Ordinary Magic by Cameron Powell

Author:Cameron Powell [Powell, Cameron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Medical, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781684017577
Google: LbwKtQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1684017572
Publisher: MASCOT BOOKS
Published: 2018-06-04T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15:

Descent

Day 24: High Up in El Acebo, A Heart on a Platter

At first the terrain leading away from the Cruz de Ferro is easy—a slight downhill slope on compacted white sand bounded by milled lumber. Before long, though, we enter an all-downhill, punishing, rocky, single-track trail, some of it without switchbacks. On we go, Mom will write, through more beautiful, vast, and green countryside. Up a long hill, down the same long hill, and I am sure they moved El Acebo another 10 kilometers. This is the middle of nowhere, and nothing, except hills and a wide expanse of land.

It’s interesting that as my mother kneeled at the cross, into her mind came insh’Allah—as God wills—an expression of embracing uncertainty. The Judeo-Christian tradition that led to the Lord’s Prayer, with its “thy will be done”, arrived at the same conclusion. It will unfold as it will. This isn’t fate, or destiny, or G-d, it’s just what happens. If we agree that we should not resist the reality of what happens to us, then what happens to us is, perforce, exactly what, in a sense, is supposed to happen to us. That is, by not resisting, you can achieve the same effect of surrender that a belief in God is designed to bestow. And thus do we arrive at the lessons of both Buddhist psychology and recent science.

Tiny El Acebo (564.3 km) sits on a small mountain and is so isolated that for the first time on the trip the Vodafone USB I plug into my laptop gets no reception at all.

We choose the Meson restaurant and albergue. Mom is ready to eat. We are soooo hungry. Immediately, we get our credentials stamped and order lunch. Me: bean soup, and some sort of meat dish. Carrie and I both order the Botilla del Bierzo, a specialty of the Bierzo area, which on the menu is translated as “pork with Paprika”. I give Carrie a look, she knows I mean the pigs’ heads in Belorado, and she shrugs. “I like spicy food,” she says, “and everything else on here scares me.”

When the waitress sets down our plates, Carrie and I study our boiled cabbage, chickpeas, chorizo, and a beating, pulsating, human heart, covered in paprika. Mom will write, Cameron and Carrie get an odd-looking concoction, a little sack filled with odds and ends—bones and cartilage? Tentatively I begin to saw at it with my knife. It parts in two, yielding unrecognizable chunks of white shards of pig bone, and something that is like, but is not quite, meat.

I turn to Mom, the expert, and say, quietly, so that Carrie does not hear, “Could this be organ meat?”

She peers at it. “I have no idea,” she murmurs. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Try it.”

“You’ll probably really love it,“ I say to Carrie.

She shakes her head. “I’m not touching it.”

I catch the waitress’ attention. “Perdon,” I say, politely, holding up a single, graceful finger. “Una pregunta.” A question. She nods.

“Um, Que es eso?” What is this?

She points to the casing of the meaty sack.

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