#28 the accidental pilgrim, part 2

The first morning in Croatia, in Split, I woke up to this sound, just meters away, the voices echoing around the ancient walls of Diocletian's Palace. This video shows it perfectly, way better than I got. I ran to that spot, navigating by ear down endless narrow corridors, open to the air, until I found this. It was one of those "stop my life, I'm OK right here" moments.

Graeme bought a couple of bikes, and we spent many happy, strenuous hours exploring the coastal hills near Split.

I knew that my earliest inspiration, the sculptor Ivan Meštrović had worked nearby, but, perhaps in the overwhelming visual banquet of the area, I just didn't think to look up local references. We were just out biking another area north of the city when we came across the museum. Well, we were on Šetalište Ivana Meštrovića, Ivan Mestrovic  Promenade, so there might have been a clue. Not sure. It was hot out there. We were sun-blasted and salt-saturated, thanks to the local cuisine.

We came to this. Not the studio of a starving artist:

The gate was locked. There was a lady selling tickets and memorabilia nearby, who said the gallery would open in an hour or so. I can't remember if she could communicate that there was more down the road, or whether we just drifted there. But we drifted. 

And found another gate, with Mestrovic on it, pretty much unguarded, deserted, in fact. We wandered in, through a portal into a mostly empty walled courtyard, and into an open door. I may have almost fallen down. This was just available to anyone on the street? I'd languished over these pieces for hours in my early 20s, and here they were, all of them:

Kastelet-Crikvine, restored and remodelled by Mestrovic to house this large installation, a Life of Christ. I simply had no idea that this existed. Some day, I might get back here when I'm not so hot, so thirsty.

I did spend quite awhile with these bas relief carvings. The texture, the rich aged wood, those dramatic Slavic poses, the Medieval style fascinated me as a young man. Maybe, as it just occurs to me, this shouted to me 'you want to be a dad'. I became a dad. I took my son to see these. I was impressed. He was patient.

Perhaps I just have spent so much time in the company of wood, carving, sanding, finishing, breathing the stuff, knowing what I'm working with just by the smell, that I can look at these and get a certain happy fatigue in my hands. I know the sound of the studio when these were made.

It's been years, though. I starved during the time that I was carving. I still have racks of tools, but they have been used for other less noble purposes, and wouldn't sing through wood without a lot of attention from stone.

We did get to the Mestrovic Gallery. Graeme waited patiently while I hung out with the many stone sculptures that I'd known from the Mestrovic book. It was a bit like the few moments that I'd stumbled into the Louvre, just before they closed, finding an Etruscan sculpture, the original of the one featured on our Grade 9 French textbook, only there were perhaps 20 works that I'd ingested and added to my emotional waistline. Perhaps that was enough of a pilgrimage. I'd been back to my early 20s. I had knelt, paid my respects to a master.

The rocky lanes near Skrip on the island of Brac, just an hour's ferry from Split. Skrip is one of the very few continuously inhabited localities in Europe.

Graeme and I wandered to various harbours in the Dalmatian Islands riding the rocky lanes, eating in tiny cafés in narrow streets, and eating all the gelato we could find. It was a sweet time, sweaty, too. 

The hard work of many hands was simply everywhere:

Stone roofs! Stone everything, actually. A Croatian without gnarled hands must have been a priest.

This is Skrip, located at the top of a very long goat path. Graeme and I struggled up this route, spending hours grunting, swearing and laughing at each other, pushing our bikes over a lot of rough ground. When we arrived at the church, an elderly lady came out of the shadows and motioned me through the heavy oak doors of the castle, gesturing to graffiti carved into the wall by some bored Roman. She sold me some local Rakia, in a pop bottle, all kinds of herbs floating in the local spirits. Going home, we had a smooth paved road. We drank beer on the coast at Supetar, exhausted and jubilant and left the rakia mostly alone.