Camino Dispatches, Part 2.
“The frog in the well knows nothing of the sea.”
Japanese Proverb
It feels hard to write about part two of the trip. It seems like a long time ago now, having returned only to be inundated by the requisite thoughts, feelings, and tasks of home, supplanting all the acreage I might otherwise devote to reflecting on my expedition. I’ve never been sure if other people feel as overwhelmed by life as I do– not dysfunctionally overwhelmed; I manage to move through it all– but overwhelmed in the sense that on any given day there are myriad things vying for my attention of various levels of importance with differing timetables and deliverables such that nothing ever feels quite done, though not done in the sense of complete, rather done in the sense that you imagine all this must be moving toward your eventual graduation to a new plane of existence, a plane of existence that doesn’t feel so damn dire.
What I really want to write about is a video I saw the other night. My exposure to videos has been almost null since quitting social media, but, in a wild turn of events, I needed to make a throwaway instagram to communicate with a 16 year old who doesn’t have a cell phone, and again came face to face with the videos of the world. I assure you it found me; I did not go searching for it. The video begins with an image of a frog, cradled in a young man’s palm. The frog is a deep green, with spots of a slightly darker hue. The boy begins massaging a dollop of lotion into the frog’s back, starting between her shoulder blades and slowly making his way down the spine in tender, clockwise motions. The frog glistens, its body plump with health. He squeezes a few drops of an expensive-looking serum on her head, taking similar pains to ensure it’s fully absorbed by her slimy, permeable skin. He feeds the frog a little snack– spa days are exhausting!– placing an egg yolk inside her mouth. We watch as the frog swallows with an expression of pure glee. The gentle young man retrieves a ceramic carafe and rinses the frog off, who patiently stands there, poised in surrendered trust.
Maybe you guessed what comes next, but I was certainly not prepared. It was more than shock that gripped me– it was betrayal. In the next frame, the boy I thought was gentle lifts the deep fried silhouette of a frog out of a boiling vat of oil. We’re then subjected to watching him devour the little frog that used to be his friend. I was sitting alone in my room as I consumed this video, and it started playing again, from the top– a diabolic feature– and my fingers lunged at the screen trying pathetically to shut down the application. I sat there for a long time in semi-paralysis, considering how sociopathic this boy must be, not only to do this to a frog, but to weaponize content in a grand bait and switch targeting unassuming, naive people like myself. “THIS is why you should never trust anyone,” was the only comment I caught before my conniption overcame me. I felt queasy considering how the boy was monetizing my outrage. I spent the next couple hours in a vegetative state, meditating on the themes of cruelty and powerlessness. This is clearly why I don’t belong on the internet.
My mind was blank when I boarded the bus to Barcelona. I had nothing to do for 6 hours other than stare out the window and count the number of windmills passing by. My impression of Spain settled into a land of wide open spaces invaded by an army of windmills until the next city exploded and then faded into fields and windmills once more. There were so many windmills that it became too many windmills so I googled the phenomenon and learned that Spain ranks among the top wind energy producers of the world. The bus pulled off the highway and parked in a dirt lot attached to a hellish monstrosity that was at once a cafeteria and a casino outfitted exclusively in decaying linoleum and browns. Forced from our seats for a thirty minute break, no doubt caught in the shuffle of some kickback scheme. Kids with soccer uniforms and ketchuped fingers mingled with the bowels of seven or eight buses.
It was peak summer in Barcelona and the options for last minute tourists were bleak. For most of the ride it looked like Kabul Party Hostel was the only reasonably-priced accommodation, whose website featured ethnically ambiguous young people chugging fluorescent colored beverages with the explicit warning: if you’re not into all-night partying, this isn’t the place for you! I settled for the last bed at a “boutique” hostel, replete with digital nomads and C list influencers that for some godforsaken reason all wore roller skates, but at least the property observed quiet hours. At this point my achilles felt something like a defunct accordion; in a quiet room you could actually hear when I attempted movement, something that approximated the crunch of leaves, accompanied by the sensation, outside of pain, that my tendon had been replaced with the hinge of an ancient, creaking door.
Somewhere between the bus and the hostel I collapsed on a bench, the feeling of despair pooling. Depression, she’s an opportunist. I typically control my mental health with a series of well-designed levees I’ve built up over the years– this allows me to be pretty mentally ill without succumbing to the grips of whatever’s at my doorstep. But every once in a while the events of my life arrange themselves into the perfect sequence at just the right fever pitch so as to overwhelm my defenses, rendering any and all resistance to totalsystemoverload, futile.
During COVID, my girlfriend made weed brownies with no prior experience. The result was wild concentrations of THC in unpredictable bites, while others remained bland and ineffective. Just as we pulled the plug for the night, lamenting our sobriety, the shower I found myself in started turning on its axis. Thankfully I had the foresight to dress before I ran right out of the house and into the night, trying to escape the abyss of despair that had suddenly engulfed me.
On the subject of videos, a slice of this episode lives somewhere on my ex-girlfriend’s phone. I’ve seen it a couple times since, and while it is admittedly a classic of the vault, its hilarity is obscured by the memory of just how pure that despair was, as if someone had unscrewed my head and filled me with a thick, black tar from head to toe.
The video finds me once I’ve been lured back inside, slumped over the table, mumbling something to the effect of this is never going to end. I remember telling her, I don’t want to die, but I’m not sure I have a choice if I’m going to feel like this forever.
I digress only because this is the closest description to what I experienced in Barcelona. Whatever grief was stirred up by my forced stasis and the cancellation of my yearned-for walkabout, it must have rubbed up against some long-dormant and un-dealt-with skeletons. I walked (hobbled) around like a zombie for weeks, sobbing publicly and feeling as though eating was the most punishing task I’d ever been saddled with.
It wasn’t just the quicksand of depression. What really did me in was my powerlessness to the pendulum-swinging emotions: the minutiae of deducing what direction to take the subway would distract me for 2-3 seconds, only to be bombarded by fresh despair once more. A sick carnival ride I couldn’t de-board. At least depression is something of a resting state. This was like falling from a skyscraper and waking just before impact, only to fall asleep again and plummet once more, play it again. The vacillation between these extremes– momentary relief then dawning dread– triggered fight or flight at least once per hour, flooding my system with unhinged levels of adrenaline that made me feel truly insane.
You should also know (to aid the accuracy with which you picture me) that I’d sent all my excess items home the day before I decided to quit walking the Camino in the hope that a lighter pack would deliver relief (it did no such thing). So, I was cruelly stuck in Barcelona with only two pairs of moisture-wicking pants and two moisture-wicking shirts. It was bad math; I felt trapped, but the prospect of considering an exit paralyzed me. Somewhere in this fever dream I had unconsciously decided the only way out was through, by which I mean biding my time until my flight took off and enduring the misery in the meantime.
It was in this wretched state that I happened upon the Sagrada Familia. This is Barcelona’s most famous Catholic church, which has been under construction since 1882. Before his death, the architect remarked, "My client is not in a hurry."
I don’t mean to cast aspersions or invite ire, but I echo George Orwell’s sentiment when he said of the Sagrada Familia, “the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance.” He went on to describe the cathedral as “one of the most hideous buildings in the world.” Looking at any of Gaudi’s work– and there are many pockmarking the city– makes my teeth ache.
An attempt to get within 500 feet of the cathedral would swiftly reveal that Orwell and I are among the minority. Crowds of Disneyland-level density encircle the grounds, the kind of hysteria that dismantles pedestrian etiquette and makes the immediate vicinity look like City Walk on Saturday night. 99.9% of the throng is elbowing over the perfect selfie or stock photo. I’ve never understood the draw of tourism photography, champing at the bit to emulate the same photo that could more easily be googled and downloaded at a much higher resolution. It might have something to do with the childhood trauma I endured at the hands of a mother who forced me to stand in front of every historic place we encountered with the directive to open my arms wide and declare, cheeks searing with embarrassment, “I own this place,” in lieu of “cheese.” Whatever the origin of my confusion, I was primed to ogle at the ogling of others at the base of this hideous cathedral. Shockingly, I found this activity— rather than exacerbating my dire state— providing temporary relief. One of the few “extras” I’d packed was my JVC camcorder from 2006, which received less than tepid reviews due to its “mediocre video” and “sluggish autofocus.” And yet, I love her. I recalled this fact as I watched the fanfare unfold around me, staring long enough to question my affiliation with the human race. I scurried back to the hostel and grabbed Ms. JVC.
I found myself in Barcelona at the end of a summer of unprecedented explosions over unregulated tourism. Locals see tourism as being directly linked with the surge of housing prices and shrinking availability of housing, conditions which have displaced native Catalans from their own city. Of particular concern are cruise ships, which release 20,000 tourists into the city daily, overwhelming the city’s infrastructure at peak hours with almost no contribution to the local economy. In July, protesters sprayed tourists enjoying Taco Bell with water guns. Graffiti’s cropped up with variations on the message “tourists go home,” accompanied by stickers denouncing the presence of Airbnb and the Louis Vuitton America's Cup, a two-month long luxury sailing tournament that attracts mega yachts from all over the world.
While the Sagrada Familia has experienced many delays over the last century, construction has recently been deferred while the City Council decides whether to approve a controversial staircase. To Orwell’s pleasure, the architect’s original designs were destroyed in the Spanish Civil War, ensuring that the building’s completion is litigated in perpetuity. Those opposing the massive staircase dispute that it was part of Gaudi’s original plans. Its construction would require the demolition of three city blocks, forcing 15,000 residents from homes and businesses.
The church is controlled by a powerful foundation and lobby, its wealth amassed almost exclusively from ticket sales purchased by tourists. Thus, in a twisted world, it’s tourists and their ability to vote with the dollar that has the strongest effect over the future of Barcelona’s city planning. A positive feedback loop of tourism begetting over-tourism begetting hostile takeover; Catalans have summarized this as “tourism is terrorism.”
It was through this lens that I studied the crowds, understanding that they–and I– were thoroughly unwanted here. I returned to the Sagrada Familia almost daily to film. For me, oBseSsi0n is the only true antidote to mental illness, not mindfulness, not medication, but a full blown obsession so strong that it crowds out the obsessive compulsive thoughts, the panic, the anxiety. So, I leaned into the project for dear life, spending hours upon hours abusing the 40x zoom watching pasty, greasy, bloated fingers manipulate screens in order to capture the Perfect Souvenir.
I was among the church’s dense crowd when Israel exploded pagers and walkie talkies in Lebanon, a series of terrorist attacks that killed over 30 and wounded thousands. The attack permeated Lebanon’s perception of safety, a form of psychological terror from which no one was free. It wasn’t long before the internet started positing that the fear of everyday technology could spread the world over, a capitalist’s nightmare as consumers became paralyzed by their fear of iPhones and Alexas.
My mind cross-cut the images out of Lebanon inundating my cell phone with the swarm of indifferent people with which I was surrounded, and involuntary images of the thousands of cell phones flooding the basilica’s perimeter- exploding simultaneously- flashed through my mind. The crowd around me assumed their safety, just as the frog had assumed hers as she sat cradled in the gentle boy’s palm. The intrusive thoughts played on repeat as I filmed families arranging their children in front of Jesus’ crown of thorns, and a series of Big Questions ping-ponged around my head: Who gets to move freely? Who gets to feel safe while doing so? Does technology set us free? What recourse exists for those expelled from their homes? What kind of resistance is justified? Who gets to decide?
I had only one conversation while I was in Barcelona, apart from the minimal exchange required when buying food or water. An Italian boy with braces staying in my hostel tried hard to strike up a conversation, despite the fact that neither of us spoke the other’s language. He suggested that we go to the Sagrada Familia together and I chose not to tell him that it would have been my seventh time. Thankfully it rained that afternoon, conditions he found inhospitable but which posed no credible threat to my infatuation.
My flight home was out of Madrid so I caught the train. I still had a few days to kill so I rented a row boat like a regular Ryan Gosling. I booked a day trip to Toledo to provide further distraction. I cried the whole drive there and back, letting up briefly when coerced into touring a sword workshop during which we were held hostage in the gift shop for almost an hour– the calculus presumably being that we’d buy something out of extreme exasperation– before being released into the city once more. It was a gray day. We were warned by the tour company that we could easily get lost or mugged; the city’s narrow, winding streets designed to entrap and confuse invaders were now exploited by thieves in lieu of armies. I went to a museum and spent an unknowable amount of time in front of The Immaculate Conception staring at the five cherubic heads tumbling from Mary’s skirt, floating inside what was described as a “half moon” but which looked much more like a fish bowl to me.
I’ve been back for two months now. Home provides the illusion of stability, and that illusion persisted for a few weeks. I immediately started watching all my shitty footage and assembling it into something of a montage. This helped distract me, just as writing does. But I knew things were bad when I found myself keeled over in the bathroom stall of a Fresno Walmart, trying to will myself out of a derealization attack in which all the families pushing shopping carts appeared to be doing so in slow motion, as if shopping for detergent and motor oil at the bottom of the ocean.
Please enjoy the following montage, but be warned, some images & sounds are distressing: