In The Beginning 

“All children, except one, grew up.”…”Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a”….”Screaming comes a cross the sky.”…You may “Call me Ishmael” (Michael).  “Some real things have happened lately.”…”A story has no beginning or end;” but…”Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”…and…”I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.”…”I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born,… and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”…”In my younger and more vulnerable years my father(mother) gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he(she) told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

“It was a bright, cold day in April (June).”…”The sun shone, having no alternative on the nothing new.”…”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was (definitely) the age of foolishness,…it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going directly to heaven, we were (I was) all going direct the other way.”…”It was like so, but it wasn’t.”… “Where now? Who now? When now?”…

“All this happened, more or less.”…”I will (now begin to) tell you in a few words who I am.”

My sincere thanks to some of my favorite authors and the first lines of a few of their great books: Barrie, Joyce, Pynchon, Didion, Green, Hurston, Maugham, Isherwood, Salinger, Gatsby, Orwell, Beckett, Dickens, Powers, Vonnegut JR., Hawkes

It has always been the moment before the moment that most intrigued me. The trip before the trip, the adventure before the adventure, the walking out into the abyss, which caused me stimulation and growth, as well as discomfort and pain. R.L. Stevenson said something close to what I feel about it; “I go for the sake of going, not for the sake of getting anywhere.” Or something like that?

Thus an idea emerged when prior to an upcoming birthday my dear wife asked me what I wanted. After some reflection I landed upon “The Way“, an ancient pilgrimage in Spain. We had traveled to San Sebastián (Donostia), the Basque region of Spain some years earlier when our son Ryan studied there and he recommended an independent  film by the same title “The Way”, written and directed by Emelio Estevez. The 600 mile portion I was most interested in began in this cool, quaint, cosmopolitan town on northern coast and ran south along the coastline until cutting inland to Santiago de Compostela. Camino del Norte.

This walk predates the more modern Christian Pilgrimage to a pagan one, wherein people would walk to Santiago de Compostela from parts unknown and upon arriving, strip off their clothes, burn them and begin their lives anew. This neo-baptismal-like ritual appealed to me.