On The Camino Eight Years Later. Sort Of.

Back to the Scene of the Crime.
Back where it all began. Nine Years Ago. Well, not where it all began, but where it started to end. Back to the scene of the trip, the fall, the getting up again—repeat ad nauseam, ad infinitum. If Sisyphus had one leg and a drinking problem, that was me. What’s changed? Well, the world’s definitely gone more to hell. Or maybe if everything looks fucked up and no one else sees it, it just means you’re the problem.

I’m on a train north of Madrid, rolling across the Meseta now—Quixote country—passing fields of freshly cut hay, ready for another cruel winter. (T.S. Eliot said April was the cruelest month, but I’d argue January’s got it beat.) Before a tunnel swallowed us, I saw wind turbines on the horizon—sleek steel descendants of Quixote’s old foes.

Turns out enlightenment is just self-awareness with a hangover. It’s all relative anyway, isn’t it? I think, therefore I am. Or more accurately, I drink; therefore, I might still be. Meaning? Sense? Those went the way of eight tracks and attention spans. All that wisdom from the past—shared humanity, common values—just dandelion fluff blowing into the algorithmic void or the acid flashback dreams of a few aging hippies.

We’re not people anymore; we’re galaxies colliding in slow motion, and somehow still checking our notifications mid-collision. Or maybe we are still, but just too busy to see the writing on the wall. Life loves a good pratfall. It spins you around, knocks you over, and calls it “growth.” Time, that vicious Sancho Panza, keeps trudging alongside, carrying our delusions in a wineskin.

Progress, they call it. Maybe they’re still windmills, maybe they’re monsters. Maybe the only difference is that, like Quixote, dreamers are in short supply these days. God help us. Or not. He’s probably swiped left, too.

On the way to Logroño.
People say Texas has big skies. Cute. Clearly, they’ve never been to the Meseta —where the horizon stretches so far you can see your regrets coming hours before they hit you. The clouds here are puffy, like the ghosts that haunt me, and as big as the dreams I used to have before life introduced me to reality.

But I’ve got no complaints. None of us should. We’re here. It’s now. (Until it’s not, but let’s not ruin the moment.)

It’s bright here—uncomfortably so, like God forgot the dimmer switch. We’re gliding through fields of green and gold, wheat bending in the wind like it still believes in something. If there’s proof of God, it’s probably here—in the flick of a blade of grass, the twitch of an olive branch, the way the wind plays conductor to this whole shimmering orchestra of indifference.

Thoreau said, live simply. Easy for him—he didn’t have Wi-Fi, taxes, or overcaffeinated tattooed baristas who can’t get our Starbucks order right. Maybe we are all living lives of quiet desperation. Or maybe we’re just too busy checking out TikTok to notice. Busyness: the new opiate of the masses, now available in an unlimited data plan.

Anyway.
I think I’ll stop now.
And just breathe.
Before I remember why I stopped doing that in the first place.

On The Camino Eight Years Later. Sort Of.

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