ENG:
This letter (or rather “retrospective diary”) was written in March 2014 in 20 pages, which was then sent to 20 of my friends. The unsophisticated style occurring sometimes is due to the primary audience of friends. On those reading through themselves, it usually had a nice impact: many of them reported meditative experience pulling out of everyday greyness, that’s why I make the whole of it available here, in 12 parts... /CLICK HERE for the former parts/
/…/ I got into lows, also confirmed by my herpes which decorates my fluffy lips only when my immune system becomes week due to my despicable state of mind. In the Autumn I was continuously checking my lips because of the bad hygienic conditions but never found a thing as I was harder than The Rolling Stones itself. And now I just fell down after a couple of days so that my lips would flower by the morning, which is not a good beginning of changing lifestyle. Camilla went to be with family (actually it must be fun in Italy), and me just started to put the pack together, wash-dry and systematize my stuff. This made it pretty late, outside was a damn big weather so I remained for another bitterly cold night. And I also played with the donkeys.
The she-donkey proved to be smarter than Rocinante: always jumping more quickly to the reward carrots and tangerine clove so one should not wonder how she succeeded to faint the approach of the male bastard. But it can also be that when pregnant, jumping to tangerine and the approach-fainting are both instinctive. Look, how she’s teasing Roci with her butt:
Cockwarmer!
Meanwhile the Ita’-German couple started off again to search for the lost dog in the 30-km radius which they couldn’t find the day before. While they were away, an unknown big black dog started to mill around in front of the kitchen window whom the other dogs greeted him as a friend: the lost sheep returned so I let him in. This made a little improvement on my quite shattered reputation, so I could start off the next day with Rocinante in peace.
Right at the first kilometer we encountered the donkey-nightmare, in which, thereafter, we have regularly: a small bridge in the forest covered by the swollen river, so you have to go into the water. In such cases the human being just takes off his shoes, however, the donkey only stops. And when a donkey stops, it is definitely stopped. He doesn’t see the difference between the water depth of the bridge and the river, no matter how hard you pull him and try to provide a good example. And if you push him, he just turns and starts to run in the opposite direction. And it is not cool ‘cause he’s amazingly quick, except, of course, when he has to go into the direction you want. In case you are able to catch the bridle in the right moment, then he pulls you as a kite behind himself, the same as the little girl walking a giant dog on a leash in a cartoon. The solution is usually walking around – with a lot of asking and making out the map. So the 100km to Santiago was absolutely not 100km for us.
Night fell on us at Portomarín which I only remembered as the town of the unreasonably high and long bridge, since under which only a two meters wide, ankle-deep creek was flowing in the Autumn. By now it was as big as the Tisza river at the town of Tokaj in Hungary almost reaching the top of the bridge – so maybe this bridge is not so unreasonable after all. Over here, I mostly came on the motorway, now for a change, following the signs I lead Rocinante into the forest, in the midst of which we found pretty bad conditions: here, the water wasn’t 10 cm but was knee-high instead and unavoidable and me just hardly seeing nothing ‘cause just had a small bike light. Obviously it was raining. I won’t crawl back in the dark, here the donkey will be kicked over.
After several failed attempts I had the idea that I’ll tie him to a tree ahead that there would be no possibility for him to run back. Because first he succeeded and these can cause pretty great downtimes. Scandalizing this hapless animal from behind with a stick until he wades into the water: in such cases, in order to succeed the power of beats have to harmonize with the animal’s degree of fear, however now this poor donkey was so afraid that I couldn't make him move at all, he rather endured anything marking time. These are the most miserable deadlocks. Surely hurts me more that flattering word doesn’t make it possible to start him move. When you beat his butt, he farts, respectively. And now, he even shitted a big one so that I should evade it while struggling in the dark; but no way had he started to move.
Finally I had an idea to brake down the stonewall surrounding the deep road, lead the donkey to the dense shrubbery lying over the road, in an attempt to get around the temporary stream. Only that in the bushes there was a stream, too! We waded knee-deep in the mud, the spikes torn my jacket and all the pack on the donkey apart. Blood was flowing from my hand and saliva from my mouth holding the flashlight but so that it infiltrated to the lamp that already sucked anyway, the glass became hazy from saliva inside which made it flicker more faintly. The trouble is coming thick and fast, always has been. With the method of tying-to-the-other-side I succeeded to motivate him through the bushes this time and finally we got to the village of Gonzar. Telling this all costs only a few sentences, but I felt to be in a never-ending horror story...
Otherwise, we went into the woods several times in autumn, too, which can be quite scary, especially when you encounter similar difficulties. Now, when I think back to those cases I always have goose bumps that how comes I didn’t have fear of death on these unknown paths that time. Probably, because my donkey-buddy was with me. Who obviously would have eaten my corpse as being a huge fucking son of a bitch anyway. As well as being a fat gobbling machine! No matter how vegetarian he is, he sure would eat me, only for the sake of insulting my piety.
So donkey is not a winter livestock. But cute,for he has a larger fur this time.
Mr. Fur and owner in winter outfit
I had a lot of memories of Gonzar, which now was increased with finding the municipal closed at night in the absence of pilgrims, here too. Nevertheless, I found a really cool stable in the near so I slept on the straw with the donkey, like the Holy Family. It was completely good but not for winter, so freezing again. Anyway, I will chose it again next time I come back. There was even a water tap, complete luxury. Also apple trees with sporadically barely rotten fruits in February. A memorable accommodation.
However – due to the adventure with bushes – I started to get a hopelessly shabby look which my increasing homeless bouquet made even more congruent. Nobody looks good in a torn, filthy jacket. Nevertheless I didn’t get to the accommodation the next night either, but laid down on the outside of an abandoned house in a mountain village en-route where I could also tie Rocinante so that he will be able to reach the grass outside but in the same time to be able to escape from the rain under the roof. Obviously he shitted right under my nose, not on the grassy part outside.
The donkey does his toilet work in a very intelligent way: he drops his marbles even 5-6 times a night, always the same place. He smells it whether it’s his crap, yeah it is, oversteps it and shits the pile of crap again. So I quickly threw it away from beside me to a more distant place (the rope being available for me that time was unfortunately quite short) but despite of it he shitted at the same place again. So I can’t think of it as not intentional anymore. I had the same impression already in autumn. But I couldn’t tie him anywhere else ‘cause if he doesn’t eat due to the lack of grass or doesn’t sleep due to the rain, then he’s totally out of control the next day... Otherwise there’s a lot of run-down, enclosed buildings along the way just who the hell wants to squat in gallego villages of 20-30 residents where you don’t even really have a concrete road, let alone anything else. Oh, me! I do! Anti-business-ideas start to born in my head from what and how to live in a happy way along the Camino route. /.../
