The "Mi Casi es Su Casi"

9:06 PM, August 8, Monte do Gozo Cafeteria (with Gwendal and Gottfried)

For the last 200 km, some humor-filled jokester has been adding graffiti to the Camino. Above the yellow arrows every so often, this humorist has written “CASI.”

While Gottfried thought that it was just someone writing her name, I think it was much more than that. Casi, in Spanish, means “Almost.” And now, sitting only 5 km from Santiago, no word could describe it better.

Excitement fills the air and people are almost there, almost at the clincher of their journey. The Road is almost over, my walk is almost complete, my Camino friends and family are almost gone. Almost, almost, almost.

“Almost,” like the Bowling for Soup song of the same name implies, could be a bad thing, too. Almost doing good enough, almost reaching your goal, almost arriving at the end—all of these would be rather horrible, if they were the end of the story. And, believe me there have been plenty of almost moments in my life. Some almost moments have been followed by moments of climax where the end is reached; others, however, have been sad stories of a ship that never sailed. As today is one of the former, perhaps I can work toward making my life full of the former type of almost and lacking in the latter.

But today is not the end of this Camino story. Today is Almost because Tomorrow is The End. So, allow me to enjoy my final hours of Almost. When I write tomorrow, it will be with Compostela in hand!