About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
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Jottings From Journeys #294483 added June 13, 2004 at 6:10pm Restrictions: None
El Camino
In Spain, one thing I heard from friends that left me agape was the El Camino. Somebody once took me to a hilltop and showed me the direction from where the pilgrimage started. I listened to what they said, but didn’t pay much attention to the idea at that time. Much later, I read Shirley Mac Laine’s book about the excruciating voyage she made through this road on foot. It was an internal pilgrimage of sorts for the actress and she believed she came out of it for the better.
Would I do it? I doubt it. I’m rather protective of my creature comforts and I believe I can get the same results just by a short walk on the beach or on the pier where my troubles leave my mind and my body alone.
Coming back to El Camino de Santiago, El Camino for short, this road stretches through 800 miles (thousand if you somehow manage to get lost) from Somport or Roncesvalles to Compostela. According to legend Virgin Mary has appeared twice on the two starting points. The belief is once you’ve walked the Camino, you’ll never be the same again.
The preservation of history on this road owes its endurance to its travelers with religious fervor. The more than a thousand-year piety of the pilgrims on El Camino has left its Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque art untouched. Here history has blended with legend to such an extent that where one starts and the other leaves is difficult to figure out.
El Camino de Santiago, in other words St. James’s Route, has been traversed from one end to the other by emperors, kings, important leaders, tradesmen, singers, writers, painters, artists, romantics, mystics, riffraff, and criminals, who were attended, helped, and housed by volunteers, farmers, and innkeepers.
The prize for this journey is the town of Compostela with its prestigious cathedral and the idea that says, “Whoever is sad, becomes happy.”
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© Copyright 2004 Joy (UN: joycag at Writing.Com). All rights reserved. Joy has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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