14 October 2018 The completion of Camino Frances,
Santiago de Compostela

‘No mass in English on Sundays’, said the note.
So I went to hug the Apostle (although I hadn’t meant to), and there was no queue then.
The smell of metal polish: gold and gleaming, glowing jewels shuffled through my sense
of barriers, green and red lights.
The maroon marble steps up to hug his back: marking the way down in unevenness and misunderstanding.

The pre-mass — if that’s what it was — chanted and echoed in front before me, then to my side.
Sit down, they said, megaphoned in languages, or leave:
so I sat. In 799km I had moved my feet daily to go forward, not to look back. Not to sit.

[And here I was, looking back, sitting, and thinking to myself:
who pays, who paid, and who will pay? For the sense of it all? For the gold?]

I thought more than saw: verdigris in high ceilings colouring the space: metal fastenings of previous ornament: the cold, draughty, thought-filled air. It was the sense of reciprocity (contained within the feeling of mutuality in the sound of hushed humans): the joining in of a service where language is not understood but instead felt.

The decorated angels perch overhead: kitsch representations of the soaring feeling offered by kinship and community.

[Yet the uncomfortableness of coin collection — the prayer after all, still linked to the requirement for funds. To pay.]

The botafumeiro swings: surprisingly small, hung orb, medieval simplicity of operation: frightening in speed and the intensity of the movement required to swing its mass. The smell of the incense moves against the swirling noise of the Galician pipes outside.

[I noticed, and felt, the flowers that are real and not fake as I’d been told, and had expected].

I was not to be disappointed: I smiled in Santiago and I am coming home.