Archives for posts with tag: dreams


Jeanette’s surgery was a success but her forehead had become infected so the doctors inserted a drain. The new device, in addition to the stitches, the wired jaw and the swelling, made her appear like a wounded alien. Jeanette had not yet gotten out of bed since she’d arrived—which meant she hadn’t seen herself. But that was about to change. Her nurses were eager to get her on her feet the following day, and her doctors were expecting to release her the day after that.

I had wanted Jeanette to stay with me in my spare bedroom during her recovery but I knew how unrealistic that was. Not only was I unable to spend a night at home myself but my spare room was just steps from the scene of the crime and her sister Karen would never allow it. Instead, Jeanette would begin her healing at her friend Mary’s home in the valley.

As the days wore on, I was eager to find some sense of normalcy but I knew that was still too big a word. Instead, I’d reach for equilibrium and settle for moments of stillness. They were fleeting at best.

I went to the gym to work out and discovered the anger I’d been holding below the surface. I pushed weights and pulled at pieces of equipment with increasing aggression. Would I have been powerful enough to ward off that attack? I daydreamed scenarios of walking in on that man, pulling him off of Jeanette and beating him to oblivion. With one, I used the frying pan. With another, it was a baseball bat. I ran through in my mind what I knew about self-defense tactics, and I imagined kicking my foot into the side of his knee and hearing his cartilage tear. He fell to the floor, screaming. I held a knife to his throat as Jeanette called the cops, and we waited for the handcuffs to ratchet around his wrists.


March 19, 2005
Day 20: Santa Catalina to Molinaseca, 42 km/26.5 m

When Simon and I, the two lone guests at the Santa Catalina refuge, awakened, Simon happily announced that he’d had four dreams during the night. It was exciting news given the fact that we’d all been sleeping so hard it made remembering dreams difficult. Having one felt like an event, but four of them was a galactic supernova from the netherworld.

Santa Catalina was smack dab in the middle of nowhere—meaning mostly that it would be a long walk for food. It did, amazingly, have an outdated, coin-operated computer in the refuge, however. I’d poked around on it the night before but didn’t manage to access my account. I tried again in the morning, to no avail. It wouldn’t be the worst thing if I had to live without email for a while but I had grown accustomed to it. And getting error messages seemed odd.

I headed out with my companion Simon, undeterred, knowing that after a few flat, boring miles, much of the day would be spent walking uphill. And if we thought the day before seemed desolate, today’s journey appeared as if World War II had swept through and only the ruins remained. There would be a bar and restaurant, with beautiful wood and tile inside, surrounded by nothing but rubble. El Ganso was the first of the hauntingly abandoned villages with their crumbled piles of stone, and then after a few signs of life in Rabanal del Camino, we came to Foncebadón. Once a thriving farming community, the exodus came in the 60s and 70s, and the few holdouts remaining relied on pilgrims for their sustenance.