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.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
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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...
ReplyDeleteSamurai 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
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.
ReplyDeleteThank you, thank you, thank you.
love,
Kelly