There is a documentary out about the fluidity of women’s sexuality and how shown pictures of naked men, heterosexual women don’t respond, but they do respond to naked images of women, particularly women masturbating or having sex. The filmmakers have decided to not come to any conclusions because they understand that these things are complex and there are no answers that can respond to what makes a woman tick.
I traveled all over Croatia and saw barely a sign of the war that destroyed villages and threatened to destroy cities in the early nineties. In Dubrovnik there is a graph showing all the roofs that took a direct hit, all the buildings that were leveled, and other areas of war wear. But I didn’t see destroyed villages or crumbled buildings – just like in New Orleans where a tourist can come to visit and not see any evidence of the most devastating flood in U.S. history, so too, a tourist can carouse through Croatia not seeing any hint of a war that took place a decade ago.
I wish I was a fishy in the sea
I wish I was a fishy in the sea
I’d go slippery slippery slidey
All over your bony body
I wish I were a fishy in the sea
We have been together 173 days.
We have been separated in intervals for 43 days so far.
We have 24 more days before she is flesh and blood again.
She has become my phantom girlfriend – a spook I met on Mardi Gras, a dream I had once, a haunt who bewitched then left me bewildered to wail (read: blog), who returned on my birthday as a gift, who jetted just when I believed she was real again, who reappeared to whisk me to Croatia for a fantasy vacation, then poof, she’s gone again, “that T, always traveling, always leaving, might as well get used to it,” again she’s a voice on the phone, she’s words in my email box, she’s in my dreams, she’s my ache and joy, I’m unmoored by her, she’s always about to walk into the picture.
Hvar is still to me one of the most difficult places to pronounce in Croatia – the no vowel thing is a tough customer – but here in Hvar, we found a routine that suited us perfectly – breakfast on the veranda, draft beer on the plaza, a boat ride to Jerolim, a bed of needles under the pine trees to call our own, and the deep deep deep blue sea all around to plunge into and swim to our hearts content.
This is a photo of the Diocletian Palace in Split – from our vantage point at a cafe where we had lunch, we watched the elongated Dalmatian men strolling by with their wives and girlfriends and the near heatstroke of Germans and French looking to absorb any ray of sun Croatia had to offer.
The bustling part of the town takes place on a street where the cafes face the street and not this gorgeous view beyond – it’s a puzzle. On the other side from the cafes, are restaurants that look out to the sea – they are built into a 60’s fading modern puzzle of a building that some young architect constructed as his design thesis – the modern structure has no place in the vocabulary of Lastovo – beautiful stone buildings, interesting chimneys and lovely courtyards.
The houses in Lastovo have these very unique chimneys – this is one version of them.
We hiked from our little hamlet down from the town of Lastovo over to Zaklopatica bay and caught the sunset before dinner. On the way, T taught me how to count to ten in Croatian – this may seem like a minor task to you readers but I dare you to pronounce some of these words where the letters put up a war inside my mouth because there is no vowel to guide you from one consonant to the next. As we were sitting on a rock watching the sun go down in a big fiery ball, people from the village came out to watch behind us.
In our little quiet hamlet in Lastovo, my honey would make me steaming hot cups of Nescafé and one morning we took our cups down to the water to watch the sun come up – which it does quite early there.
