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Accept and learn from losing.

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After a two-year winning streak, we knew we were bound to lose at some point, we were hoping it would not be against our archrival.

The beauty of losing is that it makes you dig deeper into yourself to understand what you are made of. It allows you to contemplate life from a different perspective than winning does. I am not breaking new ground here; for example, Pat Conroy wrote about it much better than I did in his My Losing Season, a great read!

There is always some regret: I should have done this or that, should have trained more on this or that. But at the end of the day, it is still just a game, and one of the teams will lose.

Maybe because introspection is not the prettiest thing to do, to dissect a soccer game, the post-mortem, what did we do wrong? What did the other guys do right? When you win, there is no need to go that deep into your reasons for winning, you can celebrate!

Yes, there is more to be learned from losing than from winning, and all that humble pie stuff, it still hurts. Now we must go back to the drawing board, back to training, and back to basics. I can’t wait to start training again. Next season we will win.

Sorolla and the Sea at the Norton in West Palm Beach

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Maybe because the Joaquín Sorolla house and museum is around the corner from my family home in Madrid, Sorolla was the first painter I connected to. Maybe it was his Mediterranean scenes that took me to my own Summers in the Med. Whatever it might have been, Sorolla has a special place in my heart.

When I am in Madrid, I often sneak into the garden of the Sorolla house museum to read, and occasionally I will go inside to visit the paintings like old friends (you can read about that here).

So when I learned the Norton Museum was hosting an exhibition to complement their existing (huge) Sorolla painting, I had to see it.

It did not disappoint. Most of the paintings are on loan from the Hispanic Society in New York City which commissioned many paintings from Sorolla. The exhibit includes some drafts of paintings, a bronze sculpture from his dear friend and paisano Benlliure -the marble one is in the garden in Sorolla’s house, even one of Sorolla’s palettes!

Sorolla is known as the painter of light, leaving behind the Impressionists, and creating a space of his own, beyond labels.

If you are in the Palm Beach area you should see it, you are welcome.

Which shoes to wear on the Camino (Part III)(With free Camino shoes spreadsheet!)

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Enjoying my Nike Juniper trail shoes

Which shoes should I wear on the Camino? This is arguably the most asked question by folks preparing for the Camino. Everybody who has walked the Camino has an answer and is happy to tell you all about it. But nobody who has walked the Camino has your feet. So you can only answer the question.

Not surprisingly, one of the most viewed posts on my blog tackles precisely this question, you can read it here: Which shoes to wear on the Camino?

But I am nothing if not professional, and I noticed the spreadsheet on that post was from 2022; with the mad advancements in shoe technology and rampant Capitalism, I should do a new one. So I did, voila.

There is little to add to that original post, but I do have some thoughts that I did not elaborate on back then:

Some pilgrims are more prone to blisters and foot issues than others. I am not a specialist, but it might depend on how much training you have done in those shoes, how appropriate those shoes are for your particular circumstances, weight, stride, mileage, etc.

The shoe is only 50% of the equation; your socks are the other 50%. I use mostly wool with no stitching or seams. I still wear some Darn Tough socks from my first Camino in 2017! Then I got some Icebreakers from New Zealand, which are 60% Merino wool. You want the socks to fit properly to eliminate friction between the shoe, the sock, and your feet.

Sam, the first (and only) person to tell me about Camino prep, told me to lather Vaseline on my feet before putting on my socks. It works for me, in 4 full Caminos I have only gotten a couple of blisters, and they were my fault, not the shoes nor the socks…

During my Camino Aragonés, I walked some stages with Juan Gameros, a hardcore Mexican mountain guide (follow him on Insta: juan_gamerosmx). He wore Injinji toe socks, and he swore by them!

So you must find your magical shoe/sock combo that works for you.

In the attached spreadsheet, I only ranked 25 shoes by going to some random Internet rankings. The number of shoes and the number of criteria prove that there are shoes for all types of feet.

I was delighted with the Nike Pegasus Trail 3 from last year (read about it here); So this year Celia gave me a pair of Nike Juniper Trail II. I have already taken them out a couple of times and I can’t wait to walk the Camino this Summer!

Buen Camino

  • The spreadsheet is in Excel format so you can sort, add, or manipulate it as you want, enjoy!
Which trail shoes 2024 – 2025Download

Donate blood (if you can), you have enough to share!

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For years I was not able to donate blood, as I had lived in England during the Mad Cow epidemic (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease if you want to get technical) in the 80s -yes, I am an 80s kid.

This was very frustrating since the health community really did not have enough data and evidence for not allowing people to donate blood, but recently they changed the rule, and we can donate blood again!

Donating blood in Florida is a bit different -yes, Florida is special, and not necessarily in a good way. They have these red busses that go around collecting blood. A couple of times a year they go to our school.

So if your health allows you to do it, find the time to donate blood wherever you might be, someone you will never meet will really appreciate it!

Oh, just make sure that half an hour after you donate you do not go running in 30º humid Florida heat. Someone I know really regretted it and had to walk back a few kilometers…

Spanish Baroque in Boca Raton

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As soon as I found out that the Boca Raton Museum of Art had an exhibit about the Spanish Baroque, I booked a visit for my classes and then went to check it out for myself.

The paintings are courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America in New York, which has organized this exhibit, and which will then travel to a couple more cities.

Splendor and Passion: Baroque Spain and Its Empire is a small but very good-quality exhibit. You are welcomed by a local artist’s interpretation of Velazquez’s Meninas, and then you enter to discover paintings by the real Velazquez, Murillo, and el Greco (whom I would put more into late Renaissance than Baroque, but I am nitpicking). If you love the chiaroscuro, if you love Baroque art, this one is for you!

The Boca Raton is a fairly small museum, with most of the collection being 20th C art. But since you are already there, you might as well check it out.

So, if you are in this suburban wasteland that is South Florida, and you need a little injection of beauty, art, and culture, head over to the Boca Raton Museum of Art. You are welcome.

Ávila, a great excursion from Madrid

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If you are Catholic, you probably know Ávila from Saint Teresa. Otherwise, you might know this city because of its history, Medieval wall, or its sweets. Avila is a UNESCO World Heritage site and it is less than two hours North of Madrid, and a great and recommended visit.

It had been a long time since I visited this city, but I recently had a getaway with Celia. We took the train from Madrid, which was an adventure, having to change trains in El Escorial. We hit the city running, visiting El Real Monasterio de Santo Tomás straight from the train station. Sto. Tomas has one of the purest Gothic churches in Spain with an altarpiece by Berruguete, possibly the most famous Spanish artisan in this field, it also houses the tomb of the Infante Juan, Ferdinand and Isabella’s teenage son, three beautiful cloisters, etc.

We had the traditional steak for lunch and explored Saint Teresa’s home, now turned into a chapel -although they have kept her original room! We toured the Medieval wall, one of the finest in Europe, the Gothic cathedral, St. Teresa’s convent, all the beautiful little streets, sweet shops, and many palazzos, and squares. Since the visit was during Christmas, we got to see a few amazing Nativity scenes as well.

So, although Toledo and Segovia are better known day trips from Madrid, Ávila is in a remarkably close third position.

The Marginalian by Maria Popova, a blog about a blog, would that be a metablog?

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As a blogger myself, I must admit that I do not subscribe to many blogs, newsletters, etc., just a handful:

Although not technically a blog, I get the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Daily Meditation, originally written by Richard Rohr, but as he is getting older, it is now written partly by him but also by the CAC team. Check it our here, and subscribe!

Every week I also get Un salto a Galicia about travel to the northwest corner of Spain, Galicia. (Click here)

But what I want to talk about today is The Marginalian by Maria Popova.

Every week Popova writes brilliantly about how an author talks about certain things. Some recent examples are:

Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality

The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Music and the Universe

Iris Murdoch on Unselfing, the Symmetry Between Art and Morality, and How We Unblind Ourselves to Each Other’s Realities

Dervla Murphy’s Fierce and Poetic Account of Traversing the World on Two Wheels in the 1960s

Popova combines her own beautiful writing (yes, this hack is jealous) with quotes from the authors featured and gorgeous illustrations. It makes for an enlightening read.

Popova is so inspiring, that I have added her Wednesday email into my reflection time, my mediation, my Lectio Divina, if you will.

If you are not yet subscribed, I cannot recommend it enough. Check it out here.

You are welcome.

How often do you think of the Roman Empire?

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How often do you think of the Roman Empire? This was a silly viral question/meme that became quite the sensation last year on the interweb.

I must confess that maybe because of my work in the field of Literature and Culture, I end up thinking of the Roman Empire quite frequently.

One such occasion was a couple of weeks ago when I had the opportunity to listen to a conference by Universitat Rovira i Virgili professor of Classical Archaeology Joaquín Ruiz de Arbulo at the Fundación Juan March. His conference La llegada de Roma: el camino de Herakles y el ocaso del poder cartaginés about the arrival of Romans to the Spanish península was fantastic.

Ruiz de Arbulo explained that by the time the Romans arrived in Spain, there were already Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Massaliotes, which was a Greek tribe from modern day Marseille. Despite being a leading academic in his field, Ruiz de Arbulo spoke clearly and simply, listening to him was mesmerizing. He had a great Power Point explaining how tuna fished in Cadiz was dried and sold in Egypt, and how stuff from the Eastern Mediterranean ended up on Spanish shores long before the Romans even got here, how traders and sailors had a temple in Rome, etc.

In conclusion: I do think about the Roman Empire a fair bit. How about you? Let me know in the comments -and no, I am not going to try to bring back that old internet meme, although it might make my blog a bit more popular!

A night at the theatre: Luces de Bohemia

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One of my favorite plays, although I came to it rather late in life, is Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s Luces de Bohemia. (I wrote a short review of it here, although I found an error in my review: the concept of Esperpento defines chaotic Spain, not the world, as I wrote in my review).

At any rate when I saw it was showing at the oldest working theatre in the world, the Teatro Español in Madrid (you can read about it here), I immediately bought tickets for Celia and I.

The play was wonderful, the lead, Max Estrella was exquisitely performed by Ginés García Millán. The stage was well set, minimalist obviously, but with good taste and enough elements to add texture and depth. It even had a live band, something rare in Spanish theatre in general. The play, although tragic, perfectly describes today’s Spain despite it being written a hundred years ago.

If you have never been to the Teatro Español, it is in a little square, right smack in the middle of downtown Madrid. A Saturday night in Christmas time, with all the tourists, domestic and international, it was literally unwalkable, everybody with their cameras taking photos of the Christmas lights… If you are thinking of coming to Madrid this Christmas, don’t, unless you get tickets to see Luces de Bohemia.

The monk in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Prayer of a Young Poet and Alyosha Karamazov; the same person?

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One of the best things about having your own blog is that you can write whatever you want. Even if it is pseudo academic, or as one of my students says: Dr. B’s conspiracy theories. No double-blind peer reviews, no scientific method, no academic prestige to worry about, just my unadulterated thoughts, a hunch. So enjoy:

Why am I fascinated by the turn of the (20th) Century Central and Eastern Europe? I have written about it a couple of times (here and here).

I just finished Rainer Maria Rilke’s Prayers of a Young Poet, and it blew me away!

Rilke authors this 68-poem collection in the voice of a nameless Russian Orthodox monk. The spirituality is palpable. Each poem has a brief footnote denoting where and/or when it was written: “2nd of October, beneath soft evening clouds”, “On the 5th of October, written down in the exhaustion of evening, having returned home after having been out among the people.”

Perhaps due to my ignorance and lack of reading, I kept thinking of Alyosha Karamazov from Dostoyevsky’s novel.

What connects these poems and Alyosha Karamazov is a simple innocence, a pure love of life and humanity in lines like:

“I want to love things in ways no one has yet done.”

or

“The hour bows down and stirs me

with a clear and ringing stroke;

my senses tremble. I feel that I can–

and seize the forming day.”

So, that is my hunch, my thesis. That there is an existential connection between the monk, the narrative author of Prayers of a Young Poet and Alyosha Karamazov, as if he had drafted those poems. But, you say, there are hundreds if not thousands of Russian Orthodox monks and many of them are in literature. My answer to your comment is the first line of this blog post. Also, I am a romantic, can’t you see? And this connection is just beautiful, and delicate, and awesome!

Rilke travelled to Russia and was entranced by their culture, art, and most importantly their rich religious tradition. He also could have read Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece published in 1880, 19 years before the original publication of Prayers in 1899.

Yes, I could go on and on and get all academic, but this is a general interest blog, so there you have it. If you do want me to elaborate on my thoughts, let me know in the comments!!