Ten years ago, I found myself spending two days by myself on Vis, an island in the Adriatic that had become, in the years past, my favorite place on Earth.
My friends had all left, their vacation days over, and I was alone to enjoy the beauty of my surroundings. I yearned for some “me time”, after ten days of group fun.
On the previous days, we partied, explored and drank. We ate great food and tasted incredible wines. We got lost in an islander’s vineyard and, instead of shooting us with his 40-year-old shotgun, he made us a nice lunch and we got to know his family history. Now I wanted to slow down and think. And read. And write.
I had two books in my bag and I hadn’t even looked at them in ten days. When it comes to my life habits, that amount of time without me reading a book is a good sign that a doctor needs to be called. (A book a day keep the doctor away, or something like that...)
The impressions from the days that passed were still vivid in my mind. A part of me was still in the Blue Cave, which we visited shortly before breaking up our little traveling band of misfits.
The Blue Cave is located on the island of Biševo, five kilometers southwest of the island of Vis, where we had made our home for a week and a half.
This is what the Blue Cave looks like:
While inside, my mind felt like I was in a novel, and my surroundings as if they were torn out of the pages of The Count of Monte Cristo.
I had come to the island of Vis a few times before, but I never stayed long and I never got to see Biševo or its marvelous Blue Cave.
This visit was something special.
As my friends were leaving the island, I felt relief because I would finally get a chance to let my thoughts and inspirations settle. I would maybe even get some writing done.
I went down to my favorite coffee bar, ordered my café con leche and cracked open one of the two books I brought with me. It was Ask And It Is Given by Abraham-Hicks.
And it was a perfect read.
I remember doing exercises from the book on the beach and thinking that my life was never so perfect. I was free and I was me.
I borrowed a bike and decided to visit Stiniva, a popular, but very secluded beach on the island.
That afternoon I wrote the outline for what would years later turn out to be my first novel (coming out later this year if I don't screw it up).
My two days of solitude flew by quickly, but I did manage to do some writing, and also read AAIIG from cover the cover, for god-knows which time.
I remember the feeling that I had as I was leaving the island - I knew I wouldn’t see it again for a while.
I was on my way to a monastery in SW Bosnia and Herzegovina, for a family reunion. Extended family members from Germany, Canada and Croatia came to celebrate the Assumption of Mary holiday, which is immensely popular in Herzegovina and in Croatia too.
I dreaded the family reunion, and I feared it would spoil the mood I was in, as family sometimes does.
But, the curious thing was that as I was sitting in the bus that traveled across country roads, heading toward the Croatian-Bosnian border, my mind was focused on beautiful things. I was in love with my life. It wasn’t a jump-out-of-your-skin excitement, but more of a silent appreciation that took hold of me. I loved where I was, and I was looking forward to where I was going.
I arrived at the small village somewhere in southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina, to find that my family had already gone out for their scheduled sightseeing trip. I was by myself again. I followed the directions and wound up at my new digs - a modern Carmelite monastery built on the shore of the biggest lake in the country. Someone in la familia thought it would be the perfect place to stay.
Here’s one from the air:
Again, I would have more time for myself. I spent it walking the grounds, and exploring the inside of monastery too. Its stone walls exuded a peacefulness I wasn’t accustomed to. By six o’clock, I was ready to take a nap.
Instead, of a nap, I took out the other book from my bag. I bought it two months prior to the trip, but never got around to reading it.
It was Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.
Books are like LSD in a way - your state of mind dtermines what kind of a trip it's going to be.
That night, as my family was settling in at the monastery, and they hurried through the halls, I was taken somewhere else.
A Lebanese-American poet had captured my imagination and stirred something in my heart as I lay on my bed in a monastery by a lake, somewhere in quiet Bosnia and Herzegovina.
To this day, I haven’t read anything quite like The Prophet. Every word moved me, and I don’t say this lightly, but I felt every word AS TRUTH.
As I prepare to re-trace my old traveling routes in a few weeks, post-lockdown, I feel my love for The Prophet and appreciation for Kahlil Gibran growing stronger. I want to share my favorite part of it with you:
On Laws (The Prophet, Chapter 13)
Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?"
And he answered:
You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.
Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.
But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?
What of the cripple who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters law-breakers?
What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?
What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?