Now . . . This

It’s one of your rest periods, meaning that rather than walking for 30km today, you’re just walking for 10-15. You encounter the monastery that you’ve heard of; the one that is in fact a hospital, prioritising boarding for those who are ill, but where you may stay regardless.

It was started by a small confraternity, purely for the sake of taking care of travellers like yourself, who somehow liked the idea of making your whole way on foot, quickly running out of money, living off trees, bushes and handouts from villagers.

A man stands on the door, takes you in, stamps your credentials with an intricate, Latin-looking print, and postpones his duties to speak with you about his art for a while. He explains that as an illustrator, he spent a lot of his practice working with a digital pad, and for most of that time he would find himself digitally rubbing out an image, only to start sweeping and blowing away the non-existent dirt and dust. And when he returned to working with pencil, he would find himself typing the non-existent keys to work with the image. This man has an attachment to all tools.

As evening approaches you remember being told also, that the place has no electricity, and so church candles are lit, eliminating a wealth of external space and highlighting the more humbling spaces. You must buy some church candles of your own when this is all over. You hear cars pulling up outside. The rest of the confraternity enter, one of which you recognise from the previous albergue that you stayed in.

The man who welcomed you in announces to you and the other pilgrims, “before we eat dinner, we would like you to come to the chapel and take part in an important ritual. Anyone who wishes not to take part can remain at this table, but we ask that you be silent.” You and every other pilgrim in the monastery, some of whom you have walked with, collect chairs and take them to the chapel, sitting in a a semi-rectangle. You suddenly feel very serious and solemn. You can only see faces with equal feeling and a hint of bemusement. You stopped being a Christian many years ago, and even when you were, you never attended something like this. Not even close. The confraternity are wearing shawls with the hoods down, and a lady is carrying a rather large book with her. You can’t quite tell if it’s the bible.

The man who originally spoke, speaks again: “This may not mean very much to you, but we take it very seriously. It means everything to us about hospitality; looking after others”. As a group they make their way around the seats with a bowl of water. Approaching each of you, they wash and kiss one foot each, while the lady with the book reads a blessing in Spanish. As the man washes and kisses your foot, you almost fail to fathom how someone whom you were sat down with as an equal, just a few hours earlier, has now put himself in this position; one which you wouldn’t dare expect your friends and family to commit to. It makes you tremble, not physically, but deep within. You’ve never thought that this kind of humbleness exists. You think of all the people who have ever given you food and a bed, and you know that this is your home. Wherever people think of you and vice-versa, this is your home.    

As they get towards the last pilgrim, the lady reading the blessings begins to cry, as do some of the other pilgrims, who proceed to comfort each other. You’re not crying though. What the hell’s wrong with you? You cried when you watched Grave of the Fireflies, you cried when you saw DeVotchka perform live, why aren’t you crying now, when you’ve just had your faith in humanity reaffirmed and permanently preserved for the rest of your life? Something that’s actually worth crying about?… Mind you, Grave of the Fireflies was a very powerful film and DeVotchka are a very intense band; you’d have to be soulless not to well up in front of either of them.

You owe it to yourself then, to keep this moment at the forefront of your mind; think about it at least once a week from now on; tell your friends about it in every detail; use it convey to people what the core of happiness is for you. Don’t tell them how much you’ve missed them or how much you value them though. That would be a bit over the top now. They don’t need to be put through that discomfort. Or shouldn’t you?

You remember that guy your parents sometimes talk about don’t you? The one who would always say to them what wonderful people they are, and they would often reply with, “You don’t need to tell us this. You say it all the time,” then he would say, “Well, you need to tell people these things while they’re still around, because some day it might be too late.”

Should you be more like him? Or carry on as usual? Giving people sleeping space when they need it, a meal when you feel like cooking one? Or just put all your feelings into text and blurt them out into a mixed crowd of friends, acquaintances and people you barely say hi to?… I think you’ve been talking to yourself long enough now.

Preface: Text used in an installation and video where I’ve basically ripped off a bit of Jacques Peretti, Armando Ianucci and Adam Curtis… The writing’s all mine though.

The Following Information is being delivered to you, the receiver and the broadcaster. It is your duty to pay attention to and relay these stories. Read them. Read them aloud. Read them and let your voice report them to the third party. Do not be passive. Be the news reader/commentator/folklorist…
Reasons for occupation. Questions arose today as to what the anti-capitalist/anti-religious/anti-corporate/anti-conservative/anti-farm/anti-twilight/anti-broom cabinet campers actually want. Journalists are baffled, tourists are bewildered, police are clueless, politicians are flummoxed. If anyone does know, please get in touch.
A short lesson in ecology now. New discoveries have been made in the studies of the mating habits of riot police. According to experts, the crowd control tactic of kettling is in fact the officers’ ritual technique of reproduction. By forming a closed, boxed formation, the organisms are able to interlock helmets, shields and truncheons, ensuring a more efficient mating process.
A writer for the national press stood up at a public meeting, held by the National Union of Journalists today, and said: “I would like to put things into perspective here. I write online for a national newspaper and the truth is, we do not get the news ourselves. We do not get it straight from the source. It is all sent to us by agencies like Reuters. The real sources are not truly known. The information is channeled through the agencies, through us, through the receivers to the audiences whom they pass it on to. Where does this information really come from?”
The truth about the balance of nature. The natural balance is pseudoscience. The idea is held onto to maintain comfort. In actuality, nature is not a self-regulating system, where everything has a fixed place. It is unpredictable, ever-changing, not like the systematic machine that people wish it to be.
The Romanian stated that in the following year there would be floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, technological failures. Allegedly, we will return to nature, living in egalitarian groups, away from the oppressive, failing cities. Allegedly, we are survivors.
For information on the flaws and bizarre interventions of indifferent characters in society, Please bury your head in the sand.

The visitor, now a guest in a communal kitchen, run by the Romanian, was now sat waiting for the lunch that he’d been offered, and the Romanian explained one of his peeves of living in the village.
“Tonight, I’ll have to lay a trap for this mouse. It has the whole of the mountains and the woods to wonder in, but it picks my home. This is unnecessary. It has to go. I can’t get to sleep at night with it scuttling about the place, and when I get up the next morning I am good for nothing for the whole day. I can’t go for walks, I can’t chop wood, can’t do any lifting. Good for nothing!”

The Romanian started to fry some tomatoes in garlic on the wood-burning stove while the spaghetti boiled.
“Do you like football?”, he asked the visitor.
The visitor paused. Should he tell the Romanian that he likes to play the game for fun every now and then, but he finds the industry to be an odiously shallow form of money burning?
He decided to go with, “Eerm… Not so into it these days, but my dad took me to see a couple of Man U games when I was a kid and…”
The Romanian started sniggering.
“I’m sorry, I understand English perfectly well, but you’ll have to slow down, I cannot understand your accent…”
“Oh, well, sorry I’ll say that again, I…”
The Romanian interrupted him again.
“I love Barcelona. They are the greatest team in the world. They’re so much more than a club. The fans are a part of them as well. They have this principal that so many of your English teams have, called fair play.”
“Well, you could say that, but…”
“I’ve met so many people who get angry, and argue with each other about this game, but they must remember that it’s just a game. One of my best friends supports Real Madrid. We went to see Madrid V Barcelona at a pub one night and my team won. So for that, he hated me. I will love Barcelona until the day I die… but it is just a game… I’ll check the pasta.”

The Romanian took some of the spaghetti out of the pot with a fork and bit into it.
“This is how the Italians test it. They call it ‘al dente’, because you’re using the teeth to see if it’s ready”.
The visitor, glad that the subject had changed, said, “Yes, they know very well how to cook. Shame though, how they’re an absolute nightmare to share a kitchen with.”
“Ah yes”, the Romanian understood, “I’m the best cook in the world, but I would never tell someone else how to cook their own meal. I spent some time living in Italy and there’s too much ignorance. The world has too much ignorance. These people voted Silvio Berlusconi in for a second term and I’d had enough. ‘You’re all stupid!’ I said.”
The visitor was just nodding along to all of this. He’d had a good few rants about Berlusconi himself, and he was relieved to hear a response other than that you can’t have a go at the man, because he’s honest about his ‘love for women’.
“After that”, the Romanian continued, “I left Italy. These ignorant people have no idea how corrupt their governments and the big businesses are.”
“Absolutely”, the visitor agreed with a firm expression, and the Romanian, most likely not even hearing the visitor, draining the pasta, went to the next stage with his lecture.
“The cities are too dangerous and oppressive to live in. I’d had enough of city life. I came out here because I wanted a simple life. It is too fast in the city and I’m sick of it. There’s too much technology. Everything runs on computers. Cars now run on computers! If we stay within those societies and carry on listening to the big governments then we’re all doomed. People accept them now because they’ve become too ignorant. Not just in Italy, but all over the world. And America. America scares me. They’re getting more and more dangerous these days.”
The Romanian turned round, wagged his finger at the visitor and, like a soapbox preacher, delivered a bemusing question,
“And you know, what’s going to happen next year, don’t you?”
“What, exactly?”
“2012”
The visitor, being from London, was praying that the Romanian was only going to have a good old chat with him about the Olympics. His heart sank when he followed up with,
“Volcanoes will erupt, tsunamis and floods will wipe out countries. It will happen, believe me my friend, I know it.”
The visitor could only make a decision whether to argue with this man, now serving him his lunch, or just sit back and hope that he would run out of steam. He let the Romanian talk at him for half an hour, explaining to him increasingly radical conspiracy theories about America, the world’s most dangerous country, planning to merge all the countries as a one-world-nation with a single economy, where everyone would have an ID chip injection, which the government will use to monitor and manipulate our every thought and movement, and if they want to, kill us with a satellite. He repelled every sceptical look with the phrase, “It’s true my friend, believe me, I read it in a book. Just wait, we will see next year. Many of the people in this village carry the same beliefs.

It was at this point that the visitor realised that he had walked into a cult, and wasn’t sure, but it just might have been possible that this Romanian was trying to win him over; brainwash him. He had just one question for him: “So, these books that you’ve read with all these ideas. Did you take all of this at face value, or did you look into who the authors were and find the support that credits their writings?”
“I believe it all. I do not need evidence because my instincts tell me that it’s true. All the astrological signs point towards the truth of what I’ve said. When you go back home, and they tell you that you need this ID chip, or you can no longer be a part of society, you tell them to shove those chips up their arses! Disaster may come, but we are survivors. We will return to nature and live self-sustainably!”, He preached, as he opened a shop-bought tin of tuna and emptied it on top of the meal.

That was all that the visitor needed to hear; one of his favourite logical answers, “It’s true because I read it in a book.”

And with that information, he thanked the Romanian for the meal and he ran the hell out of there.