The first instance that defined Split: The distraction

Alone in a hotel room’s balcony. Dark. 11pm. Just after the long trip from Sarajevo. A bottle of wine on the table. Looking at the dark, ancient Adriatic.

“Sea. What an amazing, overwhelming, frightening thing. It is natural and poetic; physical and mystical at the same time. Real, as it storms through the coasts of Islands, turning boats upside down, and as it is the home and life of many creatures of this world. .Yet, it turns into something else in one of Hokusai’s magical paintings. It becomes the prison for Robinson Crouse; freedom for the young Sinbad; and a deep trap for the curious in Poe’s Maelstrom. It was dark and evil in Japanese folk tales and treacherously beatiful under the control of capricious Greek gods. We imagine sea as one of us.”

That was pretty much what I was thinking, sitting there, like a nocturnal turtle, when I spotted one, single glittering light in the vast darkness of the sea. Was it a loner fisherman, trying to make an early start to the fishing season? Was it a forgotten sign that warned the lost sailors? Or was I simply dreaming? I will never know. What I know is the fact that I could not think anything else but the source of that light. There it was, making me look at that single point, probably preventing me to think the thousand other meanings of the sea.

As sleep came over me with the changing tides, I wondered how many distracting lights there were in the world; which one of those lights, I managed to see past, and which ones stayed in my mind.

This first Croatian evening was a peaceful and serene one. The Sirens were silent, and that was more dangerous than their songs.

* First picture is Hokusai's painting: The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 2. Second picture is a painting by Liliane Tellier: Sinbad le Marin, Third is my photograph of the Adriatic.