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:

On cuff links, a sartorial detail.

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If you are a keen reader of this blog, you might remember that I mentioned before that my dad was an international banking executive. This added to the fact that his brother-in-law (my uncle) was a top tailor (to the king and other celebrities) means that my dad was always impeccably dressed. Top it all off with the fact that we lived in London in the early to mid-eighties where he had access to Jermyn St. Shirts, and you get the full picture.

As would be expected, I inherited his shirts as soon as they were slightly worn, which was awesome! But there was one main issue with these shirts: they had French cuffs that required cuff links…

So, over the years I have accumulated a little collection of cuff links, mostly given to me, some purchased, some exchanged with other cuff link wearers, some lost, some broken.

Hard core traditionalists insist on wearing “chain” cuff links where a small chain holds together the two buttons. The problem with these is that they take much longer to put on since there is no place to leverage power to push the button through the buttonhole. Stiff cuff links with a swinging barrette are easy to slip on. A third variety are silk knots, these come in many colors and combinations and are fairly easy to put on, although they are frowned upon by serious sartorialists, I occasionally wear them with no shame!

An added plus of interesting cuff links is that they are automatic conversation starters, you just need to pay attention to the wearer of cuff links to see if there is a story there. You guessed it, many of mine do have stories, from just showcasing my passions: coffee, Real Madrid, the Camino, etc., to personal stories of who gave them to me, etc.

Can you guess my favorite cuff links in the picture? Hint: My girlfriend gave them to me so I would not lose my true North…

Do you wear cuff links? What is your story? Share in the comments below!!

Ask not what your country can do for you… Jury Duty

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The first thing the judge asked was to raise our hand if we were happy to be there -I was- but nobody raised their hand, so I didn’t either, I was not going to be the first one to be kicked out of jury duty.

My summons for jury duty came in the middle of the Summer, when I was in Spain, so I postponed it to Sept. 11th. Coincidence? We know there is no such thing.

I was surprised that I was on the first call for jurors, I was not expecting that. Another thing I was not expecting were the views from the 11th floor of the West Palm Beach Courthouse. Amazing!

The case in question was a criminal case involving stalking. Obviously neither the prosecution nor the defense wanted a hyper-educated, suit and bow tie wearing old professor on the jury panel. But I still had to wait all day and answer all sorts of questions before getting released in the afternoon with the other 20 people not chosen: the wife of a polo player from Wellington (Polo capital of the world, a neighborhood of Palm Beach), a Louis Vuitton sales advisor, and all other sorts of interesting and not so interesting jobs…

Happy to have done my duty as a citizen. Fortunately, I will not be considered again until next year.

The oldest house in Miami

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Confession time: Although I hate Miami traffic and expansive development, I must admit that I am discovering more and more redeeming bits about an otherwise unpleasant city. But first, a little history.

The Tequesta people lived at the mouth of the Msimiyamithiipi river for centuries. The only remains of the Tequesta village is now a dog park… welcome to Miami! The first Europeans to settle in Miami were Spanish Jesuits who set up a mission there in 1567 (although both Jesuits and natives later fled Miami to Cuba when the Brits started to make trouble). Then nothing much happened in the area until Julia Tuttle set up agricultural development in 1880. When Flagler’s railroad arrived in Miami in 1896, the population was a remarkably interesting 444 inhabitants (¿?). Then there was a boom with Collins and Brickell and Fisher building hotels and developing everything in sight, until a massive hurricane in 1926 destroyed pretty much everything, hitting the reset button for Miami, kicking of its Great Depression almost three years before the rest of the country hit it.

Only a few structures remain in Miami from before the hurricane; The Cape Florida Lighthouse from 1825, in Key Biscayne is the oldest building in Miami.

The oldest remaining house in Miami belonged to a yacht designer called Ralph Munroe. His home, called the Barnacle, is fortunately now a Florida State Park, and it is a bit of a jewel and an oasis in the middle of crazy Miami. The Barnacle is right in downtown Coconut Grove, the bohemian, Rive Gauche type of neighborhood of Miami.

The house where Munroe designed and built his beautiful sailing boats sits in a hammock which is a park with native plants and trees right on the water. Also, at that time you were better off travelling around Miami by boat than by land, so most properties were on the water.

The house is a lovely Victorian mini mansion well worth the visit. There is also Munroe’s boathouse down by the water, and a couple of the beautiful boats he designed are in the water!

You are welcome. Let me know your thoughts on this and other Miami jewels in the comments.

I ❤️ Land Rover

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Lebron or Jordan? Messi or Cristiano? Ferrari or Porsche? What you might consider the best this or the best that is hardly based on science, it is based on your specific circumstances. My favorite cars are Land Rover, not because they are necessarily the best, but because I was conditioned as a child to love them.

The story goes back to my uncle Antonio. Like his late brother, (my dad), he is a keen motoring enthusiast, and he loved Land Rover. At a point in his life, working for Esso (now Exxon) in Barcelona, he had a fleet of them at his disposal. In fact, my dad bought one of those for a pittance as my first car!

It was a six-cylinder, gasoline engine 88-inch chassis, topless model and I loved it! It was not particularly comfortable and definitely not fast, but boy was it fun!! Then one day my dad sold it.

A few years later, when I could afford to buy my own car, it was a Defender 90. I got 10 great years out of it, travelling and off roading all over Spain, until it was stolen from my front door in Madrid, never to be seen again.

In a bit of a rush, I bought a far more sophisticated Discovery in 1998, which is still serving me well to this day.

Unfortunately, Land Rover, like many other brands, is no longer what it used to be. It is now owned by an Indian industrial conglomerate Tata, and some private equity funds that only care about squeezing every last drop of profit for their shareholders, thus taking production from the hallowed Solihull factory to much cheaper India, for example. So please if you have a post 2008 Land Rover (or Range Rover) do not flex, I am not impressed.

Mahler, Roth, von Hofmannsthal, and Magris, fin de siècle Vienna and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

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Lord Chandos on a train

A couple of years ago I wrote about Mahler and Joseph Roth and the coincidence that they both lived in the turn of the Century Vienna. It was very much a gut feeling post (you can read it here) since I am not a history scholar, even less an Austro-Hungarian history scholar specializing in the fall of the empire.

What you read on the Camino is very important. I usually choose spiritually enlightening books. (The Book of Job, Gemma Simmonds The Way of Ignatius A Prayer Journey through Lent (she was my sister’s teacher!), Willigis Jager The Wave is the Sea, even a collection of Zen stories!) They also have to be physically light and small due to backpacking requirements. This year under my friend Paco’s recommendation I took an intellectually challenging book: Hugo von Hofmannsthal Ein Brief (Brief des Lord Chandos) – Letter to Lord Chandos followed by Claudio Magris’ analysis of the Letter in La Lettera Di Lord Chandos.

Hofmannsthal’s (fictional) letter from Lord Chandos to Francis Bacon is a short (22 pages) but fascinating essay on language. Magris’ analysis of the letter is a mind-blowing tour de force of fin de siècle Vienna and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire and what was to follow in Europe. After a master’s and a PhD in literature, I was surprised to find that this is by far the densest reading I have ever encountered. It is rich, thick -but readable- and chock full of references: Kafka, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Freud, and Nietzsche (obviously), Borges, Saussure, Kubrick, Eco, Pasolini, Plato, Seneca, and Cicero, Roth, Kierkegaard, Klee, Van Gogh… and a whole bunch of other names I confess I have no clue who they are. But the point is that Magris explains in philosophical and existential detail the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, turn of the Century Vienna and what would follow in postmodern Europe. It was also very rewarding to read a real essay on what I wrote as a hack blog post…

In conclusion, this is a short, small book, perfect for travelling but dense and rich and glorious academic reading! Enjoy, you are welcome!

PS: If you want to read more about Chandos check out this article:

Greaney, Patrick. “On the Chaos in Chandos: Hofmannsthal on Modernity’s Threshold.” MLN 129.3 (2014): 563-573.

The origin story of my writing for public reading

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“Origin story” is a modern expression, I guess made popular by expensive superhero film franchises. But it is a useful expression, for example: to explain how I got started writing for people I have never met.

It happened in college, but it started in high school. My dad used to read the International Herald Tribune (which was a joint venture between the New York Times and the Washington Post, it was basically a newspaper for Americans abroad) and he would occasionally bring it home. We also received it at school, where I was a bit of a library rat. I was already getting the reading itch and would read anything lying around. Well, the last pages had some miscellanea: Sports, the funnies, classifieds, and a satire column, penned by Art Buchwald. I loved Art Buchwald, he was hilarious! So much so that I ended up doing my PhD specializing in satire. (You can see an interview with him here)

Fast forward a couple of years and I had some sort of gripe with my university. The solution? Write a letter to the editor in The Vanguard, the school newspaper, the style? Satire, obviously. After that letter came another one, and another one. Eventually the newspaper staff with the great Dave Newcorn as editor, made me a columnist -just like Art Buchwald! What a great moment that was. Yes, it was a small newspaper in a small university, but still, I got to write trying to imitate my Art Buchwald. And I´m still trying to write like him. Thanks Dave!

Oh you can read a random selection of articles I found here. Be merciful, it was the 80s and I had no clue what I was doing -not that I do now, either…

Selection of Vanguard articles Antonio BalsonDownload

The last (Hieronymite) Monastery, Santa María del Parral

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Besides the actual friendship, one of the very enriching advantages of one of your best friends being a fine art restorer is when he invites you to visit him at work. Jaime invited me to check out a Medieval bridge in Toledo and the Alfonso XII monument in Madrid (read about those visits here and here), amongst others over the years.

Recently Jaime invited me -and his brother with his two daughters- to visit him as he restores a Gothic altarpiece in Segovia.

Santa María del Parral is just outside Segovia’s city walls, across the river from the cathedral and the castle, a 45-minute (if you pay the Euro 10 toll) highway drive from my mom’s country house. It houses the last six monks of the Hieronymite order, which was once a powerful order favored by the royal family, and with monasteries all over Spain and Portugal.

The Monastery and its church did not disappoint. Despite having been abandoned for years after the government shut it down (together will all other convents and monasteries in the ill advised desamortización de Mendizabal), the gorgeous late gothic nave still stands and most of the monastery has been beautifully restored.

Besides the jaw dropping architecture, the monastery is fed by a really profound water source that provides the monks -and the multicolored carps in the pond- with the best fresh water I have ever tasted! It has all the minerals to satiate your thirst, unlike the thinner mountain water.

Since the Hieronymites are a very contemplative order, understandably we could only visit the “outside” cloister which is beautiful -and has a fountain of that delicious water, in fact, the monastery has never been hooked up to Segovia’s public water system.

Yes, the monastery does have rooms for (male) retreats, but you know I am committed to the Benedictine monks at El Paular!

After the visit, we had a nice lunch at a nearby restaurant before heading back over the mountains home.

Punch drunk on Oswaldo Estrada’s “Luces de emergencia”

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Luces de emergencia with a churro

When you sip a drink, a glass of wine, a scotch, you enjoy the flavors and complexities, the layers and textures, you return to it again and discover new subtleties, you explore the color and smell, every sip brings new nuances.

Reading Oswaldo Estrada’s Luces de emergencia is more like downing a shot: you feel the explosion of flavor in your mouth, the burning of your throat, and then a punch to your stomach. Do this eleven times and you feel like you have been eleven rounds with Joe Frazier.

As you go deeper and deeper into the stories you feel like you are eavesdropping on very private, personal stories, you feel embarrassed because you should not be listening to them. And then you start another one, hooked on the adrenaline of learning secret gossip. It is exhilarating, you want to talk to the characters, grab some by the shoulders and give them a good shake, hug others, sit and listen to others, console others. Get ready for an emotional roller coaster.

Not surprising, Luces won the International Latino Book Awards in 2020.

Luces de emergencia