soaring out of the ocean, covered in seashells

I spent a long time trying to think of a cool first sentence for this blog post, but it's really not so much cool as incredibly nerdy. I'm getting so stoked about doing Pèlerinage de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle next year. It's a medieval pilgrimage to where St James is buried in Santiago de Compostela, in Spain.



In the middle ages the pilgrimage route was a huge deal, you would walk from your front door to the church in Spain and for some people the trip took months. Some pilgrims did it for fun and some did it to be forgiven for sins, which is fun too. But after the Black Plague everyone's schedules got a little crazy, and then television was invented and people were too busy with that (missing a couple years of history here). Anyway, now it's cool again, and you can walk on the same paths they took in the Middle Ages. I want to take the path that starts in Southern France and goes through Spain.



The Way of St James combines everything I like: hiking, France, and medieval history. I can't think of any better combination, unless there were animals, and there probably will be sheep so that's covered too. The whole time you get to see awesome mountains and castles like these:





And there are seashells like this one that mark the path.



No one can agree on what their historical symbolism is, but most stories involve someone drowning in the ocean and then soaring out of the water alive, covered in seashells. I love it.

Walking from Marseille area to Santiago de Compostela would take over a month, so I'm going to do an abbreviated trip probably. But I am so excited. If you're going to be in France, you should come with me. If you're not going to be in France you should be. France is the place to be right now.

idleness and chocolate

If you're looking for a good Sunday afternoon activity I recommend sitting down with a huge bag of M&Ms and reading Essays in Idleness, by Yoshida Kenko.

"The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known."

I think half of why I love Yoshida Kenko so much is because I can't even get my brain around the fact that he lived 700 years ago. That's when Chrétien de Troyes was writing (and he's awesome too).

"A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky."

And I think the other half is that even though he lived 700 years ago on the other side of the world everything he says is pretty dead-on, and he just tells it how it is. I feel like he could write for a magazine. Maybe not the technology section, but still.

One should never make a show of having a deep knowledge of any subject. Well-bred people do not talk in a superior way even about things they have a good knowledge of.

And I think he would have liked M&Ms. He'd be crazy not to.

animal fact of the week - I want an aardwolf

Good news: aardwolves are like hyenas, but cuter and less dangerous.



They only eat bugs (kind of like aardvarks) and I'm pretty sure they like being petted. As soon as it's legal I'm going to get one for my apartment. I can't wait to take it on walks.

On a related note, today is the first time I don't wish I lived in the 15th century. Hyenas were running rampant in the middle ages. At night they frequently turned into werehyenas, drinking the blood of dying soldiers and feasting upon knights and damsels in their sleep. Check out this artist's depiction. Yikes.