* The authors are part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
“I grew up in the sea and poverty for me was lavish; then I lost the sea and all the luxuries turned gray to me, the intolerable misery. Since then I wait” (Albert Camus).
Sitges, the white Subur; It is a beautiful Mediterranean city that I like to walk along its beautiful promenade in the early hours of the morning, from Terramar or El Vento to the church of San Sebastián, near the suggestive Viver restaurant that looks like a house hanging over the water.
Yamuna’s coffee, served by Barbara, has quality and hospitality. There the pages of my diary are inhabited with impressions and some drawings. Nearby is the sculpture of a beautiful female nude looking at the sea.
Other times I have an Earl Gray tea with milk on the terrace of the Hotel Romà ntic or in the Café Roy on Parelladas street where a few years ago I gave a lecture on my book Trip to Ceylon and the Maldives.
Going down the stairs of the church of San Bartolomé and Santa Tecla, you come to a boardwalk with a sculpted mermaid. Beyond, the house that Santiago Rusiñol lived in -Cau Ferrat- that filled Sitges with history in the modernist era and the Maricel Museum with magnificent artistic donations from Dr. J. Pérez Rosales.
From the boardwalk, the changing landscape of the waves breaking on the rocks and sculpting ephemeral figures for many centuries parades.
Today the sea is smooth and seems to speak calmly through the waves. The sky is immensely blue and “this is how the water dyes”, as the poet friend Enrique Badosa recalled.
Between the rocks of the boardwalk I see cat food and some children discover a multicolored feline that rests peacefully with the lullaby of the waves and opens one eye exploring my possible intentions. I let the rest of him follow.
The immense sea, the dreamlike and majestic Mediterranean, invites you to read and for dreams to glide over the waters, as Keats said. It seems time stopped, the “Kidnapped Chronos”, on an island where time stopped. I open my book…
“Ogygia is an island that lies in the distance in the sea. Cronos was imprisoned there by the work of Zeus so that he would guard the island and the sea that was called Cronius. It was inhabited by the Greeks, in a gulf whose mouth faces the Caspian” .
“On an island where everything is given in abundance, it is not necessary to work and the inhabitants spend their days dedicated to cults and sacrifices as well as to conversation and philosophy. Nature is admirable and the air that surrounds it is very soft” .
“It seems that the divinity impedes those who wish to leave and appears in dreams and apparitions and even in voices to those who wish to leave.”
“And Cronos lives in a deep cave surrounded by a great golden rock and remains asleep, since it was sleep that Zeus devised as a tether to stop time. And some birds from the top of the rock fly down and bring him ambrosia “.
“And the island is dominated by a fragrance that expands from the rock like a fountain.”
“And the divinities surround and serve Cronos because they were his companions when he reigned over gods and men and the most important matters were announced to Cronos in dreams. All that Zeus foresees is dreamed by Cronos and the impulses of the soul at war and the titanic passions they are completely drowsy by sleep and the royal and divine element is by itself pure and unmixed”.
“The inhabitants have assigned to them a source, that of truth, which is by far the best and most divine of all and those who are satisfied with it never lie”
I close the book. I look at the sea The waves continue, leaving their foam in the water like the last words of the trip. It is the same sea of ​​the ancient myths, which sweetly molds the face of the earth.
