antonio balson

Libraries (continued)

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I have the privilege of working on a beautiful campus. There is a pond smack in the middle, there are a couple of gazebos for meditating, there is a beautiful chapel (arguably the most beautiful building in Boynton Beach), there is even a tree swing! There is also a beautiful library. It is not a massive library, it is rather quaint by university standards but still, it is a lovely library.

This is where it gets interesting: In order to get to my office, you have to go through or around the library, through is the much faster route.

So not only do I walk by the periodicals section where I can -at a glance- look at the new magazines coming in, then I lower my blood pressure by walking through the peaceful, quiet stacks, and right before getting to my office, there is a shelf with free books that the library no longer wants. This is my perdition.

I wrote about libraries and bookstores recently (ok, a year and a half is recently for dinosaurs like me), but that was before I had to work next to the goodie room that is the “Free books” shelves outside my office!

Over the months I have collected many varied books. My most recent find – and the detonator for this blog – was a first edition 1944 Divine Comedy with drawings by William Blake. Last year a retired history professor went into an assisted living facility, and he donated his whole library! It was chock-full of great books of which I got a good number of. And since my office is next door to these books, I always have first choice. In fact, sometimes I have even help the librarian stack the free books as he rolls them out!

La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) 2013

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La Grande Belleza

Thanks to Film Club, I am seeing many more films now than I have in years . Having said that, I really do not want to make antonioyrocinante into a film blog, there are enough of those already.

But I just saw La Grande Bellezza, (yes it is a 2013 film, I am a bit slow) and I have to tell you about it – beware, there might be spoilers.

This is an exquisite film, as beautiful as Rome, the city where it is filmed: exuberant, colorful, rich, fun… but there is a gaping void in it, a melancholy, sad void represented by protagonist Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella.

You see, all the beauty in the world is sterile, meaningless without love, without a deep spiritual connection. Director Sorrentino is not subtle about this: The film opens with a quote from Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night

Traveling is very useful: it makes your imagination work. Everything else is just disappointment and trouble. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.

To drive home that point, the opening scene combines ethereal views of Rome combined with David Lang’s otherworldly song I lie. The fact that the song is in Yiddish should lead you to the great spiritual journeys of Israel, of Job. Life is nothing if not a spiritual journey to yourself, to the divine in you, to your Grande Belleza, Namaste.

Let’s stop there. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or go see the film and then let me know.

Tonxo Tours update

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Here is a mysterious story for you…

If you follow my blog (thank you, I really appreciate it) you know I now have a deeply rewarding, full time job, which means that Tonxo Tours has become a bit of a side gig, which I can only indulge in during a few days at Christmas time and during Summer. I still love sharing my love for Spain, especially Madrid and its surroundings. I also get a kick out of promoting it. I love taking photos to put up on the Instagram (tonxotours) and I also love recording short videos explaining bits of Madrid which I also post to Insta and to the Tonxo Tours YouTube site. Here are a couple of my recent clips, and you can watch the rest here!

The videos are not great quality, in fact they are all home made with little to no edits, because I believe the story is what matters here, so unless you are a video snob, enjoy!

So, if you are in Spain for Christmas or Summer, hit me up and I would love to show you around!

Here is a quick one with a special guest: my niece!

The Proposition

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I’ve been in Film Club for a few months and I love it! I have re-visited some oldies, seen some interesting new (for me) films, and a couple of films I did not particularly care for. But last month I saw a film I must write about.

The theme for June was Westerns: Fort Apache (1948), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Proposition (2005), and the remake of 3:10 to Yuma (2007). Ignorant of me, I did not know there was such a genre as Australian Westerns like The Proposition. As the opening credits ran and I saw it was written by Nick Cave, I mentioned it to my dear friend Theo who knows Cave and his work well. His comment: “It’s a grim tale.”

Grim indeed, but at the same time deeply mesmerizing. The photography is married to the soundtrack in a way I have not noticed in most films. Another of the Film Club member’s opinion was “hypnotic”. Yes, there was one scene I could not bare watch, but the overall work is masterful, intelligent, and beautiful despite the violence.

Without spoilers, the plot weaves family, colonization and the Aborigines, morality (the key element I found in the films I saw) and the concept of justice.

The brilliant cast includes Guy Pierce, John Hurt with a stellar performance (and the only hilarious stingers of the film) and a spiritual death, and a perfectly cast Emily Watson who knocks it out of the park as an English rose.

So, if you have not seen this jewel and do not mind some (ok, a lot of) violence, make this movie the next one you see. You are welcome.

Arthur Burns: Love. Love is the key. Love and family. For what are night and day, the sun, the moon, the stars without love, and those you love around you? What could be more hollow than to die alone, unloved?

Stuff one finds on the beach.

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As my faithful readers know, my community service this year was cleaning the beach every Sunday afternoon. It was extremely rewarding to help, and at the same time to walk for an hour and to meditate while enjoying the beautiful beach and weather. A three in one: community service, meditation, and exercise.

During the Winter months, the strong winds (I guess) blew in all kinds of trash, sometimes in the course of an hour I had to empty my big bucket (you know, the 5-gallon blue buckets) up to three times! Now in the warmer months there was remarkably less trash. Anyway, that was my highly scientific (not) guess.

Fortunately, I am not the only one on beach cleaning duty, I do bump occasionally into other people cleaning up. The town also has 4 buckets available at the entrance to the beach if you want to grab one and clean up.

On top of all that there is a bit of a treasure hunter thrill, and a fun component to what you find or might find. Here is an incomplete list of things I have found:

  • Bottle tops – this is the most popular trash on the beach ☹
  • Plastic forks and spoons – really people?
  • Bottles – mostly plastic but also glass. All sorts of bottles: drinks, shampoo, oil, you name it…
  • Bits of plastic – from tiny to huge and in all colors. You cannot even tell what they used to be a part of.
  • Flip flops – every Sunday at least one! Usually, barnacle incrusted.
  • Cigarette lighters
  • Deflated balloon
  • Hammerhead shark – dead
  • Comb – I picked it up, not because I needed it.
  • Eyeglasses – no glass and broken, but I do not need them.
  • Lure – with a massive hook I gave it to a dude fishing.
  • Dog Tag – Palm Beach.
  • Part of a propeller – someone surely missed it…
  • Etc. Etc.

Oh, and make sure you do not step on the Portuguese Man-O-War… or their deadly, long tentacles.

The Walker Cup

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Once in a while, on Friday after school a few elements will align and I actually stop at the Smoke Inn, my cigar lounge for a celebratory cigar, a “Happy Hour” as it were, a necessary attitude adjustment hour.

So there I am, enjoying a cigar and a libation, out on the porch, reading my book, and the TV is showing the opening ceremony of the Walker Cup, which happens to be at the Seminole Country Club which is a couple of blocks away from my friend Manuel’s house in Juno Beach. Since he is a golf fan and I am a good friend, I send him a photo telling him about it.

Sunday comes around and Manuel sends me a message that he is at the tournament and that I should go. I do, and we had a great time!

The Walker Cup is a competition between US and English (and Irish) amateur players i.e.: university guys (and it is only guys). We enjoyed watching a few holes, we savored a refreshment and overall, just had a good time! (Oh, and the Yanks won)

First year back Stateside

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A year ago I was locked up in Madrid, teaching a few classes on line, obviously Tonxo Tours was paused indefinitely. So I started looking for gigs around the world. As fate would have it, I ended up back in my beloved (not) Florida. Well at least the East coast of Florida which, having a bit more history than the West coast is a bit more diverse…

So, as I review the year, what are my main observations and conclusions:

I love my school! Saint Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary. We get students from North Carolina down to the Caribbean, and I get to teach them Spanish and English in a beautiful campus with great colleagues!

Despite Covid issues like having to wear a mask to class, it still beat Zoom classes where students are sitting on their beds, getting up to brew a cup of tea…

I have worked hard at building my community by building relationships at school, volunteering as an usher at my church (wait for a blog post on that), and trying to socialize –although that boils down to me going to my cigar lounge once in a while.

Speaking of fate, I was lucky to find out that my friend from my schooldays in London, Manuel Andrés lives a couple of towns North of me in Juno Beach! We basically saw each other every week-end for pizza, barbecue, or trips to Ikea. Last weekend we crashed the Walker Cup which took place next door to him (watch for another blog post on that).

I have moved so many times –about 20- in my life, that I now have a fairly established routine: find a nearby church, gym, and yoga studio, bar, coffee shop, cigar shop/lounge, community service, breakfast restaurant, Trader Joe’s, etc. Of course it is tricky to check all the boxes, so there is a bit of give and take. For example, I do not really go to the bar much anymore, but I do have the beach to go running, swimming and walking/meditating, so it compensates.

All in all, it has been a positive year and it has flown by! Now I only have a handful of meetings, some paperwork and I am off to Spain, stay tuned!

On grilling

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It might be our reptilian brains, our primal instincts, but few things taste as good as grilled foods. It does make sense: fire + food, no middleman, no fancy sauce, no nothing.

Now, I got the secret to buying great secondhand stuff from Spencer, a brilliant and wise old student of mine: You have to watch Craigslist like a hawk. And I did, patiently waiting and searching for the right barbeque. When it popped up, I snatched it up.

It is a baby gas Weber grill (Spirit II E-210), but it is all I need, and it fit my teacher’s budget. I know, of course the charcoal ones are far better, but to cook for one person, it is a bit of a production, so I confess to falling for the convenience of pressing a button and presto!

I invited my friend Manuel to dinner in order to properly inaugurate (for me) the grill. I rarely eat red meat, so when I do it is a treat. I went to the butcher in town, The Butcher and the Bar, and bought a pound of filet mignon from grass fed, Florida cows.

Of course, I washed and cleaned the grill as the obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive Virgo that I am, and we were ready to fire her up!

It did not disappoint. The steaks (and the asparagus we threw with them) came out perfectly. My main concern was that being a small grill it was not going to have the heat to sear the meat, but I was wrong (as usual) (see the photos). Since then, I have also done swordfish, and it has also been delicioso!

So, if you are in SW Florida and want to put some shrimp on the barbie, hit me up!

Where are you on your journey? Richard Rohr (continued)

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Spirituality and cigars, why not?

Where are you on your journey of self-fulfillment? Where are you on your journey of peace, inner and outer? Where are you on your journey of finding the real you? Not your things, your mind, or your TikTok likes, but your soul.

If you are on this journey, and I hope you are, and it is a journey, I hope that you pay attention to yourself, that you spend time alone cultivating, discovering yourself, call it what you will, your spirit, your soul. The first step on this long road usually comes about due to failure, breakage: a failed relationship, financial struggle, accidents, whatever. Without this fall, why would you need to rebuild? To re-calibrate? To question anything? Just go on your merry way with your ego, enjoy.

Otherwise, with every so-called failure, you release your ego; you embrace peace, you let go, you become more aware of your inner self. You rebuild and grow –and here is the catch- not necessarily stronger in the selfish way of thinking, but more vulnerable, wiser.

Why are you on such a metaphysical rant, Antonio? You might ask, and I am happy that you ask. You see, I have just read Richard Rohr’s Breathing Under Water and my mind has been expanded.

In his book, Rohr studies Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps from a spiritual perspective and re-frames your pre-conceived ideas of alcoholics!

The book is epigraphed by three quotes from three of my favorite guides:

“I did not come for the healthy, but for those who need a doctor.”

Jesus (Luke 5:31-32)

“Alcohol in Latin is “spiritus” and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison.”

Carl Jung, letter to Bill Wilson (1961)

And

“These are the only genuine ideas, the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.”

José Ortega y Gasset

The first step is the hardest to take: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.” Most of the time our ego blinds us to our problems. This is why many times only a violent awakening will make us reach for much needed help. That is the first step, realizing you have a problem, it is much easier to dismiss it than to deal with it, and its roots…

Rohr analyzes every step in detail weaving spirituality into each rung of the ladder. It is an illuminating book that everybody should read. Yes, you too.

We all have our addictions our sins, it does not have to be alcohol or drugs –although many times it is. Rohr sees how “breakage” and coming out of it is deeply healing and spiritual. In Japan, when they break a plate or a bowl many times they glue it back together with gold covered adhesive, making the piece much more valuable. They call it Kintsugi, and it makes for beautiful, unique pieces!

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Enjoying mi reading

A good cup of coffee (continued)

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Yes, I talk about coffee a lot, and not because I am addicted to the stimulants, in fact during recent fasts, (for colonoscopy prep and for Lenten Fridays) I lived fine without it. And I only normally only have one cup a day. A standard 16oz size, not the Big Gulp Americans drown in. Well, lucky for me I have found a great coffee place in my neighborhood in what is otherwise the suburban wasteland of Southern Florida.

Common Grounds is a great little place despite its common name. The grounds are not Common, since they are single origin, fair trade, organic, all the feel-good stuff, but it makes for a tasty cup. The place is cute with real vintage furniture, a piano you can write on -it gets painted over when it is full-, and friendly, skilled staff. I have yet to try their pastries, but they do look tasty!!

Just as important as the coffee, the time you take to enjoy it, the space, the ceremony, your relationship with the barista, all make up your sensory and spiritual experience. Something that is normally mostly lacking in the big chain coffee shops.

The best company I can find nowadays here is a good book, as you can appreciate from the photos.

So, there you have it, if you are ever around Boynton Beach, hit me up, otherwise head over to Common Grounds!