Thursday, June 28, 2007

I have finished Eat, Pray, Love and am mourning this ending. There is something in Gilbert’s writing that has fed me these last two weeks. If I could eat the pages, the very words she wrote in order to assimilate what it is she is for me, I would do it. But I can’t, and so I steady myself by focusing how my body feels when in the presence of her willingness to be real and human in front of all of us. Real and human, that is what it is, and that is what I want for my expression of myself. She does not hide, she keeps tearing off the layers that ego constructs everyday. She diligently tears them off and then shows up on the page. This is what I aim for – stripping off the stories and lies I want to construct to feel better, to look better, to perform better. Fuck that. No more competition. No more better/worse. I’m done with that. There is just me here, now. And I thank Elizabeth Gilbert for being my Virgil into the realm of my own authenticity this week.

That is it for now.

2 comments:

  1. Talk about stripping away layers...Just acquired a reference set that includes the Oxford Companion to American Poetry. Flipped it open and this is what appeared...

    Samurai Song

    When I had no roof I made
    Audacity my roof. When I had
    No supper my eyes dined.

    When I had no eyes I listened.
    When I had no ears I thought.
    When i had no thought I waited.

    When I had no father I made
    Care my father. When I had no Mother I embraced order.

    When I had no friend I made
    Quiet my friend. When I had no
    Enemy I opposed my body.

    When I had no temple I made
    My voice my temple. I have
    No priest, my tongue is my choir.

    When I have no means fortune
    Is my means. When I have
    Nothing, death will be my fortune.

    Need is my tactic, detachment
    Is my strategy. When I had no lover
    I courted my sleep.

    Robert Pinsky, 2000

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  2. Holy Shcmoolies! From Ginny in Bryan ,OH. I just read this out loud to her, and we are both standing in raw being letting these words work their truth on us.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

    love,
    Kelly

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