considering the end: more reflections.

Many many dreams of a kind of space travel and a kind of time travel. Leaving and returning to exactly the same moment in time and space is impossible, leaving the past exactly as it was found without any effects to ripple to the future. I think there were three attempts to not alter the time continuum... All unsuccessful and nothing is the same after the journey out on the thin strip of weed free Camino path and the return to neetles, thistles, cacti, blackthorn, acacia trees coiled by snakes waiting to bite.

***

It rained heavily in the night. And a gale blows as I cross from the Pension to the train station. And the news headlines are bad once more. Together we stand, divided we fall. The more that humanity is divided up the more the war continues. I think I forgot to take my day pill to beat off the depression because I wasn't depressed on the Camino - tired and confused but not anxious.

John mentioned 'an eye for an eye' and I had completely forgotten how some folk operate, largely free of guilt, when they fight violence with violence.

Shortly I will return to folks who rarely consider the roads leaving Wetherby(where the world drops into the abyss as you hit the A1, A58, A168, A661, B6164 and B1224), and only ever see what is paraded by news vendors, poisoned people, untrustworthy individuals, soulless shadows and whispering fools: it's so hard to not just join them as I am lassoed back!

On the Camino I saw a little tension, but that was usually a personal hell - blistered feet, sore shoulders, tired faces. Mostly people are in it together. It is an example. A list of nationalities:

Uzbek

South Korean

Taiwanese

Hong Kong

Malaysian

Australian

New Zealand

Mexican

Brazilian

Argentinian

Colombian

Canadian

Manx

Irish

Scottish

Welsh

Swedish

Italian

Croat

Latvian

Austrian

German

Israeli

Hungarian

Swiss

Dutch

Belgian

French

Portuguese

Slovenian

English

American

These are those who I consciously knew the nationality of... On an evening sharing food, breaking bread, sharing the bounty of life's love for us all. Indeed the first question was always "where are you from?" and there was no hostility. I got an apology from an elderly American couple the second time I had breakfast when they did. The first time they left as I arrived for bacon and egg. The second time, in Najera, we shared breakfast with the sullen faces proprietor. He apologised for being American. He was a man of great generosity and humility and I saw him just as I concluded the Camino, coming into the Hotel San Pedro Frómista as I was heading away to rest the remainder of the day away in the albergue municipal.