9/25
Stella: Hi C, I hope your morning is going well! Hot still I see 🙁 I hope you will tell me if I am off base here concerning your trip. I do want to understand your last text. This is how I feel about this “Europe” trip: When we spoke of it early in the inception, it was never going to be a “pleasure cruise”. I don’t think it was “supposed” to be? There were a lot of questions about what this trip may or may not be, but it is one of these experiences that you do to find out the answers. Example”Do you have to run the Boston Marathon? It is hard and do you really have to go to Boston? Ha Ha… Well, it is there you answer the question. Why yes I do need to do that and be in Boston… The marathon is hard. It would be more comfortable being on the couch… Haha… Something compels and interests us to try..pleasure, pain, success, failure, highs, and lows… This trip will have plenty of things that suck, Europe or not… It will also have plenty of things that don’t suck, which I have heard from you. To me the “complaints” I have heard are understandable. You could be having them anywhere… Haha, There is no way around it… This is a trip fraught with huge emotional and physical challenges. I for one want to hear about all the details of the trip from an honest place. XO

Charlene: Stella, your text was exactly what I needed to be reminded of. You are my favorite person in the world. I am so lucky to have you, Stella. I hope that I help you through life even a fraction of the way you help me through life. I hope you are doing well back in SF. Thank you for keeping the loved ones informed and entertained 🙂  After almost two weeks, I think my body is getting the idea that this is not ending anytime soon. And neither does it seem will my period. Day 5 and accelerating. I’m in Villafranca Montes de Oca for the night. Tackling hills tomorrow and into Burgos Friday. I’ll definitely let you know when we arrive there safely. Oh, I got to pet a black kitty today. And we got sternly shooed out of a hostel by an ancient Spanish woman because we were too early, but we were only looking for a cafe. This made me cry because I was so tired. I love you. Please kiss the kittens.

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The days blur together with the chafing heat. Clara helps me muscle through to this next stop in Villafranca Montes De Oca. We stay at the hostel El Pajaro. My guidebook describes the hostel as ‘situated above the bar (with awful food) on the noisy main road popular with both truckers and pilgrims’. We share a room with two twin beds and a large window facing a curve in the main road. Each time a truck barrels through it feels as though it will come straight through the building.

I spent a summer in London a few years past in a home with only a tub, no shower. Since then I only take baths at home. So I’m excited by the tub in the bathroom down the hall at the hostel. The room is straight out of 1950s with pink and black tiles. I take advantage of the bath, though I find its shallowness creates a problem when it’s time to rinse my hair, but it works well for washing my clothes.

I hang my wet laundry on lines next to a chicken coup. It’s still late afternoon, and Clara and I sit on our beds and lounge as the heat lingers. I decide to write:

Today I’m a poet
little pen in hand
light, not heavy in my pack
Today I am a poet
short on words
allowing the silence
to stay, afloat, pulled
in by a breath
like the backward un-puff
on a cold morning
In this heat, a word
is unbearable
on this journey, a story
ruthless
Stop, softly, shush
the pandemonium of the mind
If speech a must, speak
slowly, pause, reflect
the value of each syllable
Wait for the breeze to pass
the flower petals to unbend
Breathe in and pull from
the deep hollow at the bottom
of the breath, then I
will listen with all my
heart