One of the benefits of being a renter is being the renter of a quiet, secret 10 X 15-meter garden in the heart of a gardenless city center, and having the owner of the property be responsible for its upkeep.
As a result, the last few days have seen two Argen- tine gardeners slaving away to clear a year's worth of overgrowth and pine needles ( 43 large garbage bags' worth ) from my garden, while I got to work at my job and get paid for working. These two nice guys just cleared away the last of the debris today, and I am sitting in my garden now appreciating their efforts over a cold beer, just as Spring arrives in full force here in Sitges. Now that it's cleaned up, one of the next things on my agenda is to go out and take advantage of the recession to buy one of those now-underpriced digital projectors so that this Spring and Summer I can have "movie nights" out in the garden. It's a joy I remember from Morocco, where on the Air Force base I grew up on, we had a weird kind of "walk-in drive-in theater." This theater, and making out in it under the stars with my girlfriends at ages 15 and 16, formed an indelible impression in my young mind, one that I've been hoping to recreate ever since. This year I finally get the chance. HD projectors are now cheap enough to make it feasible. So start- ing ( hopefully ) next week, I get to share my 2000+ entry film library with my friends here in Sitges, under the stars. The "rules" are simple -- I provide the food and the movies, they provide the drinks. ( Although, to be honest, I always have to supply some of the drinks because they never bring enough to any of my gatherings. ) And then ( theoretically ) we just sit out under the stars and enjoy a movie, and then kick back and talk about it, and talk about the stars, both cinematic and astronomical. The first film in this summer's Uncle Tantra Film Festival is going to be one of my all-time favorites. I've told my friends about it many times, but being ( on the whole ) younger than I am and caught up in the pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-cynical milieu of modern-day Spain, many of them have never been able to kick back and enjoy the delights of a nice romantic fable, in a nice romantic setting. I hope to rectify that by showing them Jeremy Leven's wonderful "Don Juan De Marco." In other parts of the world, people are getting all excited because their religion ( which they would fight to the death to deny is a religion ) is in the News, and they feel a sense of renewed inspiration that others are soon going to be converted to believe as they do, and dedicate their lives to the pursuit of the Ultimate Ineffable Goal, enlightenment. Me, I have lesser goals. I'm just hoping to share this cool garden space and a really sweet film with a few friends, and to watch them smile as some of its great scenes act themselves out under the stars for their amusement. To each his or her own goals, I guess... "There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love."
