Split

Thus far, the view of my travel from one city to another has been hills and fields and forests and mountains. This time, I look out the window and see the beautiful blue waters of the Dalmatian Coast, islands sprawled over them, peacefully sleeping in shades of blue-green.

I had expected to only spend a day in Split, but ended up spending two; there is so much to do, so much offered up, in this coastal Croatian city. It has an activity that summer elicits and, though I don’t know what Split is like during other times of year, it seemed like the city was in full bloom: young and old enjoying the warm sunlight on both pebbly and sandy beaches; the herds of yachts and boats in the harbor that form a familiar forest of swaying masts; families traversing the white stone streets where stalls pop up like dandelions, selling everything from indistinctive hats and overpriced souvenirs to some beautifully-crafted jewelry and hand-made woven bags.

Pizza shops and ice cream parlors, wine gardens and beer gardens and expensive restaurants and cheap fast-food stalls….

For me, the most remarkable thing about Split is that you’ll find all of these things within walls that are literally hundreds of years old. The Diocletian Palace was built by the Romans in the early 3rd/late 4th centuries A.D., and while it appears like ruins, there are still parts that are well reserved—and still functioning: people live in some of the palace’s old apartments, there are hotels that operate out of pieces of history.

Some people might stand aghast that such an ancient site isn’t partition and conserved and turned into a giant museum with fees for entrance and an exorbitant souvenir shop and café installed. But I love it, just the way it is: it’s a living monument. Churches and mosques were meant for worship, ships were meant for sailing, and palaces were meant for living and working and life: the palace is a statement that beauty shouldn’t be the abandonment of function, but the elegant coexistence with it.

I think there’s something universal about that message. Appearance is just how something looks: appearance is fickle and changes; it doesn’t build anything; it doesn’t create. That comes from the inside, from the drive and motivation of a person, from the way one functions and moves through the world. For me, the world is teaching me how to move through it, with every city I visit, with every site I see, with every person I meet.

Split shows how me how I can transform and re-appropriate the past to enliven the present. California, North Carolina, Tokyo, Pennsylvania, New York, Mongolia--places and people I've loved… somehow the relics of my past form the structures I see and live through, not the walls that confine me, and not the monuments I lock away.

The ferry shuttles me on to Hvar; I look forward to relaxing on the lovely Croatian Island.