The Goatmen on the Camino 2010
This story about my Camino journey would not be complete without mention of the numerous old German men also doing the Camino.
I had quite a few encounters with these fellows most of which were decidedly unpleasant. I was annoyed that there were so many of them.
Another pilgrim told me that this huge influx of old German men had something to do with the fact that a well know German radio star had recently done the Camino and written a book about it. This had generated a huge amount of interest in it for it was not well known in Germany before that time.
Well the end result of it, was a disproportionate number of them were on the Camino while I was there in 2010.
Now I like to think of myself as a fairly tolerant person. I recognise that we live in a world full of things that have the potential to annoy us and impinge on our personal space…babies crying, children’s tantrums, dogs barking, people snoring, pilgrims whispering, people making noises, noisy parties, loud music, wild teenagers creating a ruckus, traffic jams, flies, mosquitoes, ect ect and that is just part of life and it is pointless to get upset about such things…tolerance and patience that is my motto….
Not so with Germans…old Germans that is. They seem to think that any impingement upon their personages…no matter how slight… is a gross effrontery…yet they are oblivious to the effect that they sometimes have on others…I found this time and time again on the Camino…so it is obviously a national trait.
For example, the number of times we arrived at an albergue perhaps a little late but not by much…since the doors invariably shut at 9.00…and creeping as quietly as we could into a dorm and slipping every so quietly into bed we would be met with endless shhhhhhs and ‘please be quiet’ ect ect…. from the old German men…most of the time the lights had only just gone out. At one albergue I remember I was so upset by this carry on…I gathered my stuff and crept down into the communal kitchen and slept on the floor…with Rob of course.
One time…in a large dorm with bunk beds in it…I was on the top bunk getting dressed for the day…when I dropped a sock on the floor. I asked Rob to pick it up for me since he was just standing there…when this grumpy old man turned on me in a fury and said… “You are not zee only one here!” Rob finally cracked and shouted back… “and you are not the only one here”… for a minute there I thought things would come to a head…I thought Rob was going to punch him out but he didn’t.
Another time I found myself in a dorm with two old German couples and two women travelling together. Just after the lights went out the two women started whispering…I was not fussed but this old German man became irate and yelled at them to shut up…it was like five past nine or something…I could not believe it…they were whispering for all of about thirty seconds before he hit the roof.
And yet every morning they would be up before anyone else, making a noise while they dressed and packed their gear…too bad if anyone wanted to sleep in and no one complained about that.
And they took it all so seriously, the walk that is…not the spiritual side of it…never did I see them stop to smell the roses or admire some old statue or something…they would march on with their high faluting walking sticks, eyes fixed grimly ahead, not talking, not laughing.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Where to Now?
April 10 2013
Weird interactions with people on the television and in the movies.
Since my world was turned upside down in December 2010 I have had some truly amazing experiences and interactions…interspersed with long periods of boredom and meaninglessness…can I say that?
There have been times when I swear I was interacting with people on television and in the movies…oh oh I hear you say Sandy…sounds like a schizoid disorder to me…but no it wasn’t. I know the difference.
It seems to me there have been times when either the airwaves have been hijacked by some outside force or presence or the characters themselves have been or a channel has been opened up between me and the people on the television which is outside of normal broadcasting.
I can speak about this now because several months have passed since it last happened and also because I sort of don’t care much whether people reading this might thing I’ve gone mad or something…I know I am not mad and that is all that matters.
First time it happened was such a shock…it had to do with an unidentified object. The people on the television wanted to know what I thought of it and whether it presented a threat or not. One side wanted to attack it and the other side wanted to find out what it was first…it turns out that it was a spacecraft from a parallel world almost identical to earth. Apparently our world and ‘their’ world are on elliptical orbits around the central sun and every 26,000 years…our worlds collide as it were…not literally but dimensionally and the effects of this are felt and detected by radio waves, satellites, and via the internet.
At first I could not believe it partly because I am so used to being outcast and downtrodden…sob…I thought why are they asking me…no one has ever believed my stories …or asked my opinion before (aside from close friends ect) so why now?
It appeared to be some kind of video link up between various extra-terrestrial species who had all suddenly found themselves in this weird situation. None of them looked that odd really…there was as much difference between us as there is between the various races on earth.
So with all the conviction that I could muster and relying on the knowledge that I innately have of such things…I warned against the attack saying that it would be tantamount to an attack on ourselves and could start an all-out war based on nothing more than a simple misunderstanding.
There were quite a few of these bizarre interactions with the media over winter last year…to many too mention here in any case…but there is one I remember very vividly because it involved me witnessing an usual collection of creatures from another dimension who all represented what humanity would become if it followed a certain path…for example an economist was represented by a human that looked more like a turtle…half turtle, half Indian man whose head bobbed from side to side like one of those toy animals with bobbing heads that you sometimes see in the back of a car. This being seemed to be in some sort of trance as it quoted numbers and figures and talked about fiscal policy with respect to the economy….it was too bizarre looking to be human but it definitely had human genes…more turtle than human though.
Another creature looked like someone had got a huge ‘blanket’ of tripe and draped it over a figure that obviously had the shape of a head and shoulders underneath it but no arms…it was wearing dark ray ban sunglasses and did not speak...a sort of textured Caspar the friendly ghost.
Another being looked human enough…it was a man with a very large rectangular head, very pale skin and pale blue eyes…the kind of person who could easily blend in with humans but not without some curious looks…I would have to say.
Yet another creature looked like points of light on a dark amorphous shape…humanoid but barely discernable.
The impression I got was that this passing parade of freaks was meant to show the audience what they would evolve into if they followed a particular path. I gather there were some very shocked and upset people in the audience.
Another curious thing happened when I was watching the Queens Diamond Jubilee…it appeared to be taking place on the River Thames. At first I didn’t notice anything untoward…but after a while something about it just did not make sense…
The Royal family arrived on the river in a small, decrepit but colourful boat and were then transported to a barge so that they could watch the ‘Jubilee’. Prince William and Prince Harry were there along with Kate Middleton and Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles…I think Prince Phillip was there too. The Queen was there too looking very vulnerable and almost childlike. She was the only one seated. She did not appear to be dressed up like the others but was wrapped up in a cream coloured shawl. The rest of them just stood there for hours. I thought at the time it was odd. All the boats and canoes and other river craft that streamed past them in an seemingly endless procession looked like something from the seventeenth century.
The queen had about her personage something of the demeanor of my sister who is mentally ill without being deranged looking…rather she has a sort of bland happy smile on her face and doesn’t say much.
At one point the queen was led up to a sort of podium, but the camera didn’t show it or her on it…instead I heard a loud thump followed by a few more. I was reminded of my sister’s stories of her having been beheaded as a little girl.
Prince Philip apparently had an accident when he was on the boat…his head smashed into a bridge or something …anyway he ended up in hospital but was released some hours later which again is odd given the severity of such an accident and the unlikelihood of Prince Philip surviving it…yet he did.
Later that night…watching news reports about the Jubilee celebrations I was surprised to see that it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the procession I had seen that afternoon.
Instead it showed footage of the Queen and her family speeding by in their Rolls Royce’s ( I think) past cheering crowds gathered by the sides of the road leading to Buckingham Palace….very modern, very contemporary, very strange.
Weird interactions with people on the television and in the movies.
Since my world was turned upside down in December 2010 I have had some truly amazing experiences and interactions…interspersed with long periods of boredom and meaninglessness…can I say that?
There have been times when I swear I was interacting with people on television and in the movies…oh oh I hear you say Sandy…sounds like a schizoid disorder to me…but no it wasn’t. I know the difference.
It seems to me there have been times when either the airwaves have been hijacked by some outside force or presence or the characters themselves have been or a channel has been opened up between me and the people on the television which is outside of normal broadcasting.
I can speak about this now because several months have passed since it last happened and also because I sort of don’t care much whether people reading this might thing I’ve gone mad or something…I know I am not mad and that is all that matters.
First time it happened was such a shock…it had to do with an unidentified object. The people on the television wanted to know what I thought of it and whether it presented a threat or not. One side wanted to attack it and the other side wanted to find out what it was first…it turns out that it was a spacecraft from a parallel world almost identical to earth. Apparently our world and ‘their’ world are on elliptical orbits around the central sun and every 26,000 years…our worlds collide as it were…not literally but dimensionally and the effects of this are felt and detected by radio waves, satellites, and via the internet.
At first I could not believe it partly because I am so used to being outcast and downtrodden…sob…I thought why are they asking me…no one has ever believed my stories …or asked my opinion before (aside from close friends ect) so why now?
It appeared to be some kind of video link up between various extra-terrestrial species who had all suddenly found themselves in this weird situation. None of them looked that odd really…there was as much difference between us as there is between the various races on earth.
So with all the conviction that I could muster and relying on the knowledge that I innately have of such things…I warned against the attack saying that it would be tantamount to an attack on ourselves and could start an all-out war based on nothing more than a simple misunderstanding.
There were quite a few of these bizarre interactions with the media over winter last year…to many too mention here in any case…but there is one I remember very vividly because it involved me witnessing an usual collection of creatures from another dimension who all represented what humanity would become if it followed a certain path…for example an economist was represented by a human that looked more like a turtle…half turtle, half Indian man whose head bobbed from side to side like one of those toy animals with bobbing heads that you sometimes see in the back of a car. This being seemed to be in some sort of trance as it quoted numbers and figures and talked about fiscal policy with respect to the economy….it was too bizarre looking to be human but it definitely had human genes…more turtle than human though.
Another creature looked like someone had got a huge ‘blanket’ of tripe and draped it over a figure that obviously had the shape of a head and shoulders underneath it but no arms…it was wearing dark ray ban sunglasses and did not speak...a sort of textured Caspar the friendly ghost.
Another being looked human enough…it was a man with a very large rectangular head, very pale skin and pale blue eyes…the kind of person who could easily blend in with humans but not without some curious looks…I would have to say.
Yet another creature looked like points of light on a dark amorphous shape…humanoid but barely discernable.
The impression I got was that this passing parade of freaks was meant to show the audience what they would evolve into if they followed a particular path. I gather there were some very shocked and upset people in the audience.
Another curious thing happened when I was watching the Queens Diamond Jubilee…it appeared to be taking place on the River Thames. At first I didn’t notice anything untoward…but after a while something about it just did not make sense…
The Royal family arrived on the river in a small, decrepit but colourful boat and were then transported to a barge so that they could watch the ‘Jubilee’. Prince William and Prince Harry were there along with Kate Middleton and Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles…I think Prince Phillip was there too. The Queen was there too looking very vulnerable and almost childlike. She was the only one seated. She did not appear to be dressed up like the others but was wrapped up in a cream coloured shawl. The rest of them just stood there for hours. I thought at the time it was odd. All the boats and canoes and other river craft that streamed past them in an seemingly endless procession looked like something from the seventeenth century.
The queen had about her personage something of the demeanor of my sister who is mentally ill without being deranged looking…rather she has a sort of bland happy smile on her face and doesn’t say much.
At one point the queen was led up to a sort of podium, but the camera didn’t show it or her on it…instead I heard a loud thump followed by a few more. I was reminded of my sister’s stories of her having been beheaded as a little girl.
Prince Philip apparently had an accident when he was on the boat…his head smashed into a bridge or something …anyway he ended up in hospital but was released some hours later which again is odd given the severity of such an accident and the unlikelihood of Prince Philip surviving it…yet he did.
Later that night…watching news reports about the Jubilee celebrations I was surprised to see that it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the procession I had seen that afternoon.
Instead it showed footage of the Queen and her family speeding by in their Rolls Royce’s ( I think) past cheering crowds gathered by the sides of the road leading to Buckingham Palace….very modern, very contemporary, very strange.
Getting lost on the Camino
Did I tell you about the time we got lost on the Camino and had to turn back.
In Logrono my accomplice Rob Warren McWallace decided he had to buy a porn magazine. The first one was not hard core enough so he purchased another one from a roadside stall. I tried to give the first one away without success…no wonder we got lost…this was supposed to be a spiritual pilgrimage not some murky exploration into the seamier side of Spanish life. The first guys I offered it too just laughed and said they already had it. Next I offered it to a young guy who was clearly not amused by it… the expression on his face said it all… shocked and angry…I cannot really blame him…it was a tacky thing to do…I threw it in the bin.
Leaving Logrono…first thing I noticed was the smell of sex…in the street of all places…it was truly disgusting Sandy…God knows where it was coming from but it permeated the air along one rather large section of the street…The Camino was about to teach us a lesson.
Getting out of the city entailed a long walk through park land. I remember seeing a Spanish couple embracing lotus style…a tantric sex position. Somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn. After about two hours we found ourselves standing by the side of a highway and no yellow arrow in site. We crossed the road and walked to a service station and spoke to the attendants there and they confirmed our situation…we had taken a wrong turn.
It was late in the afternoon and the sky was grey. We were hungry so we bought some chips and some coke and went and sat on a nearby hill to discuss our options.
I had a look at the magazine Rob had purchased…it was terrible and heightened my sense of unease...it basically consisted of page after page of wide open vaginas and erect penises…I was shocked by the colour of the women’s genitals…they were purple, almost black…I felt sick.
I looked around me….there was rubbish everywhere and the vista was bleak…it was as if the Camino was saying…when you immerse yourself in garbage you end up wallowing in it….and it wasn’t even my idea to buy the magazines…I certainly didn’t get a kick out of them…my interest in them was one of morbid curiosity alone…nothing more…but…having said that perhaps I should have exerted more of a good influence on Rob rather than indulging him or rather not putting up any opposition And here we were…sitting on a rocky hill next to a gas station on a highway surrounded by garbage...lost.
We decided to walk back to Logrono and spend another night in the hotel which was expensive…but we didn’t have the time or the inclination to go looking for an albergue in the dark…and that is what we did…it was a most memorable day but not one I care to remember.
In Logrono my accomplice Rob Warren McWallace decided he had to buy a porn magazine. The first one was not hard core enough so he purchased another one from a roadside stall. I tried to give the first one away without success…no wonder we got lost…this was supposed to be a spiritual pilgrimage not some murky exploration into the seamier side of Spanish life. The first guys I offered it too just laughed and said they already had it. Next I offered it to a young guy who was clearly not amused by it… the expression on his face said it all… shocked and angry…I cannot really blame him…it was a tacky thing to do…I threw it in the bin.
Leaving Logrono…first thing I noticed was the smell of sex…in the street of all places…it was truly disgusting Sandy…God knows where it was coming from but it permeated the air along one rather large section of the street…The Camino was about to teach us a lesson.
Getting out of the city entailed a long walk through park land. I remember seeing a Spanish couple embracing lotus style…a tantric sex position. Somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn. After about two hours we found ourselves standing by the side of a highway and no yellow arrow in site. We crossed the road and walked to a service station and spoke to the attendants there and they confirmed our situation…we had taken a wrong turn.
It was late in the afternoon and the sky was grey. We were hungry so we bought some chips and some coke and went and sat on a nearby hill to discuss our options.
I had a look at the magazine Rob had purchased…it was terrible and heightened my sense of unease...it basically consisted of page after page of wide open vaginas and erect penises…I was shocked by the colour of the women’s genitals…they were purple, almost black…I felt sick.
I looked around me….there was rubbish everywhere and the vista was bleak…it was as if the Camino was saying…when you immerse yourself in garbage you end up wallowing in it….and it wasn’t even my idea to buy the magazines…I certainly didn’t get a kick out of them…my interest in them was one of morbid curiosity alone…nothing more…but…having said that perhaps I should have exerted more of a good influence on Rob rather than indulging him or rather not putting up any opposition And here we were…sitting on a rocky hill next to a gas station on a highway surrounded by garbage...lost.
We decided to walk back to Logrono and spend another night in the hotel which was expensive…but we didn’t have the time or the inclination to go looking for an albergue in the dark…and that is what we did…it was a most memorable day but not one I care to remember.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
A Series of Wacky Astral Adventures
Hi Sandy…pardon my absence I had a malaise of the spirit which prevented me from writing to you.
Some of my wackiest adventures of late have occurred in my dreams which you and I both know are the times when our larger selves go a wandering.
Last night I had a most perculiar adventure…I was in a place with a Japanese woman and her young daughter. Danton was there along with a contingent of US military officers.
It was a frozen place…probably Antartica or the North Pole…The Japanese woman had dug a large square hole that descended in a series of steps…eventually to a mysterious underwater cavern filled with the most exotic species of human I have ever seen…they were amphibious and some of them had tiny wings between their shoulder blades…as if the wings were just starting to sprout…well the US military turned up and tried to take over…at one stage they tried to exclude us without success…they gave up after it became apparent that we could come and go to this mysterious place whenever we wanted…despite the blocks which they had set up.
Danton showed up after a while and we went for a walk in a park, wherein a series of sculptures and plaques had been set up to reveal the story of creation. One sculpture depicted a dying soldier and a picture…the picture of ‘I don’t know what’ was significant because it was not a sculpture and therefore not three dimensional. Another plaque upon which a tree had been embossed supposedly represented the tree of life. It was a fruit tree Sandy.
For some reason I had a hard time convincing Danton that these sculptural and pictorial arrangements described the book of Genesis in the Bible and then I woke up.
Another astral escapade took place in outback Australia. It was my job to look after some witchetty grubs hiding underneath the bark of the trees that were there. This proved to be quite difficult as a bunch of aboriginal people were making their way towards these trees with only one purpose in mind…to find and eat the witchety grubs hiding in them.
I only managed to save one…it was a big fat one. I hid it deep within the trunk of a tree and just in the nic of time too because a really mean looking, old aboriginal woman was headed my way and boy did she have an evil look in her eye.
And yet another escapade involved a house buying venture that went horribly wrong.
I was going to buy a house from Lee the special friend of one of my friends.
The house was situated in a very ugly, industrial type of neighborhood which should have set alarm bells ringing but oddly enough didn’t.
Moreover a friend of mine, who was accompanying me to see the house, was being pursued by a dangerous madman wielding a large phallic object.
Upon entering the house we were led to a very pleasant, sunny room overlooking the garden. There was a small square table and some chairs in the room and we all sat down and had a cup of tea.
Then Lee showed me the rest of the house…first we went down a hallway with a linoleum floor what was badly buckled… so much so that it resembled waves and it was dirty…the bedrooms of the house came off this hallway and the first one I saw did send alarm bells ringing…a dirty mattress on the floor piled with filthy sheets and blankets...I was thinking oh oh but trying to remain positive nevertheless.
Finally Lee took us into the main living area of the house…the lounge room. There was no furniture in it but there was a large fireplace in one corner of the room and large floor to ceiling windows that looked out onto a very pretty little garden shaded by large trees. It was very green and lush.
I could have lived in this house. The first room we saw was very nice, the hallway and bedrooms could have been fixed up but the sight of a nest of huge black birds sitting in a pile of shit, huddled around the fireplace really put me off…I was told they were peacocks which they obviously were not. I decided not to purchase the house after all.
In one more astral escapade, the details of which are very hazy…I revisited the house where I lived when my children were little.
At first site it looked exactly the same as I remember it…but during my visit there it got bigger and changed. By the end of my visit it bore no resemblance to the house that I remember and neither did the neighbourhood. At one point, half of it burnt down…I also met up with a bunch of relatives that I didn’t know but they were like my large extended family…that is all I remember of it…it was a while ago.
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