turn a corner, or blows your hair into your face as you are trying to eat your falafel pita. This was different. It was constant, and strong, and unrelenting. After a period of time longer than an hour and shorter than a year, there was finally enough Nature to kick in my trip, and I began to have an internal . . . mostly . . . conversation with the wind, my dead mother and Oliver Cromwell.

It got complicated, and because I like you—and Buddha won’t let me—I will leave out the Jungian details. But the conversation I had, which descended to the point of me screaming at the wind, can only be called psychedelic as it changed my consciousness. Luckily, the wind drowned out or blew away everything I said aloud, so nobody in our little squad of pilgrims could get freaked out by my utterances. Suffice it to say, I came to the understanding that the wind, like the insanity of my Mother, has nothing to do with me whatsoever; that the suffering they create is not aimed at anyone at all, it just is.

And with that I wish a rousing Selah, to Hunter S Thompson’s ghost.

There’s a tipping point when it comes to arduous activities. You can easily and cheerfully get through a little crappy labor when it’s necessary. But as you are bashing away at your task, if it takes long enough, you will start to question why you are doing this? Does this really need to be done? Does it need to be done like this? Who else knows and cares about this thing? If I set this thing on fire would anybody care? Do I care about any people who do care about me setting this thing on fire? Who made this thing in the first place? And who made that guy who made this thing? Isn’t this thing really God’s responsibility and I should just get out of the way and let entropy and Divine Will rule?

When the arduous activity is a spiritual task, alas, you cannot leave it to God, entropy or even a Lebowski. Because the only point of the whole thing IS the arduous activity, and all that is laid bare by it. Welcome to the Camino de Santiago, pilgrim.

We made it over the mountains without being blown off a cliff, and found our way to the former monastery-now-albergue, the Orreaga-Roncesvalles Pilgrims Hostel, one of the most lauded spots by all the Camino-istas. When we arrived we found out the winds that we fought were the worst in decades, and we gained Mad Props for a week from other pilgrims when they found out we were there. But for now, we could stop for the night at a big old monastery where we already had reservations. But not as many as were were going to…

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