Towards Santiago, looking for a bit of self

'We were all little rivers, each with its own rhythm, but destined to flow into the same sea, Praza do Obradoiro, the square of Santiago Cathedral'. Among those rivulets, tired and happy, born to new life thanks to the sweat of going also Diego Passoni, one of the presenters of Pinocchio, Radio Deejay's flagship programme to which he lends his voice. Returning from the Portuguese Camino, from Porto to Galicia, Passoni decided to write: 'this book is not a postcard, but an invitation to get your hands... and feet. And he succeeds in his intention. What remains of Santiago. Joys and doubts of an unorthodox pilgrim sets doubts and desires in motion. It tickles the ego because there are no shortcuts to the heart. You have to prepare your rucksack - a pilgrim is measured by how well he realises that tetris of kilos and needs - and set out. Accept to be alone, naked, to find another way. The Camino, whichever way one chooses to get to Santiago, is to cross solitude and silence to listen to oneself and discover that we are not alone.

Passoni, with much self-mockery and criticism for those who have the mania for sporting performance, relives the stages of his journey, Porto, Vila do Conde, Barcelos and so on, remembering the wayfarers he has crossed, from Tomás, the Argentinean boy who walked barefoot, to those trying to heal the wounds of a lost love, of a great pain. After all, one need only quote Zeno of Cizio, the founder of Stoicism. His Latin followers used to say solvitur ambulando, it is resolved by walking: it still is. Walking is an itinerant secular meditation. So many slow-walking authors come to mind: Thoreau, Hesse, Rousseau, the 'thinking walker', David Le Breton, sociologist of the Walking World. In Praise of the Walk, Jack Kerouac or Antonia Pozzi who found in walking a way to deal with pain: 'the walk guides me towards the silence I seek within myself'.

How much we need silence and solitude, in this rollercoaster-like world of ours. We think we are happy, we are just homologated - it is reassuring -, so laying bare is tiring and painful. But, then, when your body has become familiar with the slow going it finds peace, it smiles. Our time is one step after another. You get everywhere, almost with an alienating sense of omnipotence. Passoni also reminds us of Panikkar: 'the human being is not separate from nature, nor from the divine. We are part of a greater whole. We are the bridge between heaven and earth ... and walking becomes a movement towards that sacred, every step we take is not just a physical act but a profound connection with the cosmos'. Ultimately, we walk because we belong to the eternal. All that remains is for you to prepare your rucksack, in the name of St James the Apostle.

Diego Passoni, Quel che resta di Santiago. Gioie e dubbi di un pellegrino poco ortodosso, Sonzogno, pp. 218, € 17