For today I had planned to visit a park located near the home where a character of mine, Jacqueline, lives. When I woke up, my digestive tract was more screwed up than usual (I have IBS): apart from the near-liquid shits, I also bled out of my ass. I’m beyond questioning what the hell goes on any given day with my body unless it pertains to my heart, and one of these days I’ll stop caring about that too.

Usually when my health issues attempt to ruin my plans, I give in and spend the rest of the day either writing or wasting my time. However, I felt that walking the whole way up from the Lugaritz Euskotren station to Jacqueline’s house was a sort of penance that I had to undergo.

Yesterday we were enduring temperatures of 35 grades Celsius, but today the weather was stuck in that extremely humid state that announces that in a day or two the clouds are going to burst in a tremendous storm. So by the time I got off at the Lugaritz station, I was already drenched in sweat.

That’s the Lugaritz Euskotren station in Donostia, which is the local train slash subway system. I love to complain about everything, but I can’t say many negative things about the public transport system of this region.

That’s the parking lot where Jacqueline stops her car to have a conversation in chapter sixty-one.

That building is mentioned a couple of times in the novel, because it’s on the way to Jacqueline’s place.

I had to trudge up a slope all the way there. As expected, the narrow sidewalks were deserted.

Most of the homes in this area are about four or five times more expensive than what your regular computer technician could afford. Further ahead families were swimming in their private pools.

I took plenty of photos of the apartment building where I decided that Jacqueline lives (and where Leire spends most of her spare time now). However, it feels wrong to show it, so I won’t. As soon as I turned around after taking those photos, a guy was standing still further down the street as he stared at me with what looked like suspicion. This is one of those neighborhoods. Besides, I’m a bearded, shady-looking, deranged guy who tends to freak people out the moment they interact with me, so I just walked out of sight as casually as possible.

I was about to ask for the whereabouts of the park that Jacqueline mentioned in the most recent chapter; I had looked it up in Google Maps, but it was even closer than I expected, and very secluded. Real treasure for the locals.

That mountain over there is Mount Igueldo, and the complex on top is an amusement park.

That’s as much documentation as I needed, added to the notes I took of how it felt to be there. I considered returning to the Lugaritz station and taking a train straight home, but instead I decided to walk down to Ondarreta beach, which would be packed with tourists at this time of the year.

I don’t know what this building is supposed to be, but it looked really impressive.

On the other side of the beach there are tennis courts, as well as a fancy pub called “Wimbledon” where I set up the sequence that starts in chapter fifty-three.

That island looks like a whale from certain angles, particularly from the top of Mount Igueldo.

This morning I posted the sixty-sixth chapter of the novel I’m working on. After I finish a chapter, for a few hours I feel fulfilled, as if I have earned the right to exist, so I decided to take a walk in the sun while reading a new book. I did very little reading (I’m very impatient with books these days), but I ended up walking to France (Jacqueline’s home country), which isn’t saying much because I live right in the border. It’s a picturesque town called Hendaye, de jure part of the ancient kingdom of Aquitaine. I’m thirty-seven years old now, but it was the first time in my life that I walked through Hendaye; as a child my father drove us through it plenty of times during the summer, because the local beach is great.

The town’s sidewalks are narrow and poorly maintained. Half of the stores have closed down, and of those that remain, plenty of the owners are old enough to retire. Even as a child I had a hard time believing that anyone lived in Hendaye throughout the year. Most of the people you come across are tourists and tend to hang out near the beach, and most of the buildings in that area look like vacation homes.

The more I walked around and checked out the sights, the more melancholic I felt. I also came across quite a few French beauties, which didn’t help my mood. I often daydream about being able to teleport; apart from emptying the treasuries of a few notorious gangs so I wouldn’t need to work, I’d spend my days teleporting from town to town. If any cop asked for my ID, I would teleport away. I’d absorb dozens of new sights every day. I’d write in deserted coffee shops and sleep in a new hotel every night.

I’ve mentioned before that whenever I do something more compelling than work at my office or sit at home, I feel like a prisoner on a furlough; I’ve had to endure health or health-adjacent issues from birth, from high-functioning autism to the intrusive troubles of OCD, hormonal issues thanks to a tumor, and an Irritable Bowel Syndrome that inflames my intestines if I don’t go to the bathroom every forty-five minutes or so. I also can’t drive around; I never got a driver’s license because I’m more likely to crash my car into a wall or a truck deliberately than arrive safely at my destination.

Anyway, at one point I came across a deserted graveyard. I took a stroll through it, checking out every tomb and reading to the best of my abilities the dedication plaques, which were obviously written in French. So many variations of, “to my beloved father”, “to my friend, who will never be forgotten” and such made me sad. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any ghost.

At that point I realized that I was carrying my tablet, so I figured that I may as well take some photos of my mundane journey.

Nearby, close to spectacular views of the Txingudi bay, I took a few photos of a grandiose memorial for the locals who got pointlessly massacred during the first World War. I also photographed the surrounding park.

At some point the locals decided to build a walkway along the coast, even in front of the backyards of expensive houses; the owners must have been pissed. In any case, it’s a pleasant and reasonably isolated path.

It was getting late and I needed to find a bathroom. As I walked back home, I took a few more pictures.

The rest of the photos were taken on my side of the border.

In general, today’s was one of those afternoons in which I resented that I was born as someone who can’t even aspire to a normal life, that has to lose himself in elaborate daydreams just to tolerate the nightmare of having to exist in his brain.