Part Seven X: The Camino Under Covid-19: when blue supports me

• by Miranda Gavin
• in Camino de Santiago Camino del Norte Covid-19 Creative global pandemic Miranda Gavin nomad photography pilgrimage Spain The Way of Saint James travel walking
• posted September 26, 2020

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”

LES MISÉRABLES by Victor Hugo, 1887

The vast Atlantic ocean stretched around me, a panorama of shimmering life. Standing at the tip of the Cabo Vidio peninsular, the walled lighthouse wore a halo of seafaring birds. I stretched out my arms to embrace the horizon, pulling the sky above and the sea below towards me and smiled, a smile as wide as the semicircle holding me.

I shouted out to the blue and thanked the air and the water for giving me peace–now everything in the white noise of this pandemic-obsessed world ceased to matter and my reality shifted.

My Camino is one of survival and escape (the word escape has a vivid and apt origin which is derived from the Latin excappare, and means “literally “get out of one’s cape, leave a pursuer with just one’s cape”). Now I realized, more fully than ever, that action matters to me and that without the embodiment of experience, many how-to-feel-better strategies I read about are empty symbols on a page which only come alive when spoken silently, or voiced externally. (There is some discussion among academics as to when people stopped reading aloud and started to read silently. If you are interested this interview Have we always read silently? expands on this question).

My desire for change is tied to a need to step out of my comfort zones and repetitive forms of communication and interaction. Once I jump magical encounters take place and I feel a sense of Jonathan-Livingston-Seagull freedom; a book I am sure has left an indelible mark upon my sense of individuality and pursuit of travelling.

Herd mentality has always stifled me. I am given to being full of expectation for change, which often leads to disappointment as many of these changes are out of my control, and many are too reliant on others. Hoping for a change that will never arise is exhausting and dispiriting, even more so when the change is promised but never occurs. It’s not dissimilar to waiting for a bus that will never leave its depot, even though the timetable stuck to the bus shelter assures its arrival. Looking at the horizon for a sign, then realizing that the Big Blue Bus got stuck in yet another rut.

It’s also a lot like waiting for a lover to change. Words are easy, they can be used with total disregard for the seeds of hope that are locked inside each and every syllable. Just think of all the ‘I love you’s’ you may have heard, but what of the deeds that match the words? Well, this Camino is my rude awakening, and where the notion of romantic love is concerned, there will be no more melting of my heart when I hear those three syllables uttered by someone who cannot and will not act upon them. Otherwise it’s all just a waste of the little breath we may have left.

Our needs are varied and subject to change. One mantra for life? Not for me, I’ll choose mantras and ways of being that respond to the seasons of my soul. I keep hearing the same dialogue: ‘you can only make the change from within’ and ‘it doesn’t matter where you are, you always take yourself with you’. Now I choose to differ. My interior changes are not hermetically sealed; they are cellular, chaotic and react to all manner of contingent and unexpected factors. Covid-19 being one of them, a global virus that is spreading as much dis-ease as its biological attacks.

What is this self that I take with me? I have many selves: some are dynamic and mischievous, some fragile and strong, others are joyous and melancholic. My core is soft. Hold it in the heat of freedom, of love, of kindness, and of feeling connected and it becomes smooth and glows. Cast it into a mould and it becomes one of many identikit selves. And then I remembered this book, film and song, and the 1990s Heroin-chic, Thatcher-bleak lifestyles. And I just had to post this link too. The contrast is extreme, but then so is life. So if you choose to, click the link and transport yourself to another kind of Choose Life.

Isn’t the beauty of creativity as a way of expressing the human situation as much a life saver as a life taker? How does joy exist without pain? And what is this reason and passion that Kahlil Gibran wrote about in his seminal book, The Prophet?

Uninterrupted, this experience is salvaging my lost soul. And as I embraced life on the precipice, I became light, salt, air, and water and I felt still, connected, safe and solid. It was restorative.

Thank you to the Asturian man on a bike who brought me here and who is a keen photographer called Xurde. This random out-of-the-blue encounter is a tale for another post where I will share the meetings, mostly fleeting, that touched me beyond words. There are five, so far, that stand out; all of which elevated me beyond the confines of my limited, CV-19 enforced, daily existence of semi incarceration.

“It is difficult not to indulge in meditation at this point. Does human nature thus change utterly and from top to bottom? Can the man created good by God be rendered wicked by man? Can the soul be completely made over by fate, and become evil, fate being evil? Can the heart become misshapen and contract incurable deformities and infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness, as the vertebral column beneath too low a vault? Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?” Chapter Eight: Billows and Shadows. LES MISÉRABLES by Victor Hugo, 1887

All photographs copyright Miranda Gavin, 2020, except the two of me, and the one of his bike, and my 15kg rucksack copyright Xurde, 2020.