Rain & Pain

Trudging to the store each drop was thick and heavy, exploding onto my shoulders, hands, hair, and face. Halfway through the walk from El Supermercado to our apartment in Valencia, Spain, I took a break. I sat against a green wooden door, the doorframe offering refuge, and lit a smoke. Of course the quiet, as it always seems to be, was a miracle. The rain was waving like sheets in the wind, most visible in the tunnels of the car lights. Ancient towers from the Moorish days felt the rain of today as they have for many days before. The cobblestone roads in a neighborhood called Carmen, a statue of a man called The River in La Plaza de Virgen, Café Lavin, and the train station all felt the rain. Valencia’s streets are laid about like spaghetti noodles strewn on a plate, all small and winding with haphazard design. The buildings are faded pinks, yellows, and blues. The people are dressed in layered scarves and jackets colored black and brown and grey. Everything feels the rain.

The rain reminded me of the Camino de Santiago, which is a sort of walk/pilgrimage that thousands undertake each year to the town of Santiago in Northwest Spain. I left for a 10 day portion of this walk with a few acquaintances.

*

My back was already hurting, my shoe broken, and myself aware that I would be spending days in isolation with strangers and without distractions—all before we boarded a bus that would take us to Lugo. Lugo is where the walk would begin.  My mood remained similar through the first day of walking: It rained all day, as it would each of the next seven, unless of course it was hailing. My feet swelled into marshmallows, my ankles cracked, and I limped. I complained to myself. The oppression of knowing that the next day would be almost twice as long as the first was mentally crippling – I was limping in all senses.

The land was green and soft with small stone and wooden villages. The sky was always grey, which made the green even greener. Aside from the destination city of Santiago there were no built structures higher than one story and most homes have only one small door right in the center of the front wall. The path we follow was defined in some places and nonexistent in others, marked every few miles by a yellow shell and arrow. Sometimes there were piles of stones that have been left by pilgrims carrying rocks for sins and lost loved ones. There was a lady pilling hay into a wooden wheelbarrow, a man with a stick resting on the hind of the cow in front of him, and boys throwing small pebbles at a big stone.

We waited for livestock to pass through the streets, we had wine from a homemade wineskin, we waded through rushing streams, we took wrong turns, we got lost, and we fell in love with one another. We knew we were in love when The Walk began to feel like a long road trip with family—complaints about the distance yet to be travelled, complaints about things that one of us said/did to the other, tears, solidarity.

On a road trip I may have the discipline to look out of the window for say, 2 of 8 hours. When you’re walking The Camino you are looking out of the window for all 8 hours and things aren’t even moving quickly. I had thoughts before The Walk, but during The Walk you could say that my thoughts had thoughts. Chiefly, I concentrated on the constant rain and hail. This is because I, as a good upper-class American, am vehemently opposed to my own discomfort. If I were to see both a jogger and someone lashing their own back with a whip, I would feel that both were roughly the same goal. I have a remote to turn my fan on and off. I put product in my hair that doesn’t look like product but still functions effectively. I want to smoke, and so I do. I want to drink beer, and so I do. I want to sleep in, and so I do. The Camino’s premise is discomfort.

Anyway, this is what I thought about the rain:

Mutual discomfort can be galvanizing. It was for us. And now I know about the old loves, parents, dreams, favorite movies, mistakes, and authenticities of a few who can say, “We walked The Camino together.” Thomas Merton says, “The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit…God’s plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back upon the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone.”

A car could have gone to Santiago faster, keeping us free of pain, rain, and smelliness, but we would have lost everything. It seems that the pain, much because of like the rain, is what made our mortality and reality very real. And within a context of that awareness the pain and the rain served as encouragement to share honestly with each other, to listen intently to each other, and to somehow be glad that one foot continued to surpass the other. It seems that in the past I have spent too much time debating the creator of the process that gives us rain and too little time reveling in the pure existence of it. Too little time spent amazed that our greatest need falls from the sky, a miracle every time, and too much time annoyed that it is doing so. Walking for days in the rain taught me to covet and love it, to acknowledge that I need the rain and that needing the rain means that I’m alive and that it is good to be alive. Pain is much like the rain in this way.

*

And that’s what I remembered when my back was against the green door. And that’s when I reconsidered the rain. And I realized that I could walk in the rain and deal with pain because I’ve walked in the rain and dealt with pain. I’ve known the rain and pain so intimately that my skin changed and the invisible strings from my shoulders to my boots were tight, and I’d become heavy. But the rain and pain are not against me. The rain is the rain and pain is pain and in life we have rain and pain and if we didn’t, maybe we’d fail to remember that we are here. I thank God for the rain and the pain because they fall on me and I feel it. I thank God because—even though they make things slippery and hard to do—it is part of what we’ve been given. The pain is sometimes loneliness, and sometimes fear, and sometimes anxiety, and sometimes cancer, and sometimes a lie, and sometimes distance, and sometimes memory, and sometimes it is a water droplet; but I know it.

So when it rains, like it was against the towers and within the cones of light, and upon the cobblestone, statues, buildings and people, I’ll turn my face upward and feel what is real. I’ll feel each drop that lands on my shoulders, hands, hair, and face. Sometimes I’ll forget all that good stuff about the rain and pain, and the rain and pain will seem too heavy, and the strings from my boots to my shoulders will get tight, and I will try to remember that feeling the rain and pain is better than feeling nothing, and that though it has rained before, the rain has never failed to stop.

Misguided

When I watch TV or movie characters move for rebirth or escape I know that the show is telling me through the character that it's a thing that hopeless people do because they think that they will be the person they were when they were there before, or the person that they picture living there, or I guess most accurately, the person that they've always pictured themselves being. And that person, of course, only exists in the place that they will move to.

In baseball the way that ability or contribution is measured is changing. There was a movie about it, but a small example is a player’s batting average. Batting average is how often a batter converts his plate appearances into a hit. If he converts three out of ten appearances into a hit he is considered to be statistically proven as an above average hitter. What we know now is that this number can sometimes be deceptive. If in the first few weeks of a season a batter averages four converted hits out of ten chances, but an above average number of the balls that he puts in play are falling for hits, it is likely that the average of 400 will regress. It's even more complicated but what the numbers tell us is what we believe: over time the true ability and talent of a player will not in any way fall prey to luck. Each man will be exactly who he is as a batter.

I lived in Florida until I was allowed to choose where I lived. Since I've been able to choose again, after finishing school and all, I've lived in Virginia, Europe and Colorado in less than two years. I will likely leave Denver in the Spring and that is likely because I've not committed to living here because I tell people that I've been here (Denver) for three months despite having been here for six and that is likely because I moved here and realized a thing that I had already learned from TV and movie characters and that is that I think that more should be different than is different. I project this conviction upon the people I meet and I imagine that they too wonder why more has not been produced or accomplished or changed and I am embarrassed. Temporary solace is found in articles and people's story's that align with mine but ultimately we all probably just got hugged and praised too much for our Participant Ribbons.

My writing usually seems beleaguered but I'm not. It's actually hope, or a belief as deep as my character which knows that “it” will happen. The difficult aspect of the sort of life that I feel that I am living, a life similar to many who are my age, is not that our batting averages are lower than an average which would make us proud, but that we, despite outs and misses, in our deep insides, believe that the swings will eventually produce not only hits, but enough to compensate for all of our previous misses and result in an ultimately respectable batting average. A few of us may be right but a lot of us are delusional.

Maybe it is this hope that haunts us which leads to all great things that people do. Even though so many are told by their stats that they do not successfully turn three out of ten plate appearances into hits, literally everyone walking around continues to swing. And we know this because they are still walking around. Maybe swinging is the human compact. The agreement that we will all continue believing in ourselves despite the evidence because it is that everyone else continues to try that encourages you to try, and me, and as a result of everyone trying some people set records. Some people go to the moon, or manage fidelity, or listen with their eyes. Maybe moving around because we’re trying to be who we’re not is merely an observable signature of the most beautiful part of humanity. Maybe the conviction that we are better than we are is the misguided belief propelling we people towards the community that we cannot believe that we cannot have. 

Anyway, this is my happy thought and my happy story. Be buoyant colleagues. 

Sent To You

I love you.

I've never said or written that to anyone before and it looks disappointingly naked and little and like it's in a Facebook message. But I send it to you not in the way of a verb, or in the sense or hope of inspiring verbs, but in an inanimate way. It’s just a thing that is there. Like a stick or a river or something. I've thought of you everywhere that I've been for these years but not all of the time. Sometimes I leave you where you are and me where I am for weeks, but then I go to you or bring you to me. Never for long. It’s like remembering not to forget something. And then we each go back to where we are.

I know very little about how you have changed or even what you've been doing. I could wish that I loved you when we were together but I don’t because I couldn't have. All I could love then was the idea of loving. It was a nice thing to think about and imagine. The love I send to you doesn't feel as good. It’s more like an empty stomach nostalgic scared kind of thing.

If prayer actually happens then I don’t see why love can’t be sent from one person to another. I hope that we are someday old and overweight and sitting on a train each having lived separate lives, barely recognizable one to the other, and I hope that the train will be forced to stop because of snow on the tracks and that we will order wine and tell the stories of our lives to one another and it will be like another night that was the same and then we will go where we go except for the few moments when my eyes are closed and I’m planning my next day and then I cannot sleep and then I bring you to me or myself to you because I've remembered not to forget.     

-P&B 

I Don't Do What I Do

I saw a black and white movie after work. It’s modern but I saw it in a theater has free popcorn and expensive beer. Today Work was Starbucks. Tomorrow Work is writing websites for small businesses. I get paid much more for the writing but not enough. I worked at Starbucks while earning my degree. Now I work at Starbucks so that I can use my degree for work.

The movie was art and even if the plot didn't surround a twenty-something too “busy” not working to make the bed, it still would have been enough to change the course of my night. My nights never end in front of the computer. Not since The Bull or the story of We have nights ended here.

When I was 12 and in the family van riding towards Minnesota my little brother would sometimes hit his arm. “Whack.” Then he would “cry.” And then, if I had already done something stupid like talked back to mom or made fun of my brother, the van would pull over and I would likely be punished for hitting my brother. In retrospect I know that I should have been able to out-smart the six year-old, but at the time I wished for a witness. Maybe another older brother, in another car right alongside ours who could wave and yell and save me. Save me not just from the humiliation of requiring a spanking, but from being the instigator of the small sadness my parents felt, or the small disappointment they felt because their oldest son wasn't being nice to their youngest.

As a younger man than I am I saw a powerful leader getting others in trouble while he hit himself to make noise. Then I thought that I wasn't clever enough to outsmart him, to reveal the injustice, to be the other boy in the other car. Later I decided that it wasn't my smarts that were lacking, but the courage necessary to risk being blamed for another false hit. Now I know that it wasn't courage nor intelligence that inhibited my action. It was a too keen awareness that I too was doing the same.

In Denver my heroes have changed because my aspirations have been forced to. In college I would have called it settling but now I enjoy thinking of it as living while I’m living. My heroes were once Who I Thought I Would Become and The People Like That Person. Now the heroes are people more like me. A mom bringing pasta to her co-workers at the coffee shop despite living a different life than she once did. A bartender after hours, smoking inside and twirling her drink while she talks about an old love. A lawyer too scared to do something else, but a lawyer trying not to be.

I have no doubt that my heroes are like me so that I will be okay with me, but I’m also okay with being okay with me. My skin is dry, I’m embarrassed to tell people that I’m another English degree at Starbucks and I have no idea how I’m paying my rent. But a thing that I like to think that I know is that there are seasons. And I like to think that I know that they are all beautiful because of the other. Tonight I watched a movie that helped me listen to music with the windows down and look at the lights of my city. It helped me pass Netflix and bars and phone calls and Facebook. It helped me end up here again. I hope another artist who isn't an artist sees the movie too.

“It’s hard to explain what I do…because I don’t really do it.”