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.
Friday, March 8, 2013
The Mayan Calender Ends
The Mayan Calender Ends
February 7 2013
Well the Mayan Calender did end on the 21 December 2012 without incident. So confident was I that nothing would happen on that fateful day late last year…I went to the Southern Coast for a beach holiday with Rob Millroy, Danton and Nico.
We visited the Skull Islands to be precise. I remember where I was the exact time it was supposed to end…11.30 in the morning. I was sitting on the beach about to go for a swim. It was a beautiful day. There were quite a few other people around…in the water and out of it.
We went for a walk along the beach later that day…Nico, Rob and I. We found a Tern lying exhausted on the sand and carried him up to where the vegetation starts on the sand dunes and stayed with him a while. The eagle showed us where he was.
The truth is time did end for me in 2010…but it is impossible to say exactly when…while I was on the Camino…or back in Kanak in November or December or perhaps in March the following year or in March 2012…there is something about the month of March…time waves crashing into eachother and so forth…the ides ect…you know about it Sandy…you wrote to me about it…the dogs being killed, the tyrannosaurus egg hatching…eating crushed up insects disguised as marmite and vomiting…remember.
An endless stream of points of singularity is what it felt like…it was a rollercoaster ride for me in Kanak as I know it was for you in Bargaloo Sandy.
Apart from the strangeness of the city, which has been documented so well by you Sandy…the first really weird thing that I noticed was the sound of grinding. This was on December 1 or 2 cannot remember exactly.
I got to thinking about my experiences with ‘the visitors’…how else can I describe them…can I truly call them alien…What is an alien? What is a human? What is a reptilian…I don’t know anymore.
Like you I was always too embarrassed to go public with my experiences…such is the level of shame and ridicule attached to such things…but I don’t care anymore…
I have nothing to lose. No credibility, so none to lose. In my own timeline… ( or is it )…nearly all my friends, my parents, extended family, ex-husband and his entire family think I am either a liar, loopy, a complete loser and in need of psychiatric help…so what the hell o…I don’t have a position to uphold, no boss, no good reputation to lose…nothing. I am what I am.
First off I had a strange meeting with a guy called Toby at the Hughes Shops…this would have been around about Dec 1 or 2. He asked us if we could hear a grinding noise. (I didn’t). He said it was coming from a nearby granite mine (I think I know the one…it is near the airport).
The thing is Sandy… I did hear that noise…that night or the next I can’t remember.
I should mention that for a few weeks I had the sensation of the ground moving under my feet…very disconcerting I can tell you. I had been having some terrible rows with Rob and he ended up moving out of my apartment…I did not see him for another ten days.
Danton and Nico were staying with me at the time and they actually kicked him out. It was very upsetting and to make matters worse I had no money and no food. Nico eventually went back to Fraser Isle because he was hungry.
I don’t know why I did it…but something, some little voice in my head told me to check my compass…I had heard so many stories about the poles shifting and I thought that could be the reason for the strange ground moving sensations I was experiencing…on the second floor!...also in the basement….so I did and sure enough it revealed that north was south and vice versa. Over the next ten days it would swing back to its original position. The next day I decided to do a double check on a compass at a shop called Kathmandu in the city centre. Same thing and the shop assistant was at a loss to explain it.
That night a thick blanket of cloud settled over the city and this time I did hear the rumblings from the granite mine…or were they?
Things got stranger and stranger…watching the news that night I noticed the newsreader was someone I had never seen before and for the next ten days I recognised no one…but more significantly was the news itself…I was expecting some announcement about the pole shift but heard nothing…instead chaos appeared to be raining down on the world. Fires were breaking out all over the place…seemingly out of the ground itself…a mass demonstration by ‘students protesting a hike in university fees’ had broken out in London…but this was no student protest. I have never seen a demo like it. Thousands of people wearing black and exhibiting extreme violence had taken to the streets. The riot police were out in full force and as far as I could see they were having a hard time controlling them. A car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles to a charity event was ambushed and attacked and I don’t like to think what happened next.
A ‘bus stop’ was set ablaze apparently and if that was the case it must have been a wooden structure and one would think that it would burn itself out after a while…but this ‘raging’ fire looked more like an oil well on fire.
The next day you would have thought we were living in lala land or something…the news reports re the ‘student demo’ showed pictures of people marching down the street smiling and waving plaquards…the sun shining ect…nothing resembling what I had seen the night before.
I kept on finding bits of paper all over the floor with strange clues. I was seeing things like an incredibly tall man in a long black coat and hat hovering by my computer or standing in the doorway….a thing resembling a very large hedgehog or echidna ( at last two feet high and three feet long) covered in metallic plates scuttled by me in the corridor outside my apartment…
Even the internet was different…it was a wonder it was still working or that I had any television reception at all but curiously I did.
I googled earth and the whole globe was literally covered in water…if that was the case then how come I’m still here and the city…Danton had a very vivid dream a few weeks later where he was flying high above a planet that had been totally scorched and was devoid of all life.
As you can imagine Sandy … I soon begin to seriously question the nature of my reality … if the world had been flooded and if Danton’s dream was any indication…subsequently scorched then why or how was I still alive … or was I?
The streets were strangely silent and devoid of people, but not utterly and the very few people still around did not seem to notice anything amiss…but it so obviously was. Why was I the only one who could see it?
It occurs to me now that the world in my old timeline did end and that I had slipped into an alternate reality or parallel time line. For ten days it was like this…but out in the suburbs it was business as usual. My friend Maya noticed nothing amiss and neither did anyone else I spoke to…I really started to lose the plot after that Sandy…I wondered if I was going mad…but I knew in my heart I wasn’t.
It was during this period that Julian Assange hit the news…his Wikileaks exposure and the sexual assault allegations in Sweden…
I remember wondering down to reception and grabbing a newspaper…OK I know I am not supposed to do this but I took it upstairs…desperate for some news about the apparent pole shift…but no… not a word about that…
There was a report about a stuff up with HAARP and how forty years later ‘they were still having to deal with it’…I went back downstairs and showed Melissa…she actually took the paper from me…and gosh I regret that I did not keep it…it would have been proof that I was not deluding myself.
“Look Melissa” I said…”what do you make of that”? She replied “yes that is a bit odd”. I left it with her and when I came back down a while later, the reception desk was closed.
So you see Sandy I was not the slightest bit concerned about December 21 2012…as far as I was concerned the world had already ended and it was business as usual.
March 8 2013
This whole business got me to thinking about life and death, the afterlife, the nature of our reality and consensus reality… specifically.
If our world is the product of consensus reality then what happens to that consensus reality if everyone on the planet dies at the same time. Would we even notice anything amiss?
With regards to the afterlife…what if there is no afterlife?…rather dimensions and parallel realities…so that when we die we just slip into another reality just like the one we’ve left behind…it would explain why it was business as usual after the world apparently ended…it was a depressing thought.
If I thought about death at all it would be terms of a release from the burdens and cares of physical existence…not more of the same.
Then I began to notice that Kanak was different…the same but different. Suddenly there were sculptures, engravings on the pavement and other odd things around that I had not noticed before. There was also a proliferation of new buildings around that I had not noticed before.
I remember particularly the very faint engravings on the pavement
opposite the Health Building on Alinga Street. They made no sense and they seemed quite stupid and pointless to me at first…unless they were code for something? So I made anagrams out of them and came up with some remarkable and rather insightful messages…to whom? I wondered.
For example the engravings directly opposite the Health Building…a line of engraved boxes that said things like…Health Service, Sweep up Cigarette Butts, Jumbo the Broomstick, Drop of Money and No more Men.
Health Service translates as ‘Hear this Christ’, Save Earth, Heal Earth, Create Earth’….and the rest ? Go figure I’ve written them down somewhere but cannot find them right now.
Further up towards Alinga Street and opposite the Post Office…more engravings such, ‘Mist on Black Mountain’ and ‘The Sun a Pale Blob above the Post Office’.
Mist on Black Mountain translates as… ‘The Black Sun in near. It is not too late to save us Atalanta. Be aware. Look at the star to the west. Look north into Black. Look on the lines. Make a cross. Settle the score. Be as one’.
And…A Pale Blob above the Post Office translates as… ‘See to the east Atalanta. The face of evil in a pale blue pool. Black water from below comes this way. It will eat all. All will be lost. Stop it as soon as possible Atalanta. Love the one opposite. Turn hate to love. Love can win. Love can save. Love will unite the two suns of the sun’.
Ok I gave myself some artistic licence with this one re the letter W. I figured that V could also be considered half of a W because of the pole flip and the close proximity of a parallel world at that time.
During this time and due to extreme negative reaction to my theories and propositions that I was the only one who noticed anything amiss…I started to doubt what I was seeing and feeling. Much to my pleasant surprise I met two people during my travels up north who were aware of the ‘situation’…a man in Lismore…no not a hippie resident. He borrowed a towel from us so he could wash his feet. He was visitor to the town like myself…and a woman in Cairns who was not only aware of such goings on but knew others who were as well…she said “we are all struggling with it”. I thought phew I am not the only one besides my friend and compatriot Robert Millroy.
Another thing I should mention…I took my first picture of an orb at Hornillos in Spain…in the sports hall to be precise and took photographs of many more in Kanak over the next two years. For a while there, it became impossible to take a picture that did not have an orb in it…but lately…none….I have not taken a single picture in the last few months that has an orb in it.
If our solar system was travelling through a region of spaces with lots of orbs in it then clearly it has left that region of space or…I don’t know why I don’t see orbs in my photos anymore…maybe they were spirit beings or…what?
February 7 2013
Well the Mayan Calender did end on the 21 December 2012 without incident. So confident was I that nothing would happen on that fateful day late last year…I went to the Southern Coast for a beach holiday with Rob Millroy, Danton and Nico.
We visited the Skull Islands to be precise. I remember where I was the exact time it was supposed to end…11.30 in the morning. I was sitting on the beach about to go for a swim. It was a beautiful day. There were quite a few other people around…in the water and out of it.
We went for a walk along the beach later that day…Nico, Rob and I. We found a Tern lying exhausted on the sand and carried him up to where the vegetation starts on the sand dunes and stayed with him a while. The eagle showed us where he was.
The truth is time did end for me in 2010…but it is impossible to say exactly when…while I was on the Camino…or back in Kanak in November or December or perhaps in March the following year or in March 2012…there is something about the month of March…time waves crashing into eachother and so forth…the ides ect…you know about it Sandy…you wrote to me about it…the dogs being killed, the tyrannosaurus egg hatching…eating crushed up insects disguised as marmite and vomiting…remember.
An endless stream of points of singularity is what it felt like…it was a rollercoaster ride for me in Kanak as I know it was for you in Bargaloo Sandy.
Apart from the strangeness of the city, which has been documented so well by you Sandy…the first really weird thing that I noticed was the sound of grinding. This was on December 1 or 2 cannot remember exactly.
I got to thinking about my experiences with ‘the visitors’…how else can I describe them…can I truly call them alien…What is an alien? What is a human? What is a reptilian…I don’t know anymore.
Like you I was always too embarrassed to go public with my experiences…such is the level of shame and ridicule attached to such things…but I don’t care anymore…
I have nothing to lose. No credibility, so none to lose. In my own timeline… ( or is it )…nearly all my friends, my parents, extended family, ex-husband and his entire family think I am either a liar, loopy, a complete loser and in need of psychiatric help…so what the hell o…I don’t have a position to uphold, no boss, no good reputation to lose…nothing. I am what I am.
First off I had a strange meeting with a guy called Toby at the Hughes Shops…this would have been around about Dec 1 or 2. He asked us if we could hear a grinding noise. (I didn’t). He said it was coming from a nearby granite mine (I think I know the one…it is near the airport).
The thing is Sandy… I did hear that noise…that night or the next I can’t remember.
I should mention that for a few weeks I had the sensation of the ground moving under my feet…very disconcerting I can tell you. I had been having some terrible rows with Rob and he ended up moving out of my apartment…I did not see him for another ten days.
Danton and Nico were staying with me at the time and they actually kicked him out. It was very upsetting and to make matters worse I had no money and no food. Nico eventually went back to Fraser Isle because he was hungry.
I don’t know why I did it…but something, some little voice in my head told me to check my compass…I had heard so many stories about the poles shifting and I thought that could be the reason for the strange ground moving sensations I was experiencing…on the second floor!...also in the basement….so I did and sure enough it revealed that north was south and vice versa. Over the next ten days it would swing back to its original position. The next day I decided to do a double check on a compass at a shop called Kathmandu in the city centre. Same thing and the shop assistant was at a loss to explain it.
That night a thick blanket of cloud settled over the city and this time I did hear the rumblings from the granite mine…or were they?
Things got stranger and stranger…watching the news that night I noticed the newsreader was someone I had never seen before and for the next ten days I recognised no one…but more significantly was the news itself…I was expecting some announcement about the pole shift but heard nothing…instead chaos appeared to be raining down on the world. Fires were breaking out all over the place…seemingly out of the ground itself…a mass demonstration by ‘students protesting a hike in university fees’ had broken out in London…but this was no student protest. I have never seen a demo like it. Thousands of people wearing black and exhibiting extreme violence had taken to the streets. The riot police were out in full force and as far as I could see they were having a hard time controlling them. A car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles to a charity event was ambushed and attacked and I don’t like to think what happened next.
A ‘bus stop’ was set ablaze apparently and if that was the case it must have been a wooden structure and one would think that it would burn itself out after a while…but this ‘raging’ fire looked more like an oil well on fire.
The next day you would have thought we were living in lala land or something…the news reports re the ‘student demo’ showed pictures of people marching down the street smiling and waving plaquards…the sun shining ect…nothing resembling what I had seen the night before.
I kept on finding bits of paper all over the floor with strange clues. I was seeing things like an incredibly tall man in a long black coat and hat hovering by my computer or standing in the doorway….a thing resembling a very large hedgehog or echidna ( at last two feet high and three feet long) covered in metallic plates scuttled by me in the corridor outside my apartment…
Even the internet was different…it was a wonder it was still working or that I had any television reception at all but curiously I did.
I googled earth and the whole globe was literally covered in water…if that was the case then how come I’m still here and the city…Danton had a very vivid dream a few weeks later where he was flying high above a planet that had been totally scorched and was devoid of all life.
As you can imagine Sandy … I soon begin to seriously question the nature of my reality … if the world had been flooded and if Danton’s dream was any indication…subsequently scorched then why or how was I still alive … or was I?
The streets were strangely silent and devoid of people, but not utterly and the very few people still around did not seem to notice anything amiss…but it so obviously was. Why was I the only one who could see it?
It occurs to me now that the world in my old timeline did end and that I had slipped into an alternate reality or parallel time line. For ten days it was like this…but out in the suburbs it was business as usual. My friend Maya noticed nothing amiss and neither did anyone else I spoke to…I really started to lose the plot after that Sandy…I wondered if I was going mad…but I knew in my heart I wasn’t.
It was during this period that Julian Assange hit the news…his Wikileaks exposure and the sexual assault allegations in Sweden…
I remember wondering down to reception and grabbing a newspaper…OK I know I am not supposed to do this but I took it upstairs…desperate for some news about the apparent pole shift…but no… not a word about that…
There was a report about a stuff up with HAARP and how forty years later ‘they were still having to deal with it’…I went back downstairs and showed Melissa…she actually took the paper from me…and gosh I regret that I did not keep it…it would have been proof that I was not deluding myself.
“Look Melissa” I said…”what do you make of that”? She replied “yes that is a bit odd”. I left it with her and when I came back down a while later, the reception desk was closed.
So you see Sandy I was not the slightest bit concerned about December 21 2012…as far as I was concerned the world had already ended and it was business as usual.
March 8 2013
This whole business got me to thinking about life and death, the afterlife, the nature of our reality and consensus reality… specifically.
If our world is the product of consensus reality then what happens to that consensus reality if everyone on the planet dies at the same time. Would we even notice anything amiss?
With regards to the afterlife…what if there is no afterlife?…rather dimensions and parallel realities…so that when we die we just slip into another reality just like the one we’ve left behind…it would explain why it was business as usual after the world apparently ended…it was a depressing thought.
If I thought about death at all it would be terms of a release from the burdens and cares of physical existence…not more of the same.
Then I began to notice that Kanak was different…the same but different. Suddenly there were sculptures, engravings on the pavement and other odd things around that I had not noticed before. There was also a proliferation of new buildings around that I had not noticed before.
I remember particularly the very faint engravings on the pavement
opposite the Health Building on Alinga Street. They made no sense and they seemed quite stupid and pointless to me at first…unless they were code for something? So I made anagrams out of them and came up with some remarkable and rather insightful messages…to whom? I wondered.
For example the engravings directly opposite the Health Building…a line of engraved boxes that said things like…Health Service, Sweep up Cigarette Butts, Jumbo the Broomstick, Drop of Money and No more Men.
Health Service translates as ‘Hear this Christ’, Save Earth, Heal Earth, Create Earth’….and the rest ? Go figure I’ve written them down somewhere but cannot find them right now.
Further up towards Alinga Street and opposite the Post Office…more engravings such, ‘Mist on Black Mountain’ and ‘The Sun a Pale Blob above the Post Office’.
Mist on Black Mountain translates as… ‘The Black Sun in near. It is not too late to save us Atalanta. Be aware. Look at the star to the west. Look north into Black. Look on the lines. Make a cross. Settle the score. Be as one’.
And…A Pale Blob above the Post Office translates as… ‘See to the east Atalanta. The face of evil in a pale blue pool. Black water from below comes this way. It will eat all. All will be lost. Stop it as soon as possible Atalanta. Love the one opposite. Turn hate to love. Love can win. Love can save. Love will unite the two suns of the sun’.
Ok I gave myself some artistic licence with this one re the letter W. I figured that V could also be considered half of a W because of the pole flip and the close proximity of a parallel world at that time.
During this time and due to extreme negative reaction to my theories and propositions that I was the only one who noticed anything amiss…I started to doubt what I was seeing and feeling. Much to my pleasant surprise I met two people during my travels up north who were aware of the ‘situation’…a man in Lismore…no not a hippie resident. He borrowed a towel from us so he could wash his feet. He was visitor to the town like myself…and a woman in Cairns who was not only aware of such goings on but knew others who were as well…she said “we are all struggling with it”. I thought phew I am not the only one besides my friend and compatriot Robert Millroy.
Another thing I should mention…I took my first picture of an orb at Hornillos in Spain…in the sports hall to be precise and took photographs of many more in Kanak over the next two years. For a while there, it became impossible to take a picture that did not have an orb in it…but lately…none….I have not taken a single picture in the last few months that has an orb in it.
If our solar system was travelling through a region of spaces with lots of orbs in it then clearly it has left that region of space or…I don’t know why I don’t see orbs in my photos anymore…maybe they were spirit beings or…what?
Friday, February 1, 2013
Hornillos del Camino
Hornillos del Camino May 5 2010
Leaving Burgos behind, we set of on the most gruelling part of the pilgrimage…the arid and bleak plateau region otherwise known as the mesetta.
When I look back on my Camino pilgrimage, I remember it as a grand adventure and I tend to remember the good times rather than the bad…but bad times there were and very often a particularly amazing, beautiful, fun day or a stay in a monastery or old church or quaint medieval village or a beautiful walk in the woods or the mountains would be followed by a horrible day…the first day on the mesetta was one such day.
It started off badly. We had stopped at a village when Rob decided to get rid of his wind/rain jacket because as he put it ‘his mother had given it to him and therefore it had bad energy’. First off he threw it in garbage bin, but I retrieved it. I thought… since he didn’t want it I would keep it and it was a good quality jacket too…and since I didn’t have one…well…this was unacceptable to Rob because of lingering bad vibes upon my own personage.
I know I should have found a way to sneak it into my backpack or something but eventually I talked him into leaving it outside the local albergue for another pilgrim to find.
Leaving the village behind us and walking our way steadily uphill…it was a gentle slope… the wind soon picked up and so did the rain. I had one of those very thin poncho style raincoats that are effectively disposable after just a few wears.
Soon it was so windy the poncho was blowing about madly and whipping across my face so I tucked it into my belt…that was ok but the sleeves from elbow down on my own jacket were soon sodden. I kept on thinking about the jacket he had discarded and felt very angry. We walked in silence for a long time.
At one point I suddenly became aware that a friend of mine had died. Her name was Georgina and she was more of a friend of a friend...but we had become quite close in in the weeks before I left Australia. Georgina had endured a two year battle with a particularly virulent form of breast cancer which had spread to her bones and finally to her brain.
I stopped, suddenly, aware of a change in the atmosphere…the type of subtle nuance in energy flow that tells you someone you know has died or a beloved pet.
I started crying there and then. Rob rushed over – we often walked several metres apart - each of us lost in our worlds…even to the point of losing sight of one another. I buried my face in his shoulder and sobbed…I don’t even know why I reacted the way I did. We were not that close really but I liked her a lot.
Georgina did die four days later but I found out from my friend Maya that that was the day she slipped into a coma…never to wake up again.
I remember going to see her before I left for the Camino. I lent her my Mayan Calender to read. I said I would get it back upon my return.
We missed the turn to Arroyo San Bol and walked on to Hontanas.
Just past Hontanas…a bleak depressing place…one of those remote Spanish towns where the only people you see are old men drinking in a pub…not even any pilgrims….anyway we just missed hitting that truck...or did we…
Imagine this…a flat plain…you are plodding along in a daze blinded by wind and rain lashing at your face…you do not notice the narrow road up ahead…I only noticed the truck after I crossed the road…it missed me by a whisker…if at all…it just appeared over the crest of a hill and it was travelling at tremendous speed…a big red semi-trailer just like in my dream. What was it doing there in the first place?…big trucks like that don’t generally travel on lonely little roads in the middle of nowhere?
I became acutely aware of Georgina’s spirit just then. I looked up at the sky searching for a sign of her…a bird perhaps…but all I saw were clouds and all I could hear was the incessant flapping of my plastic poncho in the wind...but I knew she was there somewhere…in that vast emptiness… flying east.
At around dusk that night we stumbled exhaustedly into Hornillos…only to find that the one albergue was absolutely full of old ladies and a few old men. I could not believe it…did they arrive by bus or what? We saw no one on the walk there. So we and quite a few others were put in the sports hall, which was ok I suppose. It was somewhere to sleep.
However things got worse when we went to the only restaurant in town for the usual pilgrims fare. The restaurant was full up, so we waited along with a few others for a table to become empty, but none did and we were starving. I remember three glowering dark haired women who continued drinking wine at one table long after they finished eating. Finally they left but it was too late, the kitchen has closed. I was furious. Was this another one of the Camino’s tests…a test in tolerance or something. I could not see the point of it, if it was.
Leaving Burgos behind, we set of on the most gruelling part of the pilgrimage…the arid and bleak plateau region otherwise known as the mesetta.
When I look back on my Camino pilgrimage, I remember it as a grand adventure and I tend to remember the good times rather than the bad…but bad times there were and very often a particularly amazing, beautiful, fun day or a stay in a monastery or old church or quaint medieval village or a beautiful walk in the woods or the mountains would be followed by a horrible day…the first day on the mesetta was one such day.
It started off badly. We had stopped at a village when Rob decided to get rid of his wind/rain jacket because as he put it ‘his mother had given it to him and therefore it had bad energy’. First off he threw it in garbage bin, but I retrieved it. I thought… since he didn’t want it I would keep it and it was a good quality jacket too…and since I didn’t have one…well…this was unacceptable to Rob because of lingering bad vibes upon my own personage.
I know I should have found a way to sneak it into my backpack or something but eventually I talked him into leaving it outside the local albergue for another pilgrim to find.
Leaving the village behind us and walking our way steadily uphill…it was a gentle slope… the wind soon picked up and so did the rain. I had one of those very thin poncho style raincoats that are effectively disposable after just a few wears.
Soon it was so windy the poncho was blowing about madly and whipping across my face so I tucked it into my belt…that was ok but the sleeves from elbow down on my own jacket were soon sodden. I kept on thinking about the jacket he had discarded and felt very angry. We walked in silence for a long time.
At one point I suddenly became aware that a friend of mine had died. Her name was Georgina and she was more of a friend of a friend...but we had become quite close in in the weeks before I left Australia. Georgina had endured a two year battle with a particularly virulent form of breast cancer which had spread to her bones and finally to her brain.
I stopped, suddenly, aware of a change in the atmosphere…the type of subtle nuance in energy flow that tells you someone you know has died or a beloved pet.
I started crying there and then. Rob rushed over – we often walked several metres apart - each of us lost in our worlds…even to the point of losing sight of one another. I buried my face in his shoulder and sobbed…I don’t even know why I reacted the way I did. We were not that close really but I liked her a lot.
Georgina did die four days later but I found out from my friend Maya that that was the day she slipped into a coma…never to wake up again.
I remember going to see her before I left for the Camino. I lent her my Mayan Calender to read. I said I would get it back upon my return.
We missed the turn to Arroyo San Bol and walked on to Hontanas.
Just past Hontanas…a bleak depressing place…one of those remote Spanish towns where the only people you see are old men drinking in a pub…not even any pilgrims….anyway we just missed hitting that truck...or did we…
Imagine this…a flat plain…you are plodding along in a daze blinded by wind and rain lashing at your face…you do not notice the narrow road up ahead…I only noticed the truck after I crossed the road…it missed me by a whisker…if at all…it just appeared over the crest of a hill and it was travelling at tremendous speed…a big red semi-trailer just like in my dream. What was it doing there in the first place?…big trucks like that don’t generally travel on lonely little roads in the middle of nowhere?
I became acutely aware of Georgina’s spirit just then. I looked up at the sky searching for a sign of her…a bird perhaps…but all I saw were clouds and all I could hear was the incessant flapping of my plastic poncho in the wind...but I knew she was there somewhere…in that vast emptiness… flying east.
At around dusk that night we stumbled exhaustedly into Hornillos…only to find that the one albergue was absolutely full of old ladies and a few old men. I could not believe it…did they arrive by bus or what? We saw no one on the walk there. So we and quite a few others were put in the sports hall, which was ok I suppose. It was somewhere to sleep.
However things got worse when we went to the only restaurant in town for the usual pilgrims fare. The restaurant was full up, so we waited along with a few others for a table to become empty, but none did and we were starving. I remember three glowering dark haired women who continued drinking wine at one table long after they finished eating. Finally they left but it was too late, the kitchen has closed. I was furious. Was this another one of the Camino’s tests…a test in tolerance or something. I could not see the point of it, if it was.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Dreams and the Camino
Recurring Dreams in my Life
January 27
The three places that I return to in my dreams include a big old house that looks like an institution sometimes, a tropical reef and a narrow, winding river in the bush….Middle Cove or thereabouts.
Sandy I was going to tell you about my dream house first but instead I shall tell you about the tropical reef…coz I went there last night. Danton was there…I was horrified because he was not the only one visiting the reef on this particular location. A big old crocodile just happened to be there as well…I was so scared for Danton because he didn’t care. For a start he was lying on a very small sandbank with his back to the croc.
At one point he got up and gave the croc a hug or rather wrapped his arms around its head. He swam back to shore after that with the crocodile following him and me following the crocodile…then I woke up.
About my dream house…one part of consists of a long hallway with four large bedrooms either side of it. They have the appearance of faded mouldy grandeur….the carpets are all richly patterned and there are double beds…four poster style in each room…there is an overpowering smell of mould and dust and emptiness.
Another part of the house resembles part of a house that both you and I once occupied in the Forrest…the dining room which I have sequestered as my bedroom. Another part contains a guest wing which is sometimes occupied by friends that I don’t know at all in this life…but friends I know very well, nevertheless, coz we have adventures together from time to time.
Yet another wing of this house is so old and dilapidated that just walking through it is dangerous in the extreme…and it is always dark. In some places the floorboards are so rotted away you can see the basement below where the lion lives.
The whole wing, which is really just one very large room, is filled with furniture and other things…all in a dilapidated state. The kitchen is at the end of this of one very large room and beyond that water.
Sometimes… when I find myself in there creeping around trying not to disturb the lion…it disturbs me…like taking swipes at my foot when it goes through the floorboards or else it will amble by ever so nonchalantly. To evade capture I press myself against the wall or hide behind a chair or some other bit of furniture and hold my breath. As it passes me he (yes it is a he) flicks his tail which always just misses me by a whisker…as if to say ‘I know your there you big buffoon’.
San Juan De Ortega…another extract from Sandy Parkers' Journal
May 2 2010
“This was my favourite place on the Camino. My accomplice Rob Millroy and I arrived there at 9.30 in the evening after the longest longest day of walking…28 kilometers I think. I am so fit…I have been walking all day and I feel fine.
The albergue at San Juan Ortega is a thirteenth century monastery and the most amazing place we have stayed in so far. After dumping our back packs on our beds in the dorm we went to the local bar to get something for dinner. I ordered an egg sandwich which turned out to be a roll of ginormous size with omelet in it…no way could I eat that much bread so I discarded the roll and just ate the egg.
‘We live in a Beautiful World’ by Cold Play was playing on the radio and it lifted my spirits. I used to sing that song on the Camino but I had not heard it in my head for over a week…not since leaving the Pyrenees.
I went to bed on the top bunk that night that night…Rob on the top bunk next to me but I could not sleep. Rob wasn’t sleeping either. I had this idea that things might improve if we swapped beds so that I was sleeping on top of a man and he on top of a woman…and it worked like a dream. Within minutes we were snoring our heads off…knowing me and knowing Rob.
We left San Juan de Ortega about nine the next day but not before leaving crystal offerings.
At Atapuerca we met up with met Wolfgang…the second Wolfgang I should add…and had a nice chat. Saw Patrice again, the Italian lady with a leg injury, we met that morning at St Juan de Ortega.
I purchased three figurines at the shop in Atapuerca – a Neanderthal man and woman holding a baby and a sabre tooth lion…the man had a spear but when I got home and unwrapped it the spear was missing…so he’s got a toothpick instead…still it works and it’s a perfect fit.
All this stuff…the rocks…the figurines and some clothes I sent back to Australia… I could not carry them all Sandy. When next I walk the Camino I am not collecting anything…maybe one tiny rock… but that’s it.
Near Burgos a major city in the north of Spain I kept on seeing rocks and stones in the shape of maps of Australia and dead grey aliens…or were they babies…this was on the outskirts of the city…the industrial heart land as it were. I pocketed some of these rocks to add to my collection. I was wearing army style pants with pockets down the side and this was where I put them…that way I would not have to bear the weight of them in my back pack. I already had too many rocks as it was.
Upon our arrival in Burgos, we decide to spoil ourselves and stay in a hotel…couldn’t find the albergue in any case. There were flashing signs on billboards everywhere advertising the erroneous proposition that Burgos had more than fifty hotels. Well we walked for two hours around that city looking for a hotel…by this time my back was aching from the pack and my feet were covered in blisters…beating the pavement in a big city is far more grueling that walking through a forest…Sandy!
Passed two bars with the same name… El Horno and two funeral parlours…but still not hotel.
Passers by told us that most of the hotels in the city had been converted into apartment blocks. No one knew of the existence of any hotels at all…Sandy. I just could not believe it…of all the cities and towns we passed through we never once had that problem and the irony of it…the sheer weirdness and ridiculousness of it…is that the city was full of billboards flashing signs advertising the non fact that it had more than fifty hotels in it. I was incredulous Sandy…
Finally…around nightfall we found a little hotel called the Marie Luis and booked in for two nights. Too weird.
Can you imagine eating a burger that has four different kinds of half cooked meat in it as well as egg. That was dinner that night purchased at a nearby pub…horrible… I threw most of it out and I was hungry.
Burgos was definitely not the highlight of our pilgrimage…more like a shock introduction into reptilian society.
The next day leaving Burgos…I found a rock with an N on one side and a half face on the other…a little further on…I found another rock with the other half of the face on it. Strange but true.
January 27
The three places that I return to in my dreams include a big old house that looks like an institution sometimes, a tropical reef and a narrow, winding river in the bush….Middle Cove or thereabouts.
Sandy I was going to tell you about my dream house first but instead I shall tell you about the tropical reef…coz I went there last night. Danton was there…I was horrified because he was not the only one visiting the reef on this particular location. A big old crocodile just happened to be there as well…I was so scared for Danton because he didn’t care. For a start he was lying on a very small sandbank with his back to the croc.
At one point he got up and gave the croc a hug or rather wrapped his arms around its head. He swam back to shore after that with the crocodile following him and me following the crocodile…then I woke up.
About my dream house…one part of consists of a long hallway with four large bedrooms either side of it. They have the appearance of faded mouldy grandeur….the carpets are all richly patterned and there are double beds…four poster style in each room…there is an overpowering smell of mould and dust and emptiness.
Another part of the house resembles part of a house that both you and I once occupied in the Forrest…the dining room which I have sequestered as my bedroom. Another part contains a guest wing which is sometimes occupied by friends that I don’t know at all in this life…but friends I know very well, nevertheless, coz we have adventures together from time to time.
Yet another wing of this house is so old and dilapidated that just walking through it is dangerous in the extreme…and it is always dark. In some places the floorboards are so rotted away you can see the basement below where the lion lives.
The whole wing, which is really just one very large room, is filled with furniture and other things…all in a dilapidated state. The kitchen is at the end of this of one very large room and beyond that water.
Sometimes… when I find myself in there creeping around trying not to disturb the lion…it disturbs me…like taking swipes at my foot when it goes through the floorboards or else it will amble by ever so nonchalantly. To evade capture I press myself against the wall or hide behind a chair or some other bit of furniture and hold my breath. As it passes me he (yes it is a he) flicks his tail which always just misses me by a whisker…as if to say ‘I know your there you big buffoon’.
San Juan De Ortega…another extract from Sandy Parkers' Journal
May 2 2010
“This was my favourite place on the Camino. My accomplice Rob Millroy and I arrived there at 9.30 in the evening after the longest longest day of walking…28 kilometers I think. I am so fit…I have been walking all day and I feel fine.
The albergue at San Juan Ortega is a thirteenth century monastery and the most amazing place we have stayed in so far. After dumping our back packs on our beds in the dorm we went to the local bar to get something for dinner. I ordered an egg sandwich which turned out to be a roll of ginormous size with omelet in it…no way could I eat that much bread so I discarded the roll and just ate the egg.
‘We live in a Beautiful World’ by Cold Play was playing on the radio and it lifted my spirits. I used to sing that song on the Camino but I had not heard it in my head for over a week…not since leaving the Pyrenees.
I went to bed on the top bunk that night that night…Rob on the top bunk next to me but I could not sleep. Rob wasn’t sleeping either. I had this idea that things might improve if we swapped beds so that I was sleeping on top of a man and he on top of a woman…and it worked like a dream. Within minutes we were snoring our heads off…knowing me and knowing Rob.
We left San Juan de Ortega about nine the next day but not before leaving crystal offerings.
At Atapuerca we met up with met Wolfgang…the second Wolfgang I should add…and had a nice chat. Saw Patrice again, the Italian lady with a leg injury, we met that morning at St Juan de Ortega.
I purchased three figurines at the shop in Atapuerca – a Neanderthal man and woman holding a baby and a sabre tooth lion…the man had a spear but when I got home and unwrapped it the spear was missing…so he’s got a toothpick instead…still it works and it’s a perfect fit.
All this stuff…the rocks…the figurines and some clothes I sent back to Australia… I could not carry them all Sandy. When next I walk the Camino I am not collecting anything…maybe one tiny rock… but that’s it.
Near Burgos a major city in the north of Spain I kept on seeing rocks and stones in the shape of maps of Australia and dead grey aliens…or were they babies…this was on the outskirts of the city…the industrial heart land as it were. I pocketed some of these rocks to add to my collection. I was wearing army style pants with pockets down the side and this was where I put them…that way I would not have to bear the weight of them in my back pack. I already had too many rocks as it was.
Upon our arrival in Burgos, we decide to spoil ourselves and stay in a hotel…couldn’t find the albergue in any case. There were flashing signs on billboards everywhere advertising the erroneous proposition that Burgos had more than fifty hotels. Well we walked for two hours around that city looking for a hotel…by this time my back was aching from the pack and my feet were covered in blisters…beating the pavement in a big city is far more grueling that walking through a forest…Sandy!
Passed two bars with the same name… El Horno and two funeral parlours…but still not hotel.
Passers by told us that most of the hotels in the city had been converted into apartment blocks. No one knew of the existence of any hotels at all…Sandy. I just could not believe it…of all the cities and towns we passed through we never once had that problem and the irony of it…the sheer weirdness and ridiculousness of it…is that the city was full of billboards flashing signs advertising the non fact that it had more than fifty hotels in it. I was incredulous Sandy…
Finally…around nightfall we found a little hotel called the Marie Luis and booked in for two nights. Too weird.
Can you imagine eating a burger that has four different kinds of half cooked meat in it as well as egg. That was dinner that night purchased at a nearby pub…horrible… I threw most of it out and I was hungry.
Burgos was definitely not the highlight of our pilgrimage…more like a shock introduction into reptilian society.
The next day leaving Burgos…I found a rock with an N on one side and a half face on the other…a little further on…I found another rock with the other half of the face on it. Strange but true.
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