Camino Journal Day 25

April 26

The slight hangover I experienced in the morning couldn’t overshadow the weightlessness I felt with the letter to my father now written and in my backpack. I felt alive and well and ready to get to the end of the trail. I gathered my things about 6am and left from the hotel and headed for a cafe. I walked over an hour until I was in the suburbs of Gijon and stopped and had another coffee and small breakfast. I felt more at ease to scribble in my notebook and to make videos of me talking. I’ve always hated to see video playback. Some intrinsic insecurity now dampened a little.

I did take advantage of the Adderall I’d brought and ate 5 milligrams before leaving the hotel. It really does work. Incredible stuff. These days it costs about 2 dollars a milligram. In my high school days, a 30 mg pill would cost you $2; of course, I mean street value. I’ve never been able to get the doctors to prescribe me anything of any actual value. The drugs they’ve given me for depression the couple times I sought help, didn’t make me feel any relief. However, I was told to keep taking it and eventually, once the medicine starts working, I would feel relief forever after that. Or really as long as I was willing to take the pills. I wanted to get Xanax, Valium, and Speed. Uppers and Downers. Things that made you feel something instantly. This is how America got by in the 50s-80s. A pill in the morning to get you going, and one in the evening to slow you back down.

Hell in the 20s, Coca-cola was literally cocaine. Heroin was sold over the counter. And I have to assume everyone was smoking marijuana throughout the history of humanity until the Reefer Madness craze came on with the Red Scare and a really a budget scare. They were scared to lose their budget. We deal with it in the music industry. I’ll do almost anything to not leave money on the table. Like I said, I’ll sing an entire night of David Allen Coe and Charlie Daniels at some southern estate in the backwoods if the price is right. I’ll learn and sing any song. If they don’t like how I interpret the song, then fuck’em. We all buy stuff we don’t like sometimes.

I put Long Haired Country Boy on YouTube and raced on toward Aviles after my small breakfast of Spanish Omelet and two coffees with a nice spliff. Some parts of me wanted to quit getting so stoned in the mornings. Hell, honestly, some parts of me wanted to quit using substances all together. I’ve never been able to, though. the demons come rushing back into view. “You better just leave this long-haired country boy alone.” I sang along.

The trail between Aviles and Gijon is mostly suburbia and there were many locals using the trails all day. I saw a few pilgrims, but there was no real conversation. I made some good time and took my breaks how I liked and smoked my spliffs. I drank water all day and was looking forward to a few more vermouths later in the evening. I’d never drank it straight like that, but after having a few red vermouths on ice with Maga and Cici, I’m one hundy convinced it’s a good sipper. Low alcohol content, nice bite and good flavor, and the best part - it’s a cordial, and so only costs around 2-3 euros a pour, not the 8 or 10 for a gin and tonic.

Even though I hadn’t sent the letter to my dad yet, I felt that he already knew. My rage machines turn into fear machines, and they worked so hard I literally flew down the trail a couple times. My toes barely touching the ground as I walked, the entire day is but a blur. I felt I was running from him. Running from the cops. Running from my Dad.

Being the oldest and with so much instability going on, I never stood up to either of my parents. I’m pretty sure that has caused a little of my problems. It’s healthy to establish boundaries with parents and establish who you are at a younger age. Part of that is cutting the cord between the parents and the child - physically at birth, mentally during adolescence and spiritually as an adult. Then the child is a whole unto itself.

I think some of the expectations I had while being a kid and some of the rolls I had to play at an early age, confuse me a little. It seems I’m always waiting to become an adult and have all these adult things happen to me. But I stay a young-adult and wonder what the transcendental experience will be.

Anyway, I flew down the trail listening to my new released songs. They were doing extremely well, compared to anything I’d released before. The exponential equation is a mysterious thing, and it takes a while to build up the momentum. To even achieve a single stream a day is a feat of monstrous proportion. If you see no clouds in the sky but pray for rain, how long will you pray to an empty blue cloudless sky? Then you see one cloud. And the day goes on with no rain, just that little ol puffy white cloud sitting there, not even the size of your thumb when holding it up. So, do you say to yourself, “There’ll be no rain here.” and pack up and move along? But when you chase the rain and find it, then you only get a little. And it’s gone again and you’re back to praying for it.

In 2013 I had a ReverbNation.com page and was getting about 2 to 3 streams a month. That period was my little lonely cloud period. Now I’m getting a few streams a day, and I can see the clouds greying and becoming fat with rain. Will I continue to believe? Faith is belief in things unseen. What was it I was going for? I knew exactly what I wanted out of life, and I’d gone after and gotten it. I was even able to do what others, like my parents and society, wanted me to do along the way. As my motors turned between fear and rage and fight or flight, I tried to see how faithful I’d been to my dreams. How faithful I’d been to my parents and to my schools and to my society. The atrocities I committed in my teen-age years would be scoffed at today especially in comparison to what the youth are up to when out of sight. It’s unfortunate I felt the need to be so perfect. To do sports and theater and choir. To make straight A’s and experiment with drugs and alcohol. I have been pleasing everyone all these years and it’s taught me so much about what everyone wants. Now that I have some small autonomy, I can see how I can help others to get what they want. Zig Ziglar says, “You will get all you want in life if you help enough people get what they want in their life.”

I took a quick inventory of what I wanted and jotted down a list of priorities for when I returned to the states.

1 - pay off land. $26K owed
2 - pay off camper. $7K owed
3 - pay off car. $18K owed
4 - pay off student loans $90K owed
5 - never do another thing I don’t want to do

I knew #5 wasn’t true, that I’d always face adversity, but it was pleasing to write it down. These were my main goals. I added up the debt and divided it by a couple years. With interest, I could have everything, but the student loans paid off with just $700/week or $2,800 a month.

“Hey, that’s doable” I said out loud. Hello, I’d spent around 20K over the previous 20 months on studio time and recordings. My stomach sank a little realizing I could have already paid off my property if I’d forgone the studio. But there I was back to the cloud chasing instead of cloud praying. My recordings were like cloud seeding. What I had to figure out was how to help others. Then I could have what I want. Above all other desires, I wished for autonomy. I wished for a place to call my own. To own. The number one priority of my life going forward would be to obtain the warranty deed to the property I was purchasing and living at in Granbury. Ask and you shall receive.

I believe it’s true. I walked the trail a couple more hours, took another picture of my neck and chin to try and see the damage done by the barber the day before. Luckily, I wasn’t broken out in razor burn as bad as it itched. I carried on walking as fast as I could, eating little and drinking lots of water. By 2pm I was in the suburbs of Aviles. I’d done 18 miles from 7a - 2p. That’s 2.5 miles an hour. I was flying. If you walk a lot, you know that keeping up that extra half a mile an hour pace over long distances isn’t easy, and the drugs helped.

My feet were so sweaty from the work out. I stopped at a bench and let them air out and changed my socks. I made a reservation at a cheap hostel with my phone and smoked a spliff. It would only be another hour before I arrived in town. When I got there, I didn’t realize I was about 30 minutes early to the check-in time. I went ahead directly to the hostel and from first sight I could see this was not a good place. The entrance was strange, there was no lighting in the hallways, the elevator was out of service. The place was in the middle of downtown too. Bums and drug addicts paced the entrance. I went up the stairs to my floor and rang the bell. No answer. I rang again. Nothing. I bang on the metal door with my fist. No answer. The booking.com app had already taken the $18 to stay there so I banged again. This time a man appears down below heading up my way. He’s putting a mask on and carrying a doctor’s bag.

“Chico, what are you doing there?” he asks me upon first sight.

“Are you the receptionist? I have a reservation.”

“Oh no, my child. I’m a doctor. A very sick man lives there. Do not go in.” he says seriously while climbing the two flights of stairs and maintaining his gaze up at me all the while. I can’t help but think maybe it’s covid. I hadn’t thought about that in a while. I didn’t want to die out here, or worse get stuck unexpectedly in a faraway place waiting for testing and release forms to be approved by a foreign government.

“Really? Is it Covid?”

“I don’t know what it is,” the doctor says, “But it’s very bad. This place is not recommended to you to stay here tonight.”

“Well, I already paid. Is someone there? No one will answer.”

“Do what you like, sir. But this place is very unrecommended to you. They are also selling drugs in there. Cocaine. Hard drugs. Now excuse me, I must pass you to see my patient.”

The doctor continued up to the next floor, and I meandered slowly back down the steps and out to the street. What a jip. I couldn’t tell if the doctor was in on it and just wanted me to know I could buy some cocaine later. I was a little shaken up and didn’t want to get sick. I’d been pretty careful despite my vaccines and booster shots. The thought of doing cocaine didn’t gain any momemtum.

My phone was dead, and I found a little bar off the main path and plugged-in ordering a red vermouth. I sat and smoked and waited for the battery to my smart phone to awaken. When it does, I book one of the last private rooms available for $40 and head over.

It smells funny, but not terrible. There is an older woman there who greets me. She attempts to put me in a single room, which is what I wanted but didn’t have the option to book as it said it was sold out on booking.com. I was the only guest there and it was 5pm.

“No maam. I paid for a double room with a window.”

“But sir, there’s only one of you. The room you paid for has a double bed and a single. It sleeps three.”

“Well, I paid for it, didn’t I?”

“Let me call my boss.” she says shortly.

She gets on the phone, and they chat. She hangs up, “Come with me. You get the big room tonight.”

I again respond, “Well, I paid for the big room.”

She smiles cordially leaving my key in the door after unlocking it for me. The open balcony looked right out to the main street. There were rain clouds in the sky. It would be a cool night.

“Thank you so much I say. I’m going to shower and take a nap before dinner time.” I close the door.

After my nap, I go out to leave and there is another woman now there in the reception’s hall. She’s the boss. I bring my guitar to the common room and sing them a few Johnny Cash songs. The woman tells me of a majestic pool of bright sky-blue water - almost teal, coming up on the trail tomorrow.

“If you jump in. It will clean your skin of all impurities and you will be healed inside and out from all your ailments.”

She had a Gypsie way about her, “You will absolutely love the beauty on the trail tomorrow leaving Aviles. It’s a precious stage. And don’t forget to take a dip in the teal pool,” She reminds me as I go out to have dinner.

After looking around for something good, I decide on a canned shandy and a spliff in the park to get a little hungrier. I’d decided to get the large Spanish hamburger from the restaurant across from the hotel. The hamburger came with ham, cheese, egg and even calamari. While smoking, I called booking.com and made the complaint against the hostel not being opened.

“But sir, you arrived 30 minutes before check-in time. We already have a report from the owner of the property.” the woman over the phone informs me. “You are not eligible for a refund, but you can go and stay at the hostel still. They are waiting for you.”

Perturbed, I argue with her for a few minutes and tell her about the circumstances and that I’d already booked another place. She said it was out of her hands. I let it go. I just let it go. I’ve never been able to do that. I would normally draw out the argument, played the victim and got a bunch people riled up just so I could have my hit of cortisol. But I was not going there. I hung up cordially with the lady on the phone and headed to have my burger, not another thought about the lost 18 bucks.

Although I was experiencing a weightlessness, I was also experiencing a new sort of doldrums feeling coming from my new acceptance of life and my efforts to not replay the traumas over and over in my mind. It was much easier to not accept the way things are, I thought to myself sipping another red vermouth while waiting for my burger. It was easier to live in the fantasy that everything was alright. The fantasy of moment to moment.

I loved to eat Spanish hamburgers but hate to be judged for ordering them. It’s the typical thing that an American comes to Spain and orders burgers. I just accepted that the waiter was going to judge me like that and that’d be that. There was nothing I could do about it. Tomorrow when I went on about my day and told people about my hike, they’d ask if I’d eaten a burger as a joke toward an American, and I’d have to say, “yes, I did. And it was great. I loved it. I’m a hamburger eating American.” and then just move on with my day. Accept who I am and accept who they are. Accept the stereotypes.

The place was nice. I got nearly a whole spliff in while waiting for the cook to prepare my food. Aviles isn’t near as large and populous as Gijon, and overall, seems to be more like the largest suburb of Gijon. Kind of like what McKinney is to Dallas.

The burger was delicious and because of the smell of the hotel I was staying in, I decided to get a bottle of Vermouth and go back to the hotel and smoke my spliffs and see if I couldn’t catch a Spanish movie on the TV. If anyone said anything about the smell of the hash coming from my room, I’d just bring up the smell of shit coming from the other side of the door. The bottle of Martini & Rossi cost me 13 euros. So cheap.

I drank the btl and smoked a few spliffs while standing on the balcony shirtless and watching the people go by. The burger eating American now has his shirt off and is out on the balcony, I thought to myself. I pictured the Griswalds and Cousin Eddy emptying his shitter right into the rain drain in A Christmas Vacation.

I wasn’t any better or worse than this place. We are all the same. Good and buzzed, I turn in for the night around 8:30-9 just as the sun went down. It started raining just as my head hit the pillow. I’d get up early and try to catch some of the people I’d met earlier on the trail tomorrow. For today I did 21 miles. I felt the long day’s walk everywhere in my bones as I laid there listening to the rain and the passers-by through the open balcony window and prayed God would keep me safe. That God would keep me going down this path of self-discovery and forgiveness. That God would help me accept myself. There was no other way, now.