Walking: studying, meditating, searching, observing
Santiago’s Walk (Paolo Coehlo’s Santiago’s Walk)
WHILE YOU ARE WALKING
Observe the world around you and enhance your senses and perceptions (smells, sounds, views, etc). Include those in the treatment you will write later.
OUTSIDE AND INSIDE SAN MINIATO
- Explore the dark and repressed side of yourself and use it as an inspiration to write a treatment for a short story.
- Write a treatment of a short story using San Miniato and the dark and repressed side of yourself
- Use what you learnt in the “Artist’s Way”
She counted up the change in her pockets. It was the last of her money, but it wouldn't matter soon anyway. All she needed was 6 euro. Enough to see Giotto's campanile one last time. She softly poked the pile of coins in her hand, searching for hints of gold under all the copper. Her hand held 7.33 euro in change. Sarah sighed almost inaudibly, and leaned back into the stiff pew. She was sitting in one of the middle rows of pews in San Miniato, a church tucked away on a hillside overlooking the city. The sanctuary was deserted, save for one middle-aged woman who sat motionless two pews in front of her. It didn't surprise her that the church was empty, it was 7:30 in the morning, after all. Sarah had come up there to watch the sun rise over Florence one last time. She wondered what sort of hope or trauma had brought the other woman there. She thought about talking to her, but then thought better of it. The smell of frankincense lingered between the marble columns of the church, and the dim light of the church's perpetually dark interior made Sarah feel as if she was in a limbo of sorts. Her thighs began to hurt from sitting. Ghostlike, she arose and began walking towards the front of the church. Ancient frescoes decorated the walls, some unfinished, and she felt separated from time, from the present.
RispondiEliminaShe dropped the 1.33 she didn't need in the donation box near St. Miniato's shrine, and lit a candle for herself. She wasn't Catholic, far from it, but maybe that little light would be a tiny beacon to God, if He was out there. She sat on the step next to San Miniato's grave, and stared at the worn patterns in the floor. Sarah looked up over her shoulder at the body of the Saint, who supposedly carried his head up the hill after being beheaded. She felt a little sorry for him, oddly enough. "I hope you're being treated a little better in the afterlife", she thought. There was nothing left for her now, here, or anywhere. She got up and left the church, walking over the forgotten tombs in the floor, walking over the people she'd soon be joining.
She made her way back to the Piazzale to see Florence, one more time. And as she looked out over the city in all its beauty, she felt no joy, only a vast emptiness where the joy used to be. Tears filled her eyes and she backed away from the vista. She wept bitterly on the base of the bronze David that watched over the city, while the souvenir vendors went about their business, setting out stands of cheap novelties. Why should they care?
414 steps separated her from from freedom. She counted each one. Unexpected memories flooded her as she climbed. 327. When Danny Frye dumped her in the 8th grade. 313. The unrequited crushes she had throughout high school. 278. Running through the snow with her pet beagle when she was 10. She hoped she'd see her dog again. The memories came slower and more clearly as she neared the top. 15. Her father, putting a band-aid on her knee when she fell off her bike. 14. The first time her father hit her. 13. All the times she'd hide in her closet when he came home drunk. 5. Her mother, before she died. 4. Her first kiss. 3. The time she swung on the tire swing over the lake when she was 16, and felt like everything was right in the world.
She told herself she'd reconsider if one person on the way asked her if she was okay. Florence can be a cold city, in climate and people. She received a few concerned glances, and a couple of looks of confusion from other tourists, but no one stopped to talk to her, acknowledged that she, too, was a human being, lonely and hurting.
She drew a small Fleur-de-Lis on the back of a receipt she found in her pocket. She liked the idea of at least having a flower on her when it all ended.
Andrew Young