September 17: Ex machina

Last week, we stopped for a coffee in a picturesque, hilltop village. After pounding up the cobbled streets to the summit and the square, we definitely needed a break. We stopped at a café/pandaria, where I went inside, queued respectfully until it came to my turn and asked for two coffees. The shopkeeper, reasonably kindly, shooed me outside again: “ex machina, ex machina… con monedas.” As instructed, I put coins into the machine in the wall and got surprisingly good coffee. However, the phrase “ex machina” struck a deep chord.

In high school, I learned about the Greco-Roman theatrical trope for a happy ending: a God descending (on a wire) onto the stage to grant all the wishes. It was such a trope that “Deus ex machina” was/is still used to describe a miraculous tying up of loose ends at the end of a play/show, or a similarly pat “happy ending” in real life. So, conflating that idea with the centrality of coffee in Carey’s life, the idea of “café ex machina” seemed to me to have much potential. In fact, the restorative and healing powers of café ex machina have been much on display for both of us as we pause in our daily plodding to get out of the sun and have a sit and a sip.

This morning, there was a “crisis” with the breakfast room coffee, the machina was busted. Given the paucity of the other offerings (to illustrate: the fruit bowl on offer comprised 2 bruised apples that we know for certain have been there at least three days), the coffee (albeit powdery and over-sweetened) was the only highlight of the breakfast room. No happy ending (or more importantly, no happy beginning) for us today!

To be fair, fast forward 6 hours and you would have found us seated on the pavement outside the busy Bar Manolo in Hornillos, supping on a beer in the shade. The bar may have been too full to seat us, but the restorative power of pavement beer is not to be underestimated (even if you are sitting on your hat for padding). A happy ending after all.

For us, a “coffee” is really an excuse to take off our packs, get out of the sun and do nothing for 15–20 minutes. But, the idea of a “coffee God”, trussed up on a pulley, flying down out of the machinery to make everything better is not too far from the truth…

Today was our first day in the mesetas, and the start of week 3 of our Camino. We saw many fewer pilgrims. The mesetas are the “fly over” zone of the Camino. Many people skip them. We like their spacious farmland and white chalk paths. They are dusty, sun-soaked: full of butterflies, crickets, birds. The pilgrims are also a little different: less chatty, more self-contained, more confident, (two weeks’ in), in their physical and mental strength; more willing, in this quiet stage, to let the path be itself.