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Mildly Enlightened
  • JJ Weeks

Mildly Enlightened

Kebabs, Caligula, and the human condition (with gratings of shin splints). Baca lagi
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  • Permulaan perjalanan
    17 Oktober 2025
    JJ WeeksMildly EnlightenedPengembara

    The Author Has Gone Doolally

    17 Oktober, England ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Feather quill thumbs bleed 8-bit ink,
    prose that seeps into pixel parchment.
    Words that once dried onto candlelit vellum,
    now hum beneath amorphous blue glass.
    Binary and biblical, the hieroglyphs flicker,
    at sixty hertz and in silicon psalms.
    Each keystroke a prayer, each typo a tremor,
    For hands unto heavens with a phone in their palms.

    The everyman gazes at clouds that rain colour,
    And though aware of no Torah his scripture is scroll.
    His sentience, it buzzes in lithium-ion,
    but he cannot identify what's left of his soul.
    He kneels before a cached reality,
    seeking warmth in electrical pulse.
    Lifeblood that surges through his fibre veins,
    an addiction that without, his senses convulse.
    A sermon illuminates his blue light confession,
    for the algorithm forgives all who engage.
    Meaning, anointed on modernity's altar,
    a social standard he dare not enrage.

    He writes not with hands, but with algorithms
    that dream, of calligraphy and breath.
    His thoughts sculpt data, rendered into light:
    The fuck am I talking about (this poem's pure shite.)

    Uhh, don't really know what came over me there... I'm not exactly religious at all. Don't get me wrong, I used to worship Mr Bean and Maoam pinballs (hell yea!), but sadly that's not an option you can really choose on the census or any inclusivity surveys. I'm not sure I can really say that I believe in transcendence either, but part of me does want to believe in believing. And therein lies an irony. Believing that some form of enlightenment can exist on a tourist trail in Northern Spain of all places is frankly ridiculous. But consider for a moment that the world is built to laugh at itself for even looking for meaning in the first place. And when it comes down to it, isn't it a thought we've all had, the very one that drives the human condition. What *does* any of it really mean? Could all of this just be... futile? Whether you realise it or not, you probably already live by some private creed about meaning. You must, or you’d never bother even getting out of bed. For you, maybe that creed is honey nut Cheerios, or ferret racing, or recreational voodoo, or one of countless pointless pastimes. But, why? Is this really just... it, or is there anything more?

    Feeling sick yet? Don't worry, I've wiped away my existential snot, and flicked it gleefully into the crowd. Regardless, I'm not here to pursue some mythical enlightenment at all really...

    I've come to see travel blogging as an expression and a freedom. At its core, it’s never really been about what it was that I was doing, or even about where it is that I've been. It's been a sort of cross-section of my being, a mark of the person I am, the person I have been. Ain't that kinda cool!? I like to think it’s been a lived experience, a wide-eyed view into a contradictory world, and what I wanted from it in my confused and mildly deranged voice. The scotched egg of meaning wrapped in my very own sausage meat of sarcasm, if you will. In a way then, this is my pilgrimage of creativity, in meaning through writing, rather than hiking alone.

    At this point, you're probably wondering 'has this man swallowed the world's most pretentious poetry anthology, when did his screws get so loose?' (I've started reading philosophy books okay, so uhh blame them for the self-indulgence).

    Cartographically speaking, the Camino de Santiago is a revered network of ancient paths, criss-crossing Iberia and converging at the sanctified tomb of the apostle St. James. They say it's not just a walk; it's meditation, faith, transformation... a pilgrimage through landscapes and oneself all at once. (I bet it's actually shit, isn't it).

    Still, enlightenment has been on the bucket list for a while now (right next to 'fix my sleep schedule' and 'buy some new socks'). Plus, watching YouTube shorts in bed's been getting reaaaal boring lately, so I fancied a lil walk (and it was either this or slog to big Sainsbury's).

    Join me then for the Camino de Santiago, done my way: the metaphorical screwdriver, a final trip to tighten up the loosies before my 25th birthday (and full development of my pre-frontal cortex!)🤞. I’ll catch you on the Way.    Baca lagi

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  • JJ WeeksMildly EnlightenedPengembara

    I'm in Spain without the S

    18 Oktober, Sepanyol ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    Pain shoots up my shins before I've even left Oxford. If I was a superhero then my special ability would be the power walk, granted it does come with a 2 month cool down period while the shin splints subside. At least I'll make my train on time. Oh. Sike ! Cancelled. Thanks, British Rail.

    Fine, whatever. I shoehorn my poor body into a train heading to Marylebone instead. This leg goes about as expected, although it does open my eyes to the world of teenagers' social media. I overlook a girl's phone as she somehow jumps between messaging some twenty boys all at once, still visibly longing over one boy, Paddy, who'd never replied to her last message.

    Delayed in London’s ratruns, I race to Baker Street, get lost, somehow resurface at Liverpool Street, panting like I’ve just done the first stage of the Camino already. Okay, Stansted Express next, 19:15 arrival gives me 1h25 to spare, that's doable.

    The train rocks my vegetable head, lost in some half-formed poetry, when a tannoy jolts me back to reality: ‘Tickets at the ready.’ I leap out like a man reborn onto the platform of... Bishop’s bloody Stortford. Brilliant. I’m 30 minutes from the airport with 45 minutes until my gate closes. I'm toast. 🍞🍞🍞

    Shin splints turn to thin sprints as I speedrun security, parry the shuttle bus, and flash my boarding pass at the cabin crew just as the gate is chiming shut, still frantically googling 'travel insurance' as the plane creeps onto the runway.

    Late hours awake in the liminal spaces of Santiago airport conjure hallucinations of breakfast, and the flickering ghosts of closed cafés that do nothing to satiate my biting hunger.

    But before too long, morning reveals its sympathetic brow from beyond a forested horizon. A gentle bus ride carries me through the rolling green hills of Galicia, which mutate into the thorny vineyards of León province.

    I am now in Ponferrada, a 205 kilometre jaunt from Santiago. But where's everyone else? The streets are empty, the shops are closed, even the pigeons seem to have clocked off. The people I do see insist on speaking Spanish to me (are they stupid?).

    My albergue host assures me this is in fact a normal Saturday, but that only raises more questions. Why is there a rock band playing in the main square? Why are my shoes on the wrong feet?

    I find a kebab shop, the finest dining establishment within a one-minute walk and call it a night.    Baca lagi

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  • JJ WeeksMildly EnlightenedPengembara

    More Tiramisu, Please

    19 Oktober, Sepanyol ⋅ 🌧 18 °C

    I share breakfast across from a woman named Ozzy. She's from Thurso in the far reaches of Scotland, a town so north that even the midges haven't fully discovered it (or so she tells me). She's walked the Camino every which way, the del Norte, the Francés, the Invierno - you name it.

    'What do you think it means to be a pilgrim?' I ask, between mouthfuls of tortilla and cake. 'Personally, I think it's about walking with purpose,' she says. 'Not about walking for a destination.'

    I'm skeptical, and visibly so. I think I share her philosophy about distance walking, but I've never considered myself a 'pilgrim' so to speak. That term seems to carry a heavier weight. 'Maybe it's the community,' she continues. 'People react to you differently, they shout Buen Camino! from across the street. Many albergues are run by volunteers, and in the evenings we share why we walk.'

    This softens my understanding. Strangers used to react to me differently on my Europe walk, the scale of that mission made me feel like I had a story worth telling, that I was 'something', maybe that same something that pilgrims feel here. After six or seven more glasses of orange juice (as if I were trying to fend off scurvy), it becomes apparent that Ozzy is walking with lung cancer. She's been walking for over a month now, and in her condition she can't even buy travel insurance.

    Breakfast feels quieter after her admissions, and after chatting a while longer, we wish each other well and head off on our separate paths.

    I step out into the umbral black of dawn, my waymarker the nine-pronged scallop shell, its yellow glow blazoned on concrete pillars and plastered walls. It navigates me through sleeping streets and uninhabited alleyways onto a tarmac path where yellow flowers, filaments of them, breach the arid rock and juxtapose the scrub that lies in decay at its side.

    After a while, my bones embrittle with ache as my feet strike the bitumen over and over again. The air tastes metallic with rain, rain which pats against my head and dulls my senses. My hands clam as raindrops roll down my forefinger and pool at the tip of my thumb.

    Flecks of orange and green tremble in the wind, they are leaves variegated in shades of yellow and brown. It's not long now until they'll all have withered away. But the forest doesn't chase the leaves that fall, for it trusts in the seasons that lie ahead.

    I stop for coffee in Cacabelos. The man sat at the table over swabs another cigarette into his ash tray, his brow furrows as he inspects newspaper after newspaper. I pull out a book of my own and watch the world as it passes. It's peaceful. But the church bells soon chime and nudge me on my way.

    Ahead, clouds linger in distant valleys. I feel invited to look softer until I realise that I don't see what they conceal and I contemplate that maybe I was never meant to. When I look closer, moss grows where time lies dormant and sparse vineyards stipple earthy soil that falls away into Villafranca del Bierzo, my day's destination.

    In the evening, I go for dinner with German midwife Susi, French humanitarian Stefane, and South Korean Chukyu. Hours pass as we titillate and cantanker, toasting our differences and trading our stories until the candles gutter and wine runs dry.

    After some time, I ask that same question I asked from the morning, 'what do you think it means to be a pilgrim?' There's a pause, a quiet one, before they each answer in turn. A theme runs through their words: they all want to leave something behind in one way or another.

    Chukyu, in particular, talks of 'finding himself'. Again, I can't help in my skepticism - clichés are a little much, even for me. Susi asks if he's found what he's looking for yet, and he says no. A part of me wants to say that I've existed in that headspace previously, that he's probably not going to find it, at least not out here. Eventually, Susi asks me back 'what does it mean to you?' and I realise I'm not even prepared to answer my own question, and maybe that's why I ask it.

    But who cares about the inner journey when an outer one offers pilgrim menus - three courses for £15!? More tiramisu, please!    Baca lagi

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  • JJ WeeksMildly EnlightenedPengembara
    2

    Untitled

    20 Oktober, Sepanyol ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    There's a vanity to any writer. Why write anything down at all unless you think it's worth the paper (or in this case your valuable scrolling time). Is writing at its core just another performance of commodification? How much of this is an expression of self versus a heightened narration of a character I call me? For years on these trips, I've staged jokes, construed narrative, and enlargened my reality, and don't get me wrong, I revel in it. But that's not truth. That's not how real people live.

    The larger my island of awareness grows, the longer my coastline of consequence. And sometimes, that's paralysing.

    But if this really is every bit a journey through psyche as it is one through Spain, then I need something to represent that. Today can be that pothole.    Baca lagi

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  • JJ WeeksMildly EnlightenedPengembara
    111

    Public Enemy of the Camino

    21 Oktober, Sepanyol ⋅ 🌧 19 °C

    How to become public enemy number one of the Camino:

    Step one: never carry cash.
    Step two: don’t know a single word of Spanish.
    Step three: wet the bed.
    Step four: profit.

    Haven't mastered that whole plan yet, but clearly I had done enough to tickle the moustache of my Spanish waiter this morning (who looked suspiciously like Manuel from Fawlty Towers btw). He hurls me a plate in disgust (it's a breakfast called sadillas, because he's already stolen the 'Qué¿'). I'm just kidding, it's cake. So I have my cake and eat it too before slipping away into the dark.

    I teeter along for half a mile when I realise that I'm not even wearing my watch, and I've left my credencial back at the albergue, an unholy trinity of stupid.

    The world is still a bruise-coloured blue when I start over. Lichen encrusts tree trunks like an old man's bogies, and leaves pile beneath pine needles like hay in a needle stack. Sweet chestnut casings kick along the ground like inanimate hedgehogs and mist fuzzes the edge of the landscape's hazy features. Bagpipes wail like a distant call to prayer as I cross into Galicia and then O Cebreiro, which at 1300 m is the high point of my trek.

    Up until now I’ve actively been choosing to walk alone, but today I decide that my sociability probably ought to extend beyond giving pilgrims the side eye while playing subway surfers.

    First, I meet a man so Scottish I think he might bleed Irn-Bru and have a clan name like 'McTartan'. He started the pilgrimage as a sober vegetarian; one month in, he’s a raging caffeine addicted alcoholic who craves Marlboro Reds like holy communion. I suggested he should end his anti-pilgrimage by doing a line of cocaine off the steps of Santiago Cathedral. He either laughs or curses the English again (I can't tell through the accent.)

    Later, I find myself walking with the most insufferable American in history (or at least since the last American I met). He claims to be homeless, yet describes his lifestyle in Dubai like a millionaire who forgot where he parked the yacht. (But hey, what do I know about entitledness, I'm just a humble travel blogging legend.) Next, I ragebait an Italian by telling him how much I love kiwi on pizza, something I’ve never even tried by the way. It works. He flails his hands about in an undeniable rage. 🤌

    As the sun finally breaks the overcast and with Michael Palin and Louis Theroux yapping through my headphones, I descend into Triacastela. In my albergue, I meet American, Jane. We chat away for a little while and she tells me she’s been walking the Camino at the same time as her parents (but refuses to walk near them because they 'like Donald Trump too much.') Can't argue with that.

    We head out for dinner, and in an ironic twist of fate, her parents walk into the same restaurant and sit directly next to us. Jane spends the entire evening mocking me with an exaggerated British accent while I pick away at a gelatinous plate of Octopus (that's the last time I give Spanish culture a go.) Her dad eyes me like I’ve just voted for higher taxes (or anything moral at all for that matter, given that he's a Trump supporter.)

    Fyi, my phone has become diabolically glitchy. 🤧 Writing this has been a motherfucker. I fear it could be the last post. :(( Remember me as the man as the man I always aspired to be (a bastard). Bye.    Baca lagi

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  • JJ WeeksMildly EnlightenedPengembara

    I am Caligula, Caligula is Me

    22 Oktober, Sepanyol ⋅ 🌧 19 °C

    My thighs screech like banshees as I power past other pilgrims, my enlightenment clearly loftier than theirs. Each overtaken pilgrim is another conquered province in my empire of smugness. Don't they know that inner peace is a race, and that I am the victor?

    'Buen Camino' they gasp.
    'Yes,' I reply. 'It is,' kicking up dirt and flexing my rippling calves as I pass.

    They'll have run out of enlightenment by the time you arrive, pal. They have to order it in from Sweden, don't you know.

    (Has anyone seen my meds lately?)

    Weee whew, this was a long old day.

    My phone is broken. The display has been claimed by a black mould of breached pixels, voxels of rot that have consumed it in the night. But there is a renewed freedom that comes in walking without it. Initially it feels like nakedness, I reach for my pocket and find only air. Every now and then the path forks without waymarker. Left or right? Who knows. Does it even matter?

    Eventually I reach Sarria, and decide I probably ought to buy a phone before my mum hires Magnum P.I. to track me down. The woman at the shop doesn't know a word of English, she looks at me for help, not knowing that my Spanish extends only to 'cerveza' and 'Despacito (feat. Justin Bieber)'. After a short game of charades, she brings out three different phones, each in a cheerful flavour of cheapness. I eeny meeny miny mo my way into an Oppo, one of those dodgy Chinese brands (glory to Xi Jinping, top shagger. I've always been a huge fan, just don't steal my data.)

    No matter how many settings I chop'po and change, it alerts me with peculiar notifications and exotic newsflashes, all in Spanish. Who knows what they mean, possibly weather updates in Toledo, possibly terms and conditions for the next bullfighting bonanza. I accept them all the same.

    Later, I stop for a pint and speak to a Bostonian couple. The man speaks with the precise cadence and intonations of Harrison Ford. Every sentence sounds like it should end with 'Chewie, get the falcon ready.' We have an entire conversation without him ever even looking up from his book. I wonder if it's his dad's diary with clues to the Holy Grail. His wife clearly hates him.

    Staggering in my tipsiness, Alan from Mexico joins for an evening gander. It's his second day in Europe and we chat for some time. I'm the first British person he's ever met. He tells me about how his friend was kidnapped by the cartel, I tell him how to perfectly butter a scone.

    By the time I reach Portomarin, I'm forty kilometres drunker and a thousand miles more ridiculous. I slump, shattered and delirious. But rather than appoint a horse my consul, I appoint a fish my dinner.    Baca lagi

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  • JJ WeeksMildly EnlightenedPengembara
    'Jensel Weeks' 💀

    The Breakdown will be Televised

    25 Oktober, Sepanyol ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C

    I've missed a couple of days in my chaos. Lost highlights include Indian Manusha, Australian Lauren, Melide, and the karaoke-with-the-drunk-priests debacle. But let's skip the filler and cut straight to the final day (for a little treat.)

    I shift my jarring left knee off the morning mattress and nibble on some painkillers before setting off into the dark. As Santiago draws near, stickers plaster every surface like syrupy stickiness on a Wetherspoons table. Herds of pilgrims trudge like bisons through muddy tundra, and stamp sellers line up like vipers along the rat run.

    The stark spires of Santiago Cathedral stab the horizon, a horizon that keeps its distance just enough so you keep walking. Protests rumble through the streets, Galicians waving flags and chanting in synchrony. I gawp at their march, unsure what's upset them. Perhaps it's the pilgrims.

    And then, just like that, I'm there. To be honest, the endpoint disappoints me, not because it's ugly or unworthy, it's not. But because it doesn't even try to be something it isn't. Consumerism in the name of religion. After all the miles, my knee doesn't hurt so much as the anti-climax.

    Outside the Cathedral, pilgrims stand in every flavour of emotion: awe, fatigue, contemplation. A man wearing Balenciagas poses for a selfie beside a weathered looking wanderer who's walked all the way from Rome. His beard is overgrown, his dog's even more so. As I slump beneath the nave, I spot the Italian I ragebaited days ago. He congratulates me, then casually mentions he makes tea in the microwave. I consider calling the police.

    Of course, there's no enlightenment (or lines of cocaine) waiting on the steps of Santiago Cathedral. Just another meaningless certificate for my meaningless wall. The act of meaning making is absurd in its futility, and we are all the punchline. But isn't that, weirdly, all the more reason to search on and laugh harder? Or don't, all approaches are valid. I'm just a man with a brain that won't shut the hell up.

    Collapsing thought into language can often drain it of its richness and texture, but I'll attempt to answer Susi's question from Act 2 Scene 24, what does it mean to be a pilgrim? I think: a pilgrim is someone who walks a pilgrimage. Well by extension then, what makes a route a pilgrimage? I think: it's literally that it calls itself one (frightening insight, I know).

    But you approach it differently because of that label, and it's that collective questioning - that shared delusion that we're all doing anything more than walking - that somehow ends up making it kind of true.

    So would I walk the Camino again, point to point? Probably not. If you want a scenic hike, walk the coast path, and if you want a proper existential crisis then just walk to Bosnia, ya big dummy. But the fact that something like the Camino exists is, ultimately... beautiful. Sure, it might not give you enlightenment, but what it will give you is community, convenience, and a warm sense of belonging - and that's why it means so much to so very many. And it didn't mean nothing to me.

    But then again, maybe that's just the enlightenment talking. Mildly. ;)    Baca lagi

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    Tamat perjalanan
    25 Oktober 2025
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