The year is sometime in the early 1990s, perhaps 1993 or 1994. I’m a photographer working for an American news agency and am currently based in Split, Croatia. Split, a coastal town, boasts seemingly perpetual sunshine and is built around an ancient palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian. The town features a charming waterfront promenade and dramatic mountains that frame it.
The agency rented an apartment on the first floor of a Roman-built corner tower of the Diocletian palace. It has a spacious living room that doubles as an office, with two desks facing opposite walls. There’s also a kitchen with a dining area and two bedrooms. This is where I sleep. The apartment lacks air conditioning, but it doesn’t need it. The walls of the former fortress, over 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) thick, keep the place pleasantly cool even on the hottest summer days. To reach the window with a view of the street, I have to stoop and shuffle through a tunnel-like arch cut into the wall. It’s a safe place to sleep.
Right outside my apartment, along the outer wall of the palace, lies Split’s vibrant green market. The first stalls begin right next to the stairs and stretch in unruly rows to the seafront. Every day, the market comes alive before 6 a.m., as vendors’ trucks start unloading their wares for the day’s trade. The scene is a cacophony of sounds: the screeching of wheels and tires, the sighing of hydraulic breaks and lifts, the echoing thunder of metal and plastic containers hitting the cobbled street, and the vendors’ shouts of greetings, questions, and jokes. Despite the 5-foot-thick walls of my bedroom, or maybe because of it, the sound somehow amplifies, making it impossible to escape.
On the first few days, I tried various methods to drown out the market noise. I placed a pillow over my head, then another under, and even tried earplugs. However, the sound vibrated the walls and furniture, rendering earplugs useless. On day three, I’m up and scowling at the market through my tunnel-like window. By day four, I admit my defeat and take a walk through the hubbub.
Once away from the market, I can feel the pre-waking breath of a sleeping town as the sun warms the stone walls. Across the downtown, at a hotel, a waiter is setting the tables. He wears a white apron and a not-so-white kitchen towel over one shoulder, which he uses to wipe the tables and chairs. He nods at me with a sleepy half-smile.
“Not quite open yet, but I can whip up a quick coffee,” he says, clearing the cobwebs in his voice. “You look like you need one.”
I smile gratefully and sit in the farthest chair, still trying to escape the market noise even though it doesn't reach the cafe.
Two days later, I know the waiter’s name is Stipe, and Stipe knows how I take my coffee. From my observation table at the corner, I watch the fishermen rowing in with the rising sun. Just as the housewives and a few househusbands descend zombie-like on the fishermen’s harbour to buy the night’s catch from the hand that caught it, I observe the sun shyly climbing the usually cloudless sky. Seagulls sail lazily above the street sweepers, and a barber with hair greased to such a perfection it must serve as a business advertisement of sorts, stops for an espresso at the bar. Even though I'm not eavesdropping, I hear every word he says. His booming voice has the volume stuck on highest. After exchanging the latest gossip with Stipe, the barber half-walks, half-runs to the newsstand, picking up every newspaper they have and hauling them to his shop. By the time he arrives, he’s a quarter of an hour past opening time. The first customers await smoking in front of the shop, and the barber greets them boisterously like old friends, then they all tumble in.
I reach the bottom of my first cup when the photographers arrive. There’s no set schedule for who will show up first. My four close friends all work for the local newspaper. They find their way to the seafront at the beginning of their morning shift. The lucky one has been assigned to take “weather pictures,” illustrating a segment of city life in today’s weather. It makes his morning coffee officially sanctioned by his employer. The others arrive later, one by one, or sometimes all at once. I’ve become a fixture of Split’s morning routine, a part of their daily ritual. Over coffees, we discuss the pictures we took yesterday, sometimes talking sports, life, politics, or anything else. Sometimes we sit in silence, enjoying the morning, soaking in the town’s vibrant energy and each other’s company.
Before the Split's market, I wasn’t a morning person. However, Split taught me to find beauty in that twilight moment when the town yawns, stretches, and rises for a new day. To appreciate it, I had to be up before sunrise, and to this day, I do the same. Sometimes, I bundle my dogs and walk through the sleeping neighbourhood, while other times we drive somewhere where the sun rises over a different horizon. Regardless of the location, it always brings me the same feeling of peace and joy for being alive. Whenever possible, I drag my wife along because every joy is always more joyful in a good company. In short, I became an early bird, and I’ve kept at it ever since.
My “worms” are those magnificent everyday scenes that exist between the dream and reality, before the night’s magic fades into the light of day.
You can only see a flower opening if you rise before sun.
The photo is taken by me on today's dog walk. It shows the dawn breaking over Medulin marina.