It’s 3pm on a warm and sunny Sunday here in Memphis, TN. Perhaps inspired by Nick the cat, I’ve done little more than feed myself and sleep today. Last night I hung out with my friend Stacy – it was the first time I had ever been over her place (other than to pick her up to go somewhere). She has five dogs – at times, I was the center of attention, surrounded by wet noses, panting tongues and furry heads that all wanted scratching, Her dogs co-exist in two groups (3 and 2). They can’t all be together or they fight. She shuffles them about the house the way you work one of those plastic puzzles – 8 pieces on a nine piece square and one empty slot. Actually it’s more like crossing the river with the hen, fox, and corn problem. Take the hen first, come back and take the fox second, bring the hen back, take the corn, and then finally take the hen back across – or something like that. She shuffles the dogs between rooms and the outside so that they never interact. It looks exhausting. She was impressed with how easily the dogs took to me. Apparently I’m the only person who has come over and Dixie hasn’t barked at. I’ve always had a way with pets. I was glad to see that I still have it.
I don’t think it was the dogs that tired me out, but I came home exhausted. It wasn’t late, but I could barely keep my eyes open. I was asleep before midnight. Nick woke me sometime between 4 and 5 in the morning. At 5, I got up and fed him and tried to fall back asleep on the sofa with limited success. It was one of those periods when I was so tired, that it almost hurt. I wanted to fall asleep in the worst way, but felt fidgety and couldn’t fully fall asleep. I drifted in and out for about an hour before finally getting up to make coffee and breakfast. When I have mornings that feel mildly insufferable, I’m reminded of the time, after she left, that my ex-fiancee said she loves me but hates the way we live together. I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that I wake up early, but it’s a criticism that I let echo around my head when I hate living with me (like at six in the morning when I’m too tired to be up).
I allowed myself a bit of time to relax over a second cup of coffee in the morning, and again in the afternoon. It had been a few days since I had read Eat, Pray, Love and today, I finally finished it. Gilbert’s tale is an odd one for me. As a narrator, I don’t find her terribly likable. I don’t feel bad for her, and there are spots where it just seems tone-deaf to real suffering. I think it makes me uncomfortable because that’s the criticism I would most likely levy against my own writing. Though, I’m not telling my story as I travel the world meeting interesting people. Her spirituality seems a bit too intense and surreal for me. Like Gilbert, I believe in allowing, acknowledging, and accepting all feelings (love, anger, shame) but I can’t imagine sitting on a beach for what seemed like half a day and bringing up every ounce of shame and saying to each instance “I love you and accept you into my heart…” and doing the same for anger, etc. I’m not saying it didn’t happen – and people have those types of transformative experiences all the time – but somehow it felt hollow. That said, I saw a lot of parallels between her journey and whatever it is I’m doing. She went for walks around an island every morning and every evening – I walk along the river nearly every morning and every evening. She’s trying to find balance and freedom and love (of her self and others) and I’ve been giving those subjects a lot of thought this past year.
Towards the end of the book, she talked about the ex-pats in Bali:
But generally, all they are doing here is seeing to it that nothing serious will ever be asked of them again. These are not bums, mind you. This is a very high grade of people, multinational, talented and clever. But it seems that everyone I meet here used to be something once (generally “married” or “employed”); now they are all united by the absence of the one thing they seem to have surrendered completely and forever: ambition.
Maybe I’d fit in with them. Towards the end of the book I found myself identifying mostly with Felipe, Gilbert’s Brazilian lover. He is smitten with her and adores her. He expresses an unconditional love for her, and she worries that she’s not ready to be the sun in someone else’s universe (let alone make someone else the sun in hers).
Reading a little of Gilbert’s bio on Wikipedia, I get the sense that she has used a lot of people in her life – which makes some of the spirituality of Eat, Pray, Love feel inauthentic. Also learning that she wasn’t quite as destitute as she made herself out to be – the advance for the book that financed her trip was $200k is disheartening.
In a piece she wrote for the NY Times, Gilbert admits,
Seduction was never a casual sport for me; it was more like a heist, adrenalising and urgent. I would plan the heist for months, scouting out the target, looking for unguarded entries. Then I would break into his deepest vault, steal all his emotional currency and spend it on myself.
If the man was already involved in a committed relationship, I knew that I didn’t need to be prettier or better than his existing girlfriend; I just needed to be different.
It turns out, the on the floor bathroom moment that kicks off Eat, Pray, Love – the moment when she knew she had to leave her first marriage was because she had already started seducing someone else.
I only started reading about Gilbert’s life as I was writing this post… now, I feel a little cheated by the book. Perhaps the book should come with a warning label “This may not be as sincere or authentic as it appears.” Some of this is sour grapes. I have a few friends whose wives have had an awakening of sorts – things that I could see being inspired by Gilbert’s bold search for herself – a new type of individualism or feminism. Several of my ex-fiancee’s friend were thinking of leaving their marriages. In some ways the cliche male mid-life crisis in which he trades everything in for newer, sportier models has been rewritten by women leaving their husbands to find themselves. In justifying breaking up with her last boyfriend, my ex-fiancee said to both of us she can choose to be with someone or not, it’s the 21st fucking century… and then something along the lines of her happiness isn’t dependent on us… It felt cavalier in the way Gilbert seems to have been cavalier with the men in her life.
Reading these things makes me feel like I don’t belong – like I’m the only one not trying to trick someone in to believing a different version of myself. Maybe this is why I do so well with pets. There is no guile. they are genuinely happy to see you – every time.