Month: October 2023

El Greco, a proto-Impressionist and the new exhibit at the Norton Museum of Art.

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Confession time: I like the Impressionists, but as a collective, it is not my favorite artistic movement. I like and appreciate the Impressionists individually, but I am not crazy about them as a whole. I can explain.

I am privileged in that I am a supporter of the Prado Museum through their Amigos del Museo del Prado program which is (mostly) fantastic. The main advantage of this “membership” is free access to the museum, which I do take advantage of frequently, plus I love showing the museum to friends and in Tonxo Tours.

So, I often get to see El Greco’s work. Domenico Theotocopulos (1541–1614) was born in Crete, moved to Venice, Rome, Madrid and eventually Toledo, where he would flourish. One of the many interesting things about El Greco was how much nineteenth-century collectors and artists loved his work. Why? Because he was an Impressionist avant la lettre!

Picasso and Renoir were blown away by El Greco, here was someone painting how he wanted to paint more than what he “saw”, a very unreal, conceptual art, and around three hundred years before them!

Why am I pontificating thus? you ask. Well, I recently had the opportunity to visit one of my favorite places in South Florida, the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. They have just opened a new exhibition titled Artists in Motion: Impressionist and Modern Masterpieces from the Pearlman Collection. It is a smaller exhibit with some niece pieces: a Gaugin wood carving, a van Gogh, some Cezanne, a couple of Modigliani, etc. My favorite was a Modigliani portrait of Jean Cocteau -yes, you could say it is very Grecoish.

When I am at the Norton, I always enjoy walking around and checking out the permanent collection, the gift shop, the sculpture garden, it is all a very rewarding and enriching, my blood pressure goes down. As I have said before many times, an oasis of culture and beauty in South Florida.

On the importance of keeping the flame of curiosity burning strong.

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Stay curious my friends

Hmm, the Interweb is full of encouragement to keep you curious, who knew? And yet we continue the death scroll of doom on social media, we stick to our thoughts and convictions, we are unable to change our minds, we are right, and we already know everything.

The other day I went to a lecture about the martyrs of La Florida given by my dear friend and colleague Fr. Cristian Sáenz SJ who is a scholar of Early Church History, and he mentioned that his hobby was researching the martyrs of La Florida (I have attached the lecture below, because it is awesome, and he is awesome!). But this comment got me thinking about the importance of keeping the flame of curiosity burning strong regardless of your age.

For me that involves not only reading across different disciplines; from current events and pop culture to Enlightenment and Romanticism texts, to articles about the films we watch in Film Club (pro tip: go to Google Scholar, there are many available academic texts that you can access skipping the self righteous academic databases) -and obviously the films themselves, but to then see if there are any dots there to connect. You would be surprised.

The key process here is to digest and process all new information, how it makes you feel, does it change anything? Does it agree or disagree with previously held beliefs? This digestion happens in silence, in contemplation, or in conversation.

Although I am focusing here on intellectual curiosity, go ahead try new food, listen to new music, talk to people you have not met before. In other words, push beyond your comfort zone, try new things and experiences. You are welcome.

Keep calm and stay curious

The best cardio workout

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It is swimming, of course, and I’m back at it!

Swimming does not hurt your joints, it really works your core, resistance to water tones muscles, you have to really focus on your breathing, etc. etc.

As is customary with me, I was a late adopter, a late bloomer, unlike my sister who was winning swimming championships in high school.

I did not start swimming as a workout until my second year of college when they built a pool. My brother Theo and I would go for a swim almost daily. In my mid 30’s in Madrid, I was schlepping to Chamartín for the amazing 50mts length pool. Back in the US I swam on and off, eventually swimming at the Wellesley YMCA on my way back to Boston from work. Of course, UNC has a phenomenal pool where I loved to swim. I love open water swimming because you don’t have to turn around. In Naples I enjoyed swimming on the Gulf side. Here on the Atlantic coast, I have to wait for the ideal conditions, which are exceedingly rare; no rip tides, no choppy water, no Portuguese Man o’ war, etc. Sadly, in the last 3 years I have only managed to get out about a dozen times.

But the apartment building I have moved to has a lap pool! So, despite my less than perfect technique and my lack of practice, I’m back in the pool and swimming more and more.

If you can get access to a pool, throw on a swimsuit and go swim some laps, you are welcome.

On the importance of silence.

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Here is a paradox: We are surrounded by silence, and yet we choose not to listen to it. Our lives are lived at full volume all the time. Our devices keep chiming, beeping, buzzing. My new pet peeve is when you are having a conversation with someone, and they keep looking at their (smart?) watches to see all the notifications coming in. They might be physically in front of you enjoying (¿?) a coffee, but their attention is on everything coming into their watches!

I like to think of myself as a minimalist (although my recent move demonstrates that I am not very good at it –although I try). I live alone, no TV, no pets, and yet I make my breakfast watching the previous night’s newscast on my tablet. I check out the news, this blog’s stats, incoming emails, the weather, Facebook and Instagram (follow me on Tonxob) on my different devices a few times a day. But I do try to listen to the silence: more and more: in the car I do not turn on the radio nor CD (yes, it is old like me), I do not listen to my earphones at the gym nor when I am running, walking or paddling, and of course I meditate a few times a day, where one is dealing with the noise inside the head. In the mornings I walk across campus to make myself a coffee, and that five minute walk by the pond has enough silence to carry me until lunch. In my classes we start with a minute of silence, just to center ourselves and transition to Spanish. You have to make the effort to find the silence or the noise will eat you up!

This post comes about because one of my students recently asked me to help him with an independent study translating Cuando todo calla, El silencio en la Biblia by my colleague and exiled Bishop of Managua Silvio Baez. I also recently picked up Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence, just because of the title!

But I crave silence. I miss the school assemblies at Seacrest Country Day school when we would sit in a Quaker circle and only speak if we were so inspired (although it was not a religious school). I miss the silence of the Camino, of the Paular Monastery.

It takes practice to listen to the silence, oh but the rewards, the clarity, the peace are totally worth the effort. Try it!

Here is a beautiful video on the rewards of listening to silence. It is Villanova’s Fr. Martin Laird’s chat : Out of silence something is born that leads to silence itself. It is a bit long, but definitely worth it

My 21st move and Frasier

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The landlady from whom I have rented for the last three years did not renew my rent. So, I had to find a new place. If you did not know this, inflation in South Florida is crazy. After COVID, when inflation surged across the world, many folks chose Florida’s lack of personal income tax as a way to compensate for inflation -that, and the very lax and libertarian attitude. People rushed to South Florida, provoking mad inflation. Finding a place in my budget was tricky, I had to seriously downsize from a townhouse to a tiny apartment for $200 more than I originally paid for the townhouse, yikes. Fortunately, it includes water and internet, and it has all sorts of amenities. I can’t complain, just compared to my miniscule Boston Back Bay studio when I started this blog a little over ten years ago, this is the lap of luxury.

Move #21 was a total nightmare. The apartment owner’s association does not allow moving on weekends, and I had planned my move for a Saturday, so I had to rush to move in on a Friday, they charge $100 to use the cargo elevator, etc. . Not only that, but although the apartment was freshly painted and had some new appliances installed, the previous tenant had left behind his furniture, and the fellow who was supposed to take it away for the landlady reneged at the last moment, leaving the clearing out to me, and to Tyler a wonderful old student who volunteered to help me on a Friday, God bless him.

Moving, it does not matter if 2 miles (my case) or 2 countries is very stressful, right up there with with divorce, death of a loved one, illness, and so on. Add a bucket full of variables kicking in and you have the move from hell…

I think my only TV reference in all of this blog was to the 90s series Frasier, when Frasier, Kelsey Grammer, recites Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses. No spoilers: Frasier is a radio psychiatrist, but more importantly a hilarious snob, a gourmet, pedantic, bon vivant (you might also know him from Cheers, where he spun off from), at any rate, he lives in a fancy apartment in Seattle where he dukes it out with his equally snobbish brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce). So, with some obvious differences, I did fancy that I was making a Frasier move living in a fancy apartment building.

I am finally settled in, and I actually just had a go at the sauna and steam room, I do feel a bit like Frasier Crane, now I just need to have the rest of the great cast of the show. Here is a clip from Youtube of Frasier for you: