Oct 2 - Arrive for noon mass

Leave before light breaks the sky.  Hospitalero is waiting outside in car to close up, motor running, headlights burning.  Dawn breaks loudly on the shores of memory with the crashing of cymbals, baying of hounds, bird song, crowing of roosters and cawing of crows.  Magic happens when heaven and earth meet, so rare.  From the seclusion of Herbon I return to the every day with its car horns and belching and drunkenness...after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water:

Not quite dawn

we live in this world. Lost train of thought, morning was dark, no place to stop and sit.

Stop at a sports complex just outside the city, and drink cafe con leche.  There are crowds and crowds of people up ahead, on a Sunday walk. Then I am alone again as I cross over the railroad and make my way up the empty trails of the Portuguese entrance to the city. There's a university district and then a park with a church and then Rua da Franco with numero 5, and then the gate with the horses. I arrive for the noon mass. The fastest I have walked on this trip. Somehow because of the doorway, and because I want communion, I end up in the path of the butafumiero watching the swing and the smell of the smoke and hoping the knot doesn't break.