10) Roads to Santiago by Cees Nooteboom

like hello perfect afternoon

So this is a short tale of books like dominoes taking over huge swathes of my life. Roads to Santiago is a beautiful text in translation from the Dutch. The author is a poet who has lived with this troubling love for Spain for most of his adult life. The book is not a guide to the pilgrim paths or to any kind of depth of faith experience. I don't even know that you could follow any road Nooteboom takes and get to anywhere, in point of fact. In that, this is not unlike that other rambling Iberian route Journey to Portugal which I tried valiantly to mark out on a map of the country with zero success. (It was a valiant effort. There were colored pencils and copious notes.) I have memories of landscapes my eyes have never seen, and know the smell of churches whose names I cannot remember and have never spoken. Nooteboom considers history as he does the surface of a painting, or a plain, or the quality of air. 

St Francis of the many

His extended contemplations on the work of various artists, mostly Velazquez and Francisco de Zurbaran, are captivating. Particularly as I'd discovered that the St. Louis Art Museum owns one of Zurbaran's many St. Francis of Assisi paintings. There is extraordinary power in that contemplative image. Enough that one year I circled and circled around this catalog of an exhibition from the 1980s that I eventually bought. It's especially unnerving as this exhibition is one that Nooteboom mentions in his book - he went to both the New York and Paris shows. 

Sometimes the synchronicity, it is just odd.

Saw the sheep, knew I wanted it

Another afternoon, another leisurely wander around the art museum's gift shop and I saw a book about Zurbaran that was priced out of my budget. So I copied out the ISBN and went hunting at work. It took about a week for the book to get to me. Best surprise? The text was written by one Cees Nooteboom, Dutch man of letters and part-time resident of Minorca.  

These three books were my companions during a lovely trip to snowbound Hermann, MO one Valentine's Day weekend. It was glorious and cold and solitary and the food was strange and the wine was not great. The books, though. The books were startling.

But don't worry, there's more. Because, you see, I know that there are guides to the pilgrim routes to Santiago, and it's been decided that this long walk is in my future. So back to the distribution center website with me, and will you be surprised? 

So. Anyone wanna help take care of Ethel while I'm gone?

May your libraries offer such grandly quiet adventures as all those many miles of walking.