flow of stars
I recognize you
Ocean
so hard
to understand
I walked, meditating on the stars in broad daylight. To be exact, I was mulling another line I remembered from that horoscope I’d clipped from the newspaper years ago, a line assuring me that when the circle was broken, I would find “three big, beautiful truths that have been staring you in the face.”
So I continued today, puzzling over meaning found in that long-ago voice from above, that singer of celestial prophecies. My mind followed my footsteps, wandering across the winding kilometers.
I thought one truth might be my connection to music. Magnus had asked me about it one day, saying, “Why did you stop playing? Why didn’t you do anything with it?” I didn’t know exactly. The answer had to do with twisting music into work, as if any regular, singular pursuit would remove it from the realm of art and force it into a resentment that would break my heart. That, and I had completely broken down as I started college, my solid strength melted like magma in the volcano of my exploding fury. That vulnerable heart of music had barely survived. I had barely survived.
But I had survived, lived to tell the tale, to speak the unspeakable. A second truth might be that I was a writer; still, the line between poet and songwriter was virtually indistinguishable in my mind, and it seemed a bit too neat for the Three Truths to be the creative tasks I took on. If I filled the third slot with this spiritual journeying, walking the pilgrim’s way, were those the Big Three? What about my kids? They were a huge Truth in my life, a powerful healing influence for sure. Or all those homeless men and women I had met, who talked with me about the meaning of our existence, the mathematical absolute value of a human life. Talk about Truth.
This walk was sola, today’s Camino. Every day’s camino, in truth, I thought. I knew this traveling, this spiritual road I was on, informed who I actually was. It wasn’t just “interesting,” or fun. I recognized that it was integral to my true self. I was born a peregrina; to walk camino was my Way. This much I knew was true, beyond any doubt. I was born under a wandering star.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I took a detour. An alternate route led along the river out of Negreira, a beautiful, green meander. Muy tranquilo. I was captivated.
I say yes and ever yes whenever the distant, unknown, and beloved beckon me.
— Kahlil Gibran
I was all about detours and beckonings. Yet I nearly skipped the river path, thinking to stick to the main trail…not get lost. But I was saved by a Tolkien T-shirt slogan: Not all those who wander are lost. I took the turn.
For years, I had stayed the course, keeping the same job, living in the same house, wedding myself to external stability in hopes of mitigating the emotional instability of my relationship choices. It had been a spiritual instability, I saw with new clarity. I hadn’t known what I believed in. I hadn’t even truly believed in myself – I believed in only one small trait, my ability to gut it out, my toughness, driven to carry my load without complaint, pushing forward, always pushing ahead through whatever swamp or quicksand I found myself in.
The texture of rivers is ever-changing. Little rapids poured riffling and bubbling over smooth stones and submerged limbs. I watched this flow into slower pools, deep purples and indigos of shadowy hiding places, imagining I saw a ripple of fish below, life moving beneath the surface. Tall, thin trees swayed above these mysteries, guardians of the waterway as well as nourished and fed by it. Sunlight was ushered quietly through the leafy canopy, dappling the paths of both fish and pilgrim, slowly journeying side by side.
It still appeared that the Camino waymarking worked best if I would go to Muxia first, and then Finisterre, so I had changed my plan. Go with the flow, I decided. I was hoping most people were headed to Finisterre and I could continue to enjoy my solitary hiking; so far, this route had been the least crowded of all.
The river opened out into a watery clearing. All was green – algae, duckweed, lilypads, water, trees, air. My eyes, a watery turquoise of green and blue, reflected on the stillness. Reflected, without and within. I wondered how I would return to the world I had known. I saw that I wouldn’t…not in the same way. Not as the same person.
And not yet. Not today. Today, I was coursing downstream. I was in the Flow.
The river is everywhere.
— Herman Hesse, “Siddhartha”
For me to write, I needed to relax my mind. Mentally roll my neck, flex my shoulders, breathe. To write a poem, I needed to get past the surface image, see within some experience. To write a song, on the other hand, I found I needed to listen, intently. Visual art often stimulated poetry within my mind, and I frequently created collaged paintings that included poetry. Songwriting, by contrast, was somehow a process of wave and motion, tuning in to sound waves I heard by listening with my presence rather than with my ear, while moving myself within time and space, as if I was the radio dial. I was quite literally the receiver.
To write the songs I sang, I needed to access both poetry and melody. It was a unique combination, this tuning in, always accomplished solo. The irony of that word, this performance of the individual, was not lost on me. I needed to go on a ramble, by myself, to create. I needed to let go of any destination, and just explore.
Don’t push the river.
— Barry Stevens, Gestalt therapist and author
Wandering was my gestalt – the whole was so much greater than the sum of its parts. What I gained from following my feet was a camino of creativity, an openhearted art studio I carried within me. It was a watery stream, this path. Because of this fluidity, I found a grace in following it. Grace along the Camino, a flow of forgiveness and love that I had not expected or even sought; like dancing with Magnus down the hills, my pain relieved, smiling, humming a tune.
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
— Alan Watts
I wrote three songs before I reached the albergue for the evening. Months later, I would learn that, while I was singing down the Camino, scientists had been discovering two streams of stars flowing within the halo of the Milky Way; they described them as rivers of stars, flocking like birds around the core of our galaxy, flowing their own way through the Via Lactea. They would find more.
river flows
gently arcing as she goes
river flows
and she’s talking to herself
sings a little songriver flows
never staying in one place
river flows
and she’s wandering away
gotta be moving onyou know, the river she can see you
you know, the river she’s not blind
though you think that she will free you
she was only being kind
and so the river flowsriver flows
on the surface she is glass
river flows
she will show you to yourself
revealing nothing moreriver flows
current carries her away
river flows
in a love song to the sea
it’s where she wanna beyou know, the river she can see you
you know, the river she’s not blind
though you think that she will free you
she was only being kind
and so the river flows— “River Flows”