Single

Single man, back in the ring swingin'.

RyanAir has tight weight restrictions. I have to throw out all of my toiletries. We sprint to the plane.

The woman in Bristol gives me a hard time about my passport, though Ryan passes right through. I now have a monitored passport and must leave the UK by March. It should be June.

We catch the Bristol bus, from the airport to the city, with a number of people standing around outside. They are groups of several. There are two seats. Ryan and I board.

The bus pulls in to the Bristol bus station at 1:45 for our 1:45 connection. They've been waiting for us. They toss our stuff in and we take off.

London. Nick Walsh, our friend from college, is amazing. He used to work and serve in the States, which is how we met him. Now we're in his country for New Years. We walk around.

This has been a terrible day. This has been a great day.

Ring in the New Year.

Dreams

Martin McDonagh, Eavon Boland, and Seamus Heaney are out. The dream is much as it was before in Naples, Florida, driving through star-studded beaches and rich homes: that Steven Spielberg, seeing our car, would beckon us into his home that looks like Jurassic Park, and that we would have a cup of tea; we wouldn't even have to talk about movies, just get to a point where we could meet each other's gaze from across the room and do the somewhat-acknowledging-but-not-being-too-ostentatious chin raise that you see 50 Cent and all the cool rappers do, all to say: "Hey Steve... Whazzup?" To which he says, "Nothin', dawg, I'm straight chillin' like a well-earned glass of lemonade... on a hot day." This is how Steven Spielberg speaks in my mind.

And now Pedro Almódovar has also slipped my grasp. Not that I would recognize Spain's most well-renowned filmmaker by sight, but I'd love to see the man and exclaim, "I loved Hable con Ella as a piece of art even if it totally weirded me out! Do you have space for a Production Assistant who is really enthusiastic and wants to learn Spanish?"

We're in London in two days, and I don't think we'll see Gordon Brown either. Neither Ryan or I have much luck catching heads of state, especially me, because for all of my entreaties in DC, Obama never did come to my Starbucks, and Michelle, in a need for classy burgers that I can understand, visited the Five Guys at the end of my block and, probably sated with deliciousness from that place, did not need any coffee. Yet apparently Pervez Musharraf did come in with all of his aides an hour or so after I got off work, so maybe Tony Blair, W., or Mikhail Gorbachev will take our spot at the fireworks after we've been there, done that.

Woody Allen is preparing a new film in London, though (probably along the lines of Vicky Christina Barcelona), so there is hope. Maybe he'll even wind up in South Lincolnshire and need directions and I can hop out and direct the man whose zeitgeist films have traversed continents, from Manhattan and the feelings of an American generation in the '70s to Match Point and the European present. But the more I muse about this, and the massive James L. Brooks films of life that film in our neighborhoods in DC and don't hire us because they have handpicked staff from New York and California, the more that I remember that life, in its simplest essence, is that of flowers and babies, pied beauty and new life; and this life is everyday renewing... by God it is renewing.

Sevilla

In Magellan's day––by the way, I'm reading a book on Magellan––Sevilla had twice the population of London, and it appears the city has lost none of its vibrancy. As the families flood the main street, along with Punk-influenced teenagers with creative facial piercings and the innumerable and pram-contained babies, I can imagine the flood of traders that led the world to assume that absolutely anything could and was bought and sold in Sevilla.

I am trying to find a place to write, but while there are some open chairs, it is a Sunday afternoon and every table is filled up with families, food, and babies, babies, and the strollers which carry babies. So I am on a bench outside of a Starbucks, waiting for the line to die down so I can purchase americano-warmth, and I am opposite what at Magellan's time was the third largest cathedral in Europe, after St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London.

There's not much time for reading, though, what with essays and all. Now is the daunting essay about my body of creative work––the numerous poems in the rough, the plays, the screenplays in process, my journalism and scholarly work, this blog––and I'm hard pressed to articulate it all.

It is probably good that we are in Sevilla. We have a great hostel and wonderful travelers. Our Canadian friends Neal and Bria just left so loved, and I regularly discuss Brazilian and Italian history with Alex & Anna, Mateo & Betty; we love the hostel staff, and Nate gives me the last of his churros. This is a city filled with families, babies, street performers, and babies, all things that fill me with joy. So what if in our times before and after the Camino we have seen all of Sevilla? There is still excitement over seeing the rowers on the river and the unkempt '92 World Expo site, overgrown and cordoned off as if it could house zombies or velociraptors (Neil and Bria suggest I make a zombie/dinosaur film there, and Neil has offered to don a velociraptor costume... I think he'll be in the scene where Merav gets eaten... or where she and the velociraptor meet, become friends, pick olives on a hillside, and eventually travel together).

It is a good spot for me to pour over these applications too, and Ryan and Merav seem to remember, in spite of the regularity, that they are more than sufficiently awesome, greeting these days with excited, new eyes.

Jolted out of my iPod-influenced writing trance, two Moroccan girls greet me in Arabic. They are looking for jobs, see me with my green blog notebook in front of the cathedral, and think that not only do I look like someone on-the-job, I also look like I speak Arabic. I did not know that I looked this way. Nonetheless, I tell them the truth (that I'm an American guy with no job writing to you, dear readers), wish them luck and they fade into the families stepping into the expanse of families and the slow, open tracks of the Sevilla tram that bisects them. I love this culture: how, because of Franco's repression they smoke in front of No Smoking signs; how kids being with their parents is as much a necessity as grease on a car mechanic; how we can drink beer with our lunch and everyone is going to do it respectfully; how they are so friendly that, if an Ice Age suddenly descended, they would pull me in like male penguins and keep me warm, not caring if I stutter through their language. There is some terrible history, like many countries, but it is a marvelous present.

Christmas on the Camino

We wake up on the blue, sheetless mattresses of the albergue, which are surprisingly clean and comfortable. So far, Spain takes great care of its peregrinos, the five of us feeling quite charmed by the two police officers who let us in for free and checked up on us later. The police are in charge of the albergue; nothing sketchy.

Our German and Danish counterparts, who came later in the night, leave some time apart from one another, but they know they'll see each other at the next albergue tonight. We stay in bed.

It's not that we're lazy, but with 30+ pound rucksacks full of our cold gear, computers, and more, we are feeling quite weighted down. Moreover, with the way that the rain has been peppering the landscape, paths are muddy (and I'm in running shoes) and streams are swollen. One of the streams, with deeply muddy farmland on either side of us, we ford by taking our shoes off and walking slowly and painfully along the rocks. Another we avoid, hearing from a cyclist that the water is chest-deep (verified by the German pilgrim), and take a several-kilometer detour along the guardrail of a very fast-moving highway. Yet so many cars are honking, so many folks in the town are glad to meet us, and we can't help but feel exhausted and touched.

We've been talking about small miracles lately. A waiflike, exhausted Merav opens her sleeping bag, borrowed from a friend, for the first time in the albergue to find a bar of chocolate––delicious Swiss dark stuff with Hebrew lettering––with a funny sketch of Merav and a note wrapped around it. Chocolate that has been there all the time showing up at just the right time. Miracle. Sunset and how we're inspired by it. Miracle. We wonder how we need to believe in these things, how the correlation of simple wonderment is too much to pollute by saying it is mere chance, how a miracle can remind us that God is still God, and God is good despite the world.

So we are in an albergue for Christmas, away from the consumerism, away from the two-thousand years of add-ons like Santa and the Christmas tree, away from all of that and... and Merav looks at both of us and says, "Merry Christmas." I fear I have been viewing this as a normal day––and perhaps it is, my scholarly heart knows that Jesus was really probably born in Spring––but as Ryan reads Luke and Merav wishes us Christmas wellwishings and we play Christmas carols and they get stuck in our heads then I realize what is the true miracle of Christmas. The true miracle isn't whether or not December 25 is Jesus' actual birthday or not, whether the magi convened on exactly that day with the shepherds and all of that, but rather that we come together as family and friends in community during the bleak midwinter when everything is dead and wet and tired and cold and we celebrate rebirth. By myself, Christmas is just another day, but in the presence of my loved ones and other of God's children, I see new life breathed into old bones.

Ryan feels like we've given up on the Camino, though all of us feel we have acted wisely. We are cutting it short because our packs are brutal and because of the rain and the fact that, as our German pilgrim friend tells us, the Via de la Plata is the toughest one of the five. Whereas the Camino Français has albergues every fifteen or sixteen kilometers, the day after tomorrow we would be traveling twenty-nine clicks without a town in between. So, for now, goodbye tying food onto our bags and goodbye socks dangling wet and putrid from them to dry. Goodbye also the long stretches of Spain, the wonderful people, and the good food, not to mention the combination of the nice Spaniard who gave us "chocolate for the Camino" yesterday. Sevilla is a nice place.

I don't feel this is a defeat. For me, I plan to come back, packed differently, with my bike and with whomever of you want to come, to do a whole route or two. I want to see Santiago and know more about this pilgrimage which, says our German friend who has hiked all of them (and some multiple times), is like a drug. For now, though, I have applications to finish and, if I am lucky, my family and Rachel to call. I hope, if you are set apart from your loved ones, that you see what is lovely around you, the small miracles like distant gorillas in the mist.

Confession

I have been on a pilgrimage, dear readers, and you have suffered for it. I am hoping to lead a Bike and Build trip across the United States this summer, raising money and awareness for affordable/decent housing, and I have had to write several essays. I fear to say it, but soon I will also begin applying to film school, and will have to write more essays. Meanwhile, I am writing in retrospect what happened to me and my fellow sojourners on the blog even though I have not had internet to keep you informed. Suffice to say, there is a lot going on in life right now, and I am blessed, so blessed, to be swimming in the thick of it. I just ask for your grace when I'm lame and don't get a post out to you in due time.

In other news, Ryan has a new blog. You can find our adventures, in much more detail and with pictures, at http://ryanadamadven.blogspot.com/ It's cool! Check it out!

First day on Camino

This is a part of Spain that no one sees. Small towns, car dealerships, highways running along the Via de la Plata of the Camino de Santiago. Honestly, I don't know much about this road other than it is one of the five traditional pilgrim routes that the apostle James (a.k.a. "Santiago") took while bringing Christianity to Spain, yet I am not sure why there are five. Ours, the Via de la Plata, starts in Sevilla and directs us via yellow arrows through Andalucía, Extremadura, all the way up to Santiago. The yellow arrows are over everything, on street signs, on old rubble beside the rural roads, a simple yellow like three sloppy strokes of a paintbrush pointing us forward.

In a way this is much like the Pilgrimage for Peace with Rachel. By saying this I do not mean by any stretch that I am as hardcore as Rachel and those folks, mostly in middle age or later, who committed to the 50-day, 1000-mile walk, sharing the message of peace twice a day with community centers, schools, churches, and throughout the day with the common folk on the road. I'm not even as hardcore as the people who joined for one more day than I did, but I relate in that, as people see us walking, they cheer us on. It seems every few cars are proud of us, honking and waving, and that small towns know exactly what we are no matter from what culture. Merav is right, there's something about peregrinos, those pilgrims that the road draws, that local people strongly respect.

This rapport with the locals proves very advantageous to us in Santiponce, fourteen kilometers away from our destination. When the deluge comes, as it does for us in Spain, we realize how foreign this part of Spain is to such water from the heavens. Their architecture includes almost no overhangs, and we duck into a church, into restaurant door wells, and anything that will keep us dry. Even in the rain, though, people are friendly, one man shielding Ryan and me with his umbrella talking about this and that while our rucksacks and a distant Merav were continuing to get soaked. He told us about a woman in the middle of the town who lived alone and welcomes pilgrims, so, after some wandering and trying to find free bedding at an old monastery (which is closed), we get back to the center of town, where several women tell us to find this Carmen. We knock on her door and get no answer, so I ask the barkeep two doors down, and, instead of getting the phone number like I asked, he walks us to the house, and bangs loud enough to bring Carmen to the door. She is old and smiley and brings us in. We have to pay, and it's expensive for the Camino, but we were willing to pay much more to get dry on such a day. We watch Inglourious Basterds, stretch our sore limbs, and stretch our clothes out to dry after a very good day.

Read more about the Pilgrimage for Peace either here: http://walkaboutpilgrims.blogspot.com/2009/11/zigzag-back-through-these-states.html

or here: http://peacewalk-newengland.com/

Multinational like home: Stories from the road

Give it grief, Starbucks is a respect-deserving solid cup of coffee. We all have our comforts of home: Merav's is the Hebrew-lettered cigarettes she found stuffed in her bag when she ran out of rolling papers. Ryan's is peanut butter or video games, neither of which we have right now. He is smarter than us when it comes to churros as well, only engaging in churros y chocolate with us once, and watching us stuff custard-filled, chocolate-covered churros rellenos in our faces without even a hint of wistfulness or wanting to take our gastronomical place.

Occasionally, in Ireland and Spain, we go for a McFlurry, which feels a little anathema to me. Yet when an establishment like McDonalds––which I usually avoid completely for its very-bad-for-you nature––when they have free Wifi and we don't know where our hostel is, McDonalds comes in very handy. As does a McFlurry when you need a little something other than bread, sausage, cheese, and carrots.

Starbucks takes it up another notch, though. Whereas Spanish coffee is condensed and strong, fueled by a strong espresso culture full of cafe con leche and cafe cortados, there's nothing quite like the size and, with it, the continuity of a large, American coffee. Needing something to remind me of home, I stroll into a Starbucks in Sevilla and get all the way to the counter before I realize the horror: they only have one coffee brewer, and it's decaf. In DuPont Circle, DC, we have five. Yet I'm already there, so I place an order for a cafe americano, much the same thing, made with espresso and hot water. And it's good, that full flavor, the sixteen ounces that no Spanish coffee can touch. While I'm fine not having a home, I wish I could pack up this coffee and bring it with me, in a French press, like the tortoise its shell.

In other news, Merav finds me out slower than Ryan. While Ryan understands a good bit, I am the only Spanish speaker, which is to say, I am the only one who can ask for complicated directions, then gather Ryan in so he can help me understand what in the world is being said in reply. He figures me out the quickest, but that's also because he knows me better.

Merav, however, is different. So we both tell her, as I did Ryan, if she are ever stuck in a restaurant without knowing what to order, she should say this simple sentence. Same as––and yes, it is rather miraculous that it works in this setting––if she is ever interested in a Spanish guy such as Manuel-the-awesome-Spanish-barman-wearing-a-Big Lebowski-shirt-who-is-30-the-perfect-age-for-a-28-year-old-single-Israeli-woman-who-is-kind-and-introduces-us-to-great-new-music-that-we-like-and-inspired-him-to-play-the-ukelele, if she meets a guy like this, she should simply say, "Quisiera el pulpo." Though she never used it (and I don't think we'd have let her), I would have loved to see Manuel's face should she look at him flirtatiously and subtly say: "I would like the octopus."

Later, after finding this out, Merav tells us that octopi are actually quite smart. During her diving-with-dolphins-and-taking-pictures-of-them job, she learned that someone put food in a wine bottle, dropped it in the ocean, and the octopus actually opened the wine bottle and got the food. For the easily amused (like me), that image is a simple joy of life.

I am Western, I am Christian, I am complicit

Jaime is the leader of a small group of Jews in an old Jewish house in la Judería, the Jewish area of Córdoba. He is a young man, with dark black, curly hair, and it is a wonderful house, over five hundred years old, with a beautiful foyer with the Star of David inlaid in black and white stones in the Moorish style, before the Reconquista. We have seen other pebble mosaics in Spain but, as the small crowd of Jews gather around, somehow this one seems more powerful than the others. We liked the place because Jaime stocked it with CDs of singers from Israel whom Merav is familiar with, and one she knows; we love the place because they invite us in to celebrate Hanukkah.

Cheapskates, we visit all the sites that we don't have to pay for. The synagogue is nice, we see the statue of the Rambam (Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimónides), the influencial rabbi from the 13th Century who lived, taught, and doctored in Córdoba, and we wander the old streets within the city walls. We don't visit the old Jewish house except to view the gift shop, because then we would have to pay, and that pay could buy us churros or beer, of which a glass is nice when you don't have a home and wander around all day.

So Jaime stands at the large, iron Hanukiah, so tall that one of his fellows, an older man, pulls up a chair for him to stand to reach the candles. It is a small crowd, less than the ten men required to create a synagogue, and Jaime lets us know the ceremony will be in a mix of Spanish and Hebrew, not English, but to please ask questions later. He speaks (I find out later) about the meaning of Hanukkah, and how he is trying to create a Jewish community in Córdoba that is not Reformed, not Orthodox, not anything but simply Jewish. Religious tolerance, he says, is what we need, and my heart is with him. The older man gestures for Merav to light a candle, and does so with all of the other Jews, then he looks at me and holds out the candle for me to take. He must know that Ryan and I are not Jewish because of our awkwardness throughout the whole thing, not knowing when and what to say, like a Catholic church when I don't know when to kneel, but nonetheless I climb the chair, get level with the Hanukiah, and light the eighth candle of Hanukkah.

Feasting on the Hanukkah goodies in the museum part of the house––sugar donuts, challah bread and salt, anise liquor that reminds Merav of home, cookies, and thick, Spanish sweet wine made from raisins––I realize why there are not enough Jews in Córdoba to create a synagogue, and why there are only three old synagogues left in Spain: the Jews are either exiled or dead. I am further enraged as we stroll the incredible expanses of the Mezquita Catedral ("Mosque Cathedral"), among the nearly a thousand arches, wide open foyer of orange trees, a soaring minaret/bell tower, the many Christian side chapels and the magnificent cathedral among Moorish architecture: how two different religions expressed the glory of God. I am enraged because, in this converted church, there are glorious pictures of Christ opposite Spanish monarchs; a chapel of St. Paul holding a broadsword, the image of the Cross of Christ, which is odd for a man who had given up the sword; swooping battle scenes with angels butchering their naked opponents with the Cross/broadswords held high.

And as I see these things I think how unlike Jesus they are. How a church effective is very rarely a church that is richly adorned. This is not to tear down the cathedral, in fact, I think it is beautiful and one of the best spots in Spain––it is the Moor's capital and prize mosque––but when I think of Spain's history, I understand some and am baffled by other bits. I understand the 1492 Reconquista and the removal of the Moors: I understand why Ferdinand and Isabella would remove with violence what had been taken from Spain through violence. What I don't get, though, is how one could justify the Inquisition (which had its seat in Córdoba in a castle we did not go in) and the expulsion of all the Jews from Spain and, by a marriage promise, from Portugal. The culture lost! The lives destroyed! Granted, the displaced are long resettled, but I fear those attitudes still persist in the darker sides of our human nature, and if we do not educate about it then we will stumble into the horror again, just with a different religion, or a different race of people. I don't want to wade through the aftermath to find out we repeated what proud people just as human as us did five hundred years ago.

Merav is not really on fire

Merav is on fire. She yells, "It's not funny!" from the kitchen, but it is, and she tries to quench the flames with water. I tell her we fight fire with bread. And milk.

It is my night of making dinner and, faced with a lackluster pasta sauce––thrown out of whack by my choice of unpredictably sweet canned tomatoes––I dash the sauce with chilies. This doesn't do much for overall taste, but creates some sweaty faces 'round the table. Ian rocks back, exhales thoroughly, and says, "Are there chilies in here." Ryan loves the heat; Sally complains how she doesn't have any chilies as I wind up with chili after chili. Merav, however, is different. She gets one and covers her mouth like she is trapping a rampaging alien that comes to life with just enough pasta sauce combined with balsamic––and it is on fire, too; the terror!––and Merav, also on fire, runs to the kitchen, where she tries to wash the chili down with water, saying "It's not funny!" But it is.

Perhaps this is cruel. Well, yes it's cruel, but we have such jokes among friends, and we love Merav. We are on the move, through a country where giant legs of ham––jamón ibérico––hanging from their hooves in shops are as ubiquitous as the Spanish language, and this is interesting when traveling with an Israeli Jew. Yet we are unstoppable. We are headed from Málaga toward the Camino de Santiago and the Ruta Campostela and we are awesome, Ryan and his tapestry of digital pictures, Merav and her half-made didgeridoo in a hand-woven shoulder case, and, well, me, who flies on the wings of words like the mighty pterodactyl.

Málaga rains

Málaga rains and Sally ushers the dogs into their blanketed, pillow-filled shelters under the tables outside. It is the first rain since we've been here and then some, and though it's not heavy it is continuous, hopefully filling up our several parched wells.

We have no fear, because Ryan has a new nickname. Even if the waters burst from the heavens, if the clouds that envelop our little abode in mist were to liquefy, we don't even need a life preserver because we know who Ryan is. After discussing celebrity lookalikes, how I get Jake Gyllenhaal and Jim Carey and Ian gets Woody Allen for some reason, we now know why Ryan hangs around in a bathing suit, wants to go to EMT school, likes to speak in a German or Austrian accent, and probably conceals an innate desire to sing and dance. Ian points and exclaims: "You look like David Hasselhoff!"

Passions

Merav creates a didgeridoo our of an old branch she hollows out and lacquers in her spare time. Ryan uploads video of goats and landscape and sound. Sally and Ian raise animals and create massive globes in the style they were made before North America had tried and true boundaries which could be sketched. Others have passions here too, from the dogs chewing on the leftovers from the pig matanza to Blackie the cat dashing into the house like an unwelcome, over-cuddly shadow. The sun goes up and down with regularity.

For me, I poke my lip out a little because I am a writer. I don't know what that means half of the time, and sometimes I wish I wanted to be a doctor, saving lives, and sitting here in Spain, deciding about future, I would know, regardless of what kind of medicine I wanted to do, that I needed to go to medical school. Of course, for a doctor, there are tons of decisions about future, but I'm not talking about those. I'm saying that, right now, instead of one logical path, there are several different question marks on the horizon, hidden like a prize you're not sure you want to receive behind a game show curtain. A writer is a ship that manufactures its own wind.

So, after tottering for a while, I am applying to a film school. This is not opposed to Divinity School; in fact, I feel it's more a completion of it. Frederick Buechner said, "The place God calls you is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet," and I believe one of my areas of deep gladness, which is unique to me, is to bring lessons I have learned through my faith into film and other storytelling. Though, like a good David Mamet fan, I have tried to avoid film school and its formalized systems of education in favor of cutting my teeth on film jobs, with the DC filmmakers, the real McCoy. But after months of pestering my contacts, there were no jobs for me, and no benefactors to step forward and say, "Let me encourage and develop your craft." All that I have is the incredible blessing of you, my readers, family and friends and fellow travelers, all of you that make me feel on top of the world, reminding me that God has given us gifts for a reason, and how some of the best art comes out of catharsis.

I can't remember where I heard it, perhaps at a Christian leadership conference, but someone told me that a person should do "whatever makes them pound the table." If I do not do this film thing, I fear I will slide into apathy, which I have no time for anymore. The world is hungry, and I, like you, have deep gladnesses to meet its hunger. And where hunger is fed, I like to think there is reason to dance in the streets.

Because we're English

There is much rejoicing on the farm because Bianca, our moody horse, has found a new place to live. She has been living in Ian's old tool shed, beside the free range chickens, Harry the gigantic hog, and Kate, the mischievous little pig who leaps out of her pen and wanders the slopes, searching for food under rocks that, when lifted, wind up on the road.

Ian and Sally have great hearts but, like Phil and Chris in Ireland, they're English. While the connotations of "English" are different in Spain and Ireland, but when it comes to animal husbandry "English" is a common moniker in both cultures. That is to say, whereas Irish and Spanish kill their animals when they are of no use, hanging their hunting dogs and leaving horses tied up, unfed, to be the latest mortal victims of the economic downturn, Phil and Chris would rather see themselves dehydrated than the goats go without. Ian and Sally, Englishpeople, balk in disbelief at the cruelty of their neighbors, Sally doing a 180 km walk to raise awareness about animal cruelty–specifically for hunting dogs–some years ago. So, often when they are not killed, unwanted animals get schlepped upon the porches of the English.

The goats here, formerly of Spanish ownership, browse the hillsides for their simple sustenance. Bianca, however, is like a big, temperamental, also Spanish baby with the strength and appetite of an Austrian bodybuilder. Despite both of them being kicked, Ian tries to train her with the techniques he's used with dogs, pigs, and other animals. The harsh truth, however, is that there are miles of jobs to do before Bianca can be fully attended to, and Ian needs his body to help Sally at the farm, and to wander off to build in order to pay bills, so he cannot afford to be kicked again. So it is with much joy and some wistfulness that Bianca finds a new home, though for the meanwhile she remains here, dear as this morning's newborn piglets, the pack of nine dogs trailing us up the road, and a cup of hot tea amid a day's labors like a breath of fresh air.

Climbing a mountain like ascending a staircase

We are rugged and awesome. Day by day we tread mountain paths fit for goats, with goats, to pluck olives and almonds, and provide animals with acorns, which will in turn provide them with life. There is so little water here that we don't bother to flush the toilet, we wash it down manually with the dark, cumulonimbus water which pours freely into our changing, chosen receptacles from the open pipe of the washing machine. We knife and devour prickly pears straight from the cactus and drink water we bottle ourselves from the stream at the top of the tallest mountain around.

Yes, we are awesome because of this, and more. Goats may tread this land and feed on it even when there is no grazing––on bark and twigs and such––but only we can claw out the rugged earth and conform its rocks to our stone walls. While mastering these things, a piece of clothing may rebel against us; it may say, "Nay! Let us not be put to such a test!" But when it agrees with a stick or stone that they should meet and tear, we subdue the troublesome clothing with thread and make it one piece again.

Actually, the earth was already cut for us, but the stones were heavy enough that we could only pile them with much gusto and manliness, the three of us, Ryan, Ian, and myself being the only human males on the farm, the women off somewhere else. When cigarettes are smoked here, though not by Ryan or me, they are only hand-rolled, and my forearms ache with a day's worth of hefting stones and mixing concrete.

To contribute to our hardcore awesomeness at this farm, we know Merav, a traveling Israeli who, like us, left making goats' cheese to come to Spain. In her case, she worked with troubled kids, teaching them simple life principles through agricultural labor and the stewardship of animals. In philosophy, she wants to be like Zorba the Greek, and though the book has topped my reading list for a while, I have not read it. She tells me about how Zorba worked random jobs, did random things, and kept life simple, enjoying every little moment along the way. As she speaks of Zorba, one can detect that, in her life, she would love to marry a man like Zorba and live in a mud-and-stone house that they built. Simple.

In many ways our lot is like the Old West. We are isolated, at least from the city; waterless to the extent that we took our first showers yesterday, after five days, and wear the same dirty, durable jeans; we live among scrub brush and hardy, centuries-old olive trees. When Ian and Sally moved here from England, there was no water at all, forcing them to construct a network of wells. They carved the road out of rock to get to our house from the main road, and when someone comes toward us, our doorbell is a pack of dogs, whose ears and bodies perk up with attention to what we cannot hear.

Now they have electricity, and even receive internet for free after allowing the company to use their land, if needed, to provide better access. But if you turn your back on the house, and block out the clicking hum of the power lines, then it would not be so surprising to see revolutionary pistoleros coming down the road, or perhaps a group of marching pikemen in their bright, feudal tunics, their regality suggesting that the local lord had a money, influence, and a penchant for fashion.

A word picture

Mountains upon mountains, like the endless cutlery of shark's teeth, without the whole terrifying quality. Málaga lays in a hollow among them, Lego buildings piling up, with the unseen people walking around the yarn-sized streets.

Somewhere behind is our porch on the edge of the mountain is the Mediterranean Sea, but is obscured by so many hills and shrubs and olive trees that we can't see it, at least without having to actually get up from our comfortable chairs and view so open that Merav suggests we imagine we're looking at the ocean.

Of neighbors, we have one nearby: the one next to our rental house, and they share the responsibilities of readying the place for holiday travelers, a house you can see clearly from the city of Málaga. The rest of the neighbors are like Meteora (my favorite spot in Greece), looking out at the surrounding cliff monasteries. Suffice to say, the quickest way to get there would be to shoot a grappling hook, tie it off, and prepare a zip line, which I can do because I was a high ropes instructor at Camp Leesburg. I would do this, you know, if we weren't so comfortable in our chairs, and if the little Jack Russell didn't seem to be framed by the entirety of Spain, laying so comfortably on the wall where a zip liner would otherwise stand.

Bus stations

The middleaged Spanish barmen have the look of culinary opportunists, standing invitingly at a room-long bar where I am sending vibes to pastries, wishing they would leave their protective glass casing and come towards my belly... It is the bus station in Granada, which we visited at 4:30 AM when we arrived and to which we've returned at 7 after a rough sleep in the cold, headrest-less metal chairs. The barmen are the same, with the somewhat snappy dress that suggests professional and clean, but not intimidating; with the look in the eyes that says, "Please ask me a question, and let me answer it with a sandwich, beer, or pastry."

Crossing back and forth over the United States' Eastern Seaboard, I became well acquainted with Amtrak stations. I have noticed, whereas some stations are real gems (many great holdovers from older days, New York City's Penn and DC's Union Station being fine examples) most lack tremendously in the culinary department. In fairness, one can find a good steak or such during meal times on the train itself, but, if one is laid over in Jacksonville, one is relegated to chips and cookies from one vending machine, ice cream or soda from another, and – is it oddly? – hamburgers from another machine.

The irony is, with such a breadth of vending machines, Jacksonville is an upscale station compared to others.

Enough of this ragging on Amtrak. What this contrast really is to me is an interesting glance into cultural values. For the Spanish, it is important to have – if not healthy – fresh food, beer & wine, and espresso readily available while traveling. The barmen, who seem to have served for years, pass us everything on a ceramic plate, with real silverware, and one can watch the crema as it slides down the glass to finely settle on the espresso halfway down. We in the States don't demand such treatment, nor do we demand such a professional level of service from, for instance, the grills one may find in a Greyhound station. I wonder: if stations were supplied with fifteen-different-species-of-sweet-and-savory-(and chocolate!) pastries, would we even eat them? Are napolitanos too rich for our blood? Do we eat so fast that we don't have the time to fully experience an eclair? Or, hey, do we just not like sweet fillings and puff pastry because they are bad for our pastry, and we have a figure to watch?

Regardless, I think all of our lives could be enriched by more bocadillo cutters: machines like those which divide ham into cold cuts, they split a thick hoagie roll into a sandwich bun in the twinkling of an eye, the invisible blade almost completely halving the thing with a satisfying twang! twang!! twang!!! To me, the onomatopoeia could be better heard as awesome! awesome!! awesome!!!

La reína estudiante

The hundred-some soldiers in camouflage and berets are stock-straight and getting lambasted by their commanding officer. Watching the placing of a wreath for historically fallen comrades, the corps stands tall as if their upraised chins were also in salute, or they were, say, shackled at attention and made to climb over a wall.

We are at the Air Force Building, and this is but one of the festivities surrounding the long weekend for El Día del Constitución. The wreath-laying done, they break ranks, but wait! This ain't no civilian ceremony! You don't leave when y'er done! This is the military, and you leave only when you're good and told to! At least that's what I perceive is going on, through my broken Spanish and Inma's narration, given the discliplining spectacle in full view of the public.

Of course, we aren't cool enough to be here for the long weekend. We're not cool enough because, in fact, we didn't even know it was a long weekend, much less a holiday. We are here to see Sarah Richardson, la reína estudiante de España before she heads back to Stetson in a few days.

We walk to see her because public transit, though great, censors the true view of a city, and in my dreams I'm riding a bicycle. After the lambasting, we--Sarah la reína estudiante, Inma who is her awesome Spanish friends who casts warmth and culture with every expression, and some other neat friends and Ryan and myself--we all eat tapas and speak much Spanish to kind ears.

It's good to see Sarah. The last time I got to see her was when I wandered into her room at the Wesley House and bugged her for a few minutes (which is how it goes as residents at our beloved campus ministry), and she is now as she was then: friendly, fun, and inspiring, albeit this meeting in two different languages. At night, with even more friends, we wander two hours in search of gelato, which we never find. We do, however, see that an Irish bar is broadcasting the Gator game at 10 PM, and listed as "10 PM" instead of 22:00, for us Tebow fans who keep time differently from the rest of the world.

Of Madrid there is much to say, but here are two key points: Ryan and I were fifteen meters away from the thrones in El Palacio Real and hence fifteen meters away from ruling the Spanish kingdom including all of its wealth and colonies. Secondly, I felt tempted, even justified, to gloat to Pam that we visited El Museo de la Reína Sofía (for free!) and stood beside Picasso's "Guernica" as well as all of the studies that he drew and painted in preparation. But we don't need often ill-begotten and infinite colonial wealth, nor the changing room with wall dècor so intriguing that I can't begin to desribe or fabulous green and red ceilings of carved wood. We don't need a "Porcelain Room" where, running up the walls on all sides appears one solid piece of porcelain, of cherubs connected to grape vines connected to doorknob-type faces one might find on a castle gate, all of this ascending with no cracks. And if we don't need all of that, we definitely don't need to gloat to Pam, because she loves Picasso and that would be mean. Besides, it's nice not having a permanent job and to be suddenly and decisively placed as monarch for life, well past retirement age when I could sit back, drink coffee, and write memoirs--well, that would be royally lame.

Even our close brush with royalty, however, does not alleviate us from being stranded without a hostel for a night due to such a gigantic holiday weekend. Usually, rooms are plentiful and dirt cheap in the off-season, but when all of Spain is out of work for four days and the restaurants of Madrid are standing room only, several backpackers must move elsewhere, such as a midnight bus ride to Granada and napping from 0430 in the metal chairs of a cold bus station, along with several other travelers. Nonetheless, this makes for just one more awesome story, even if it is not a night, especially comfort and temperature-wise, that I would like to repeat.


Now, the monarch job bit is only partially in jest. While it is nice having time to travel in between responsibilities, killing this week while waiting for our next opportunity to open (thanks to the holiday) has been arduous on my wallet as well as my soul. Ryan seems to be doing okay, and was enthralled at the access granted to us in the Palace and the incredible modern, contemporary, and especially videographical collection of La Reína Sofía. I liked these as well but, for me, I have to feel like I'm contributing to society, and, living as uninfluential a life as I do at this moment, I have trouble.

Perhaps it would be different if we were more fiscally viable, supporting not just historical venues and hostels, but the many and varied street performers who help make a place so wackily memorable (that is discounting, however, most of the living statue community, whose presence mostly makes a place more creepy, though there were some delightful ones, including a guy with chicklets for buckteeth, dressed as a waiter with serving plates and drinking glasses, who was permanently sprawled in midair, as if he'd stepped on a banana peel). I'm speaking of the saxophone player, for example, whose soulful music reverberates throughout the clear, spacious Palacio Cristal, in which only a handful are allowed at a time, bouncing off of the art installations and the walls with the leaves of Parque de el Retiro--a sort of Central Park or Boston Common--autumn-colored and waving outside.

Moreover, oh! The local cuisine! And not the cheap stuff, but that which is characteristic and insipiring about a place! Give me a healthy budget for food in Spain and Italy and I will eat all the potatoes and sausage in Ireland!

For now, my prayer for myself is that this heart is moved to poetry and storytelling. This is how I can influence the world and how I can let you know that I love you all. That the people I meet and serve will only be a fan to this flame, and help to channel it rightly. I can, also, follow the advice of dear friends, such as Sarah Campbell, whose heart, at least the part that remains in Madrid, spends time drinking sangria and eating fish at a brightly decorated restaurant with grog barrels in view that describes itself as kind of like "a psychadelic pirate ship". Too slathered in butter, the headless fish tried to escape, but I got it, Sarah, I got it, and 'twas delicious.

Setbacks

The rocky, arid-seeming mountains of coastal Andalucía are beautiful and surprising, especially coming from lush, green Ireland, but please, always ask the bus driver where he or she is taking the bus. We board the bus at Málaga Airport in the space marked "City Bus", which is precisely where the airport staff told us to find the bus to the City Centre. The price is comparable and all of the kind-looking people with their bags itch to get on board. Yet the ride over sand/rock mountains, olives trees, and white villas over the Mediterranean seems overly long, and when we see the station, we notice the word "Marbella" written over and over...

Marbella I hear is wonderful, and it has a very helpful, utilitarian ATM, but thirty minutes later we were headed back to Málaga, on the right bus, forty-five minutes away.

Yet I believe that God is a great caller of audibles, seeing the way the defense sets up in a football game––and how I have a tendency to mess things up––and working out some blessing or learning experience in spite of myself, like (in a serious sense) some of the ex-offenders in my Spiritual Support Group who, because of their bad calls that led them to prison, do some awesome work with other young guys who are on the path they used to tread.

So we meet Omar, who first tells us we are, in fact, on the right bus, then winds up sitting in front of us. He is a spindly man, with a hair cut like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II, though that is where the resemblance ends. I get his name wrong at first and ask, "Oman? Like the country?" "No," he says, "like Omar Sharif!"

Omar is a professor of pottery at La Universidad Polular in Málaga and lives across the city in Old Town, just three blocks away from our hostel. So, when I ask him if he knows of La Calle Victoria, he smiles, buys a pack of cigarettes and, smoking as we go, proceeds to lead us across the high rises of the new, touristy beach city, over the river into Old Town, through a very old, traditional bar of wooden barrels of wine which also sells fish in the morning, past the Roman theater and the Moorish palace behind, past the wells between buildings where house construction has stopped with the advent of new ruins. He also, on our roundabout route, leads us into one of twenty-two houses which protect the barges and vestments the Easter parade. In the middle of this house––really a small cross between a museum and a warehouse––stand two large barges of wood, overlaid with gold and silver. On top of the gold one shall sit the Christ and the silver one the Mary, each of which has four large beams extending to the front, back, and underneath, with name stickers for each monk who will carry it.

He tells us about the vestments the priests wear in the ceremony, and all through his broken English to me and my broken Spanish back to him. When I ask him if his pottery is beautiful or functional, he says he only makes beautiful pottery. I believe it, and eventually he even helps us find our hostel, which was advertised by one tiny sticker on the intercom and was very quaint and nice, undoubtedly because it is hidden in upper stories, the tree fort of hostels.

We meet Nicole from Switzerland and Henry, whom I think is of Asian descent, from Sweden. We wander the old streets under fabulously bright Christmas decor made of lights and a Nativity scene of flowers and life-size camels made of woven branches. I feel awkward because, at dinner, I am both the only one who orders Málaga's special sweet wine and, when the server plops down a plate of free olives, the only one who eats olives; but hey, free olives.

Nicole has a significant other back home, as do I, and we swap stories. I get to tell the story of Rachel's own adventures, and it brings joy and fascination. Additionally, Nicole and Ryan and I connect deeply over Scrubs, and she is thrilled about getting back home, when the 8th Season will have come out in German. Henry may think we're crazy, but he also thinks we're cool, and he is cool as well.

Yet the bus debacle and the fact that I killed my battery charger and somehow left my cool car towel in Ireland (yes, I dry with a car towel––it is small, absorbent, and awesome) turns my mind to wily schemes: How does one legally make money while abroad? By content writing for the internet? By asking for it for Christmas? Is it selling of one's soul to let a company place ads on one's blog? In spite of all this, God has brought us this far, and we trust we will be brought farther, so long as we're good stewards of goods and no longer leave cool towels for the Irish.

I'm still scheming, though. I ask Ryan if we can save money getting to Madrid by convincing a wizard to turn us into a horse or leopard so that we can run to Madrid, so long as the spell is undone when we reach the city. He thinks this is dumb, so I suggest, perhaps, his spell could be like that of the Frog Prince, where a Spanish girl would have to kiss him for the spell to be undone, and they could live happily ever after. Instead, he suggests (unimaginatively) that we just catch a bus there.

Slán, Éireann...

Farewell to the country of rural green in so many acres, dotted with sheep and cows. To the cows sauntering down the road in the Burren, their brown and white swaying like the sagebrush in the expansive, glacier-cut rock. Farewell to the friendly locals who curse a lot and are hard to understand and make sure we've had our tea, been fed, and are enjoying ourselves. Farewell to the bars where old men talk to us about Paranormal Activity and how, if you want to hold a girl's hand, it's a good movie for a date night. Farewell to Ightemurragh Castle and other unexcavated neighborhood ruins, its base layered with trees, beer cans, and shotgun shells. Farewell, historic rainfall. Farewell, Irish folk and rebel music. Farewell to the spellbinding little island that churns out literary giants like Guinness. Slán, Éireann.

Phil and Chris send us off with great food (lasagna and tea bread), The Wind that Shakes the Barley (a must-see), and one last great craic with the goats (mmm... milking...). Scott, Ben's older brother, picks us up in Limerick and swings us through Lahinch (one of his favorite surfing spots); the magnificent, iconic Cliffs of Moher (though we decided not to risk erosion and death for a better view, over the block-off gate); the pinhead town of Doolin which hums with tourists and music in season; and the continuous, tiered, flat rock of the Burren, where I met a cow. I assure the cow I mean it no harm or swipe of grazing, but he doesn't trust me and wanders off. In the Burren's craggy rocks are 75% of Ireland's natural plantlife, and the frustrations of Oliver Cromwell, the buttface. He said: "[The Burren is] a savage land, yielding neither water enough to drown a man, nor tree to hang him, nor soil to bury him." And these words from somebody who claimed to be of strong Christian faith. No wonder we're cynical. Oh, how the effects of imperialism have not changed!

At Scott's in Ennis, Ryan betters the world by uploading a bunch of pictures. I, however, get the unexpected chance to better the world by defeating the Nazis and Japanese in "Call of Duty: World At War". Granted, I've beaten these empires before, four times before in the other "Call of Duty" games, plus I don't know how many other times with "Medal of Honor", "Aces over Europe" and etc. I don't know about you, but how many times have you, like, planted the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin?

I only half think that we should defeat the Nazis and, for example, invading aliens whenever possible. The other half of me realizes video games are a departure from life, and though I learn more from a book, sometimes I need that departure. But we can beat these things because we are awesome. Because you are awesome. Because, as we healed from those war years we ensured that the disenfranchised in Germany and Japan didn't remain so, that people in the States could afford college, that Civil Rights (eventually) was forthcoming. What issues could we sock a good one to if we allowed our American and worldwide melting pot to be side-by-side in the trenches, the factories, the rebuilding?

Expletives included

You've been warned.

To quote Incubus, the country sky "resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it." A lot of holes, constellations I've never seen, like spilled salt across a black table, converging into warriors, ladles, beasts.

I get the nickname Spiderman because Ryan lets it slip to the Rhodes that, while we were sardine-packed in a Cork bar weeks ago for Patrick's birthday, a dude hits on me and says, "You should've been in Spiderman!" I pretend, as I have done in Dupont Circle, that I have no idea of what he's doing, and proceed to discuss web-slinging with the dude. Graciously, Monnica mentions something about my girlfriend back home, but it does no good. Phil, Ben, and Chris find this hilarious.

Weeks later, Ryan goes to the kitchen at the wrong time. He deposits his plate in the sink and comes back into the living room when he pauses, realizes he's forgotten something, and kind of turns back toward the food room. Phil says, in jolly vulgarity, "C'mon, Fat Fuck, get some more." So Ryan is Fat Fuck, despite his being the slenderest male on the farm apart from Dusty, the greyhound. Of course, all of this vulgarity is done with much good hearted joking and back-and-forth wittiness, so humorous that I think I hear Major––the most ornery of our billygoats––chuckling through his mouthful of hay and goat profanities.

Phil and Chris are incredible. When they lived in England, they took in foster kids, many of whom cried their heavy hearts away into the warm, absorbent coat of a loving wolfhound. When several goats are born––and Anglo Nubian goats can have anywhere from one to five kids––some are kept, some are sold, and several more are donated to an animals-instead-of-cash program similar to the Heifer Project; we watch a Discovery Channel program on Tanzania, and play "Where's Waldo" with the Anglo Nubian goats, seeing if any bear the Rhodes surname (though the one we spot isn't theirs). They are critical of military involvement we all should be critical of, saying "What right did [the US] have to be in Vietnam... The Brits [and UN] to be in Korea... England to be in the Falkland Islands?" Indeed, why did we try to play parent to these areas? Anyone with kids knows that kids don't always do what we want them to do (even when we think it's best for them). And they tend to diverge from some opportunities we set up by virtue of the parent setting it up. To make it worse, the U.S. and U.K. are not the most beloved of parents.

They are incredible because they make us a part of their family and never ask us to do something that they wouldn't do right beside us or in our place. Phil says what he means with a colorful honesty that is both blunt and endearing and, often, hilarious. Hence our admiration when he puts his foot down on bladder cancer and says, "I'm gonna fucking beat it," because the alternative is unlivable. Hence the humility when he says to Ryan, "Usually, when it comes to Christians, I don't give a fuck. But you and Adam, you're okay."

Our ministry is to love people where they are and share our joy, planting seeds and watering them and realizing God is the only one who can make things grow. Too often, we forget in ministry that we are all human, that we have common truths to our common lives. We love, we touch, we hope, we are impassioned... These are the truths of our common lives, which every being can relate to, even if they sound different in the vernacular.

Farrier works on Fred

We're stymied for a moment because Fred is gigantic and no, he's not self-conscious. He's a horse, and this time his invasion of space is purposeful, unlike the time we were looking at two satellites circumnavigating the skies and stuff and he snuck up behind us, hoping we won't notice. I had turned and thought, "That's a gigantic chestnut goat!" But it wasn't. "Get back, Fred, we're coming to finish mucking your stall," I said. "Okay Adam," he said in that slow, goofy tone he always says. For some reason, he always sounds like Eeyore to me.

In the normal world, Fred is standing tripod, tied up his door in the aisle of the goatshed, his free leg angled into the black lap apron of a master farrier, his apprentice drinking coffee with us, watching. Fred takes it well as the farrier batters the shoes to fit on an anvil with a glassbreaking, metallic clang, and as the nails come through the bottom of his hoof and come out the front and sides. The farrier also cuts off excess hoof, and apparently the nails are like driving a pin through the dead end of a fingernail, if ever someone wanted to do that.

The farrier quiets Fred a few times before looking squarely at Bramble, who always sways with a quiet energy while she waits to be milked. "I miss the goat that was here," he said, referencing the castrated male––he pulled a cart for Chris, in addition to being a pet without billygoat stink––who died this year. The farrier continues: "He used to tease and mess with Fred and keep him occupied."

Ryan is awed to witness a master and apprentice team, passing down the blacksmithing trade in much the same way as it was done in the Middle Ages. For me, I'm treated to see the rural farming community which Wendell Berry writes about, that which is sadly in decline in the United States. This is the community where local farmers provide local food, local schools provide local education, and local tradespeople whose livelihoods depend upon meeting the business and personal needs of the community. Wendell Berry laments that, in his old Kentucky town where he grew up, the farms are becoming more mechanized and we are caring for land less, the farmers are moving away, and that the schools, veterinarians, etc. are no longer local and serving just that community, but one of these may be miles away and serve many small towns. There are many other points to bring up about Berry's thoughts on this agricultural mechanization and diaspora, but chief among my issues is, when we don't have community we don't have common history, or, worse, we don't have common jokes!

The farrier, though not always the promptest hand on the clock, jokes with Phil and Chris, gets updates on the kids, and answers their questions about his wife and what they've been up to. Apparently, Chris tells me later, the male goat to which he referred earlier used to nibble on Fred and vice versa, because that's the way the only two dudes in the goatshed scratched their issues.

Pig soup

I have decided. When I am actually in one place in life, I want to own chickens. I want them if only for the pennies of their upkeep, delicious eggs, and fun sounds. I am, however, leery and debating the merits of pigs. Our four are barely a few months old and already they are––and naturally so––a picture of some serious pork. One must ask: do I like pork enough? Can I eat what pokes its scrunchy face through the gaps in the fence as I come with food, and what makes the most fun noises on the farm? Am I willing to shell out the feeding fees, the collecting of old vegetables and bread, the dirtier pen, the abattoir fees, the butcher fees? That is, unless you're Phil, the old hand, who sets up a tent and table outside the cottage and butchers them himself.

The four oinky quarries wander in the thick, brown broth that is wrought through poo, dirt, and historic rainfall. At one point the driest spot on the acre, stepping into it now is like an ocean dropoff, up to mid-ankle on my Wellies in gross suction. Stepping in properly for the first time, coming through the gate instead of over the upright wooden pallets, I'm armed with a cabinet door. Ryan has one too, and Kate a stick. The billygoats watch us curiously and Monty cries "Ladies!" [in Goat]. It's a pig drive, and it's about to go down.

Ideally, one pig emerges and I get my cabinet door in its face. Two other cabinet doors will close in on either side, acting as overly big, protective blinders. Kate will then prod it along with a stick as it barrels on into the unknown (and its new stall). Ben warns us they're strong.

The moment. The gate opens and... they're all scared and don't want to come out. So Chris, all five-odd foot of her, wades in and scares one out, at which time we fall apart. It runs across the green. It squirts through the gaps of our formation. It runs behind the pen in the back corner of the acre and we fear it'll up-and-over the ditch and be gone.

Ingenuity begins. The food bowl comes out. Phil trumps our cabinet doors with the batten for the pigs' gate, about ten feet long. I call out, "Does anybody have a lasso?" and remember how many times Lee the veterinarian/cowboy thought it was funny to lasso me while talking to someone (a.k.a. being distracted) at the Wesley House. Ben has a blue rope with a slipknot, and it'll do.

When we finally get it moving, it's with Ben's rope around his neck, the food bowl in front of him, us in a "V" behind, and the billygoats still watching and Monty crying "Ladies!" We pressure it into the barn and learn quickly what a cornered animal looks like. Its eyes go red and it thrashes and squeals with the violence of an Irish revolutionary. I yank the door open and we shove the creature into the pen as it goes for Ben's legs like delicious, murderous old vegetables.

Chris suggests we let all the pigs out in one fell swoop. We go from thinking such a thing daft, then a good idea, to finding it daft again. Turns out is is a good idea, and the pigherds form a "V" with minimal running and few cabinet doors, walking the pigs to their new pen. When they see their friend languishing in the fresh straw, there's no thrashing, only a "hey dude, what's up?" At least I think that's how it went.

Even though their pointy feet cut through the mud like toothpicks (whereas we struggled to step without losing our boots), we're glad to have them out of the pigsty, which the winter rains quickly turned to a cesspool. They seem to approve, their pink/black bodies scraped clean by the straw and curled together in their own piglike version of spooning.