el paular

Summer recap and back to school

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Well, it has certainly been a different summer, and I am happy to be back to my boring, monastic Chapel Hill lifestyle. When I was a child summers went on forever, but now they are like the weather in Boston, you blink, and its over.

Madrid was home base for the summer, although this year I rarely got out of the house other than to grab a coffee in the morning and around the block to the gym in the afternoon.

My ten days in Greece were my real break. Caught up with old friends, made new friends and enjoyed my beloved old Greece with its special sunlight, and sea, and food.

We passed July in the country house at La Navata where I spent the mornings on babysitting duty for one, two or all three of my sister’s children. We would walk down to the village to buy bread and the newspaper and to have a coffee – Cola Cao – chocolate milk for the kids. During the afternoons I would work on my dissertation, finishing chapter 3. There were a couple of excursions: one to El Paular Monastery and the nearby hills, and of course a couple of visits to El Escorial with my dear friend Paco.

Another highlight of the Summer was having my sister and her two oldest here in Chapel Hill for a fortnight! We had a blast! (see previous blog post).

And then I had my 50th birthday. Well, at least it was better than my 49th, this time I did not get arrested for speeding. To celebrate, I gave this old blog an upgrade! So now it is http://www.antonioyrocinante.com without ads or Wordpress’ promotions. But I must confess it was difficult to pass my first birthday without my father.

Classes started three weeks ago, so we are back to the grind. I am teaching a section of Spanish 204, Advanced Intermediate, the first non required class. Mostly students that want to major or minor in Spanish. It has 12 great students. The downside? Class is at 8:00 am. My other section is Spanish 300, which is Composition. Of course you can’t have a course where you only write, it is like the guys at the gym that have these explosive upper bodies but Tweety Bird legs, as my cousin Arnold would say, so I have to work on integrating all facets of language development into the class.

Start of school also means that I have to get going on my dissertation again. I am starting the fourth – and last chapter (I still have to write the intro and conclusion). I am very excited, but this also means that I will not have much time to blog.

My other project, as I have mentioned before is getting a job for next year, as this should be my last year at UNC. I hope to defend my dissertation in the Spring. As is normal, I have mixed feelings: Of course I want to finish and see what the next chapter in my narrative holds, but on the other hand I love Chapel Hill and UNC and my friends and colleagues here.

So for now it is over and out from Chapel Hill.

Babysitting
Morning coffee at Marcelino
Bentley Boys dinner in an old Greek town
Working on the dissertation
Babysitting
Hot coffee
Working at El Escorial
The garden at El Escorial
San Antonio in El Escorial
El Escorial

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Brother Eulogio, El Paular monastery, and the Lozoya river

/ antonioyrocinante / 3 Comments

My childhood friend Jaime introduced me to brother Eulogio in the summer of 2011. I was floored by this man’s overflowing spirituality, granted he is a pro, but still. We got to spend the day with him and I was mesmerized.

The other day without Jaime’s two kids we drove over the Guadarrama mountains with our bicycles in his van to the monastery at El Paular to meet with brother Eulogio again.

Brother Eulogio is a “retired” 82 year old Benedictine monk. He was a Vespa mechanic before becoming a monk at 23. At the monastery he was put in charge of meeting with couples that wanted to get married there, later he managed just about all the other jobs at the monastery.

El Paular was built as a Carthusian monastery in 1390. By the time it got dismantled in the confiscations of Mendizábal of 1835, it was mentioned in Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor, as its protagonist embarks from there on one of his “excursions” where he will meet the terrible Serranas. It housed the monk that wrote a Glosa to the Coplas por la muerte de su padre by Jorge Manrique. It also housed Enlightenment writer and first romantic (according to Russell Sebold) José de Cadalso, among others.

In 1958, the monastery was reopened under the Benedictine order. Eventually a luxury hotel was opened next door – which is now closed. Nowadays there are only 6 monks left and a couple of “visiting” monks. The monastery houses guests that can stay and take part in the monastic lifestyle. Jaime spent years there doing great restoration work in the beautiful chapel and the cloister, so he knows the monks very well, so much so that he just walks in, the other day, through the kitchen!

Some of the recent accomplishments of the monastery have been reuniting all the Vicente Carducho paintings that lined the cloister and had been scattered after the confiscation as with the choir engraved wood chairs.

Jaime and I spent the morning chatting with brother Eulogio. He asks pointed questions and reasons with you. It is one of the most – if not the most – intense and spiritual experiences for me.

We had not asked to stay for lunch, so we said our goodbyes, picked up our bicycles and started an excursion to the top of the Peñalara hills. We had a lovely pic-nic by the side of the Lozoya river and carried on until we had to ditch the bikes and continue hiking for a good hour until we arrived at the source of the Lozoya, the Cascadas del Purgatorio. We had a refreshing swim in the pools before heading back down. Near the end of our trip Jaime got a flat so we had to walk the last couple of miles to the car.

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