If there’s a book with a rep it’s Eat Pray Love. The holy text of white women finding themselves in foreign countries. I never thought it was any more than that, then I heard an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, and I adored her. There is afterall, a whole book entitled Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It. Perhaps I had written it off too early, time to give it a shot.
So now seemed like a good time to give it a shot, especially since I found a very cheap and badly printed copy in a bookstore in downtown Amman. So let’s go on this journey together, because this is an experience I would love to share. This is the ‘Eat Pray Love’ of reading Eat Pray Love, if you like.
I wonder why no one has ever recommended this to me before? Maybe they have and I thought that recommendation was patronising drivel so I ignored them - that really is more my style. A woman escapes the breakdown of her relationship and life challenges by electing to go travelling for a year - why does this sound all too familiar? Maybe they didn’t recommend it to me because they thought I was doing it already. There is also the possibility that with talk of a continuous and messy love life and a fear of settling down to have children they were worried it would hit a nerve and I would actually go all ‘Eat Pray Love’ on them.
I might still do that, you couldn't keep this from me forever!
Readers you will be happy to hear that the closest I plan on getting to enlightenment is listening to The Masterplan by Oasis on repeat while I do yoga. I do not bore my friends with talk of finding my purpose, just of not being able to find a taxi in the morning. Let’s get going.
Eat
Okay so the stuff she says about who God is to her is actually pretty nice, as someone with a pretty loose association to faith, if any at all, I find that all a very good explanation. Actually the whole first few chapters on the bathroom floor and the praying and stuff hit home because it all feels very really and painfully familiar.
Going to a country because you want to learn the language and you figure that’s the best way to start - check. Goddamn, am I really doing this without realising it? Although granted I did not have to wait for my divorce to go through and I did not get a miraculous advance payout before I left. The way she describes feeling about Italian is how I feel about Arabic, tears have been spilled and I am endlessly frustrated at my lack of fluency, but I am trying.
The food, oh my goodness the food in Italy is the best in the world. The food in the Arab region would come a close second I think, it does not quite satisfy my attempts to be vegetarian like Italian food though. As a little context I read most of this first section on a sun lounger in Aqaba where I had food brought to me all day and ate huge and fantastic meals at night. I have never felt so much like I am the luckiest person on earth, and so grateful for my decision to pack it all up and bring myself over here.
I have put on weight too, almost definitely. Only a little but I have never bought clothes that don’t fit me and now some of them feel a tiny bit tight so, go figure. Sometimes I feel like it’s wonderful that there is more of me, and sometimes I feel like money exists and I don’t have the funds to replace everything I own so maybe less positive. I wish I could give absolutely no fucks but I do give a few.
I really resent people who say this isn’t my ‘real life’. It’s as real as anything else. There is nothing waiting for me at home right now, although hopefully that will change by the time I actually come to leave. So this is my job and my life and my work and it’s as real as it gets. Although granted I’ve given more directions in French than anything else, if we’re measuring it by passing strangers on the street. A little less paying the electricity bill a little more smiling and waving passport in the visa office.
I wonder for a long time if I’m more like Liz, getting lost until she doesn’t, or like her sister who inhales guidebooks and maps and facts and figures. I can read a map but I can’t remember dates or stats for the life of me. Quite simply I could get you anywhere in this city, but I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about the place when we got there. It’s about the journey after all.
I think then, that I might be more like Liz, when she explains that she was actually the more natural choice of the two sisters to be settled down in stability. If I was going to write a book about the last two years, I would call it ‘The Mess Nobody Expected’ - I’m sure everyone thought I would end up with a stable graduate job because I certainly did, if all this is a surprise to me then it must be to everyone else, too.
Italian sounds lovely but I have no desire to learn it. Which is good because it means I’m unlikely to run off to Italy as a result of reading the book, because I don’t really want to run off to Italy so it would be an inconvenient passion to inspire.
My family isn’t big enough for me to become ‘Weird Aunty Claire’, maybe I could be ‘Mum’s Best Friend Claire’ to my friends kids and they can hear about my aromatherapist boyfriend. Of course, I would have to learn what aromatherapy actually was. I would also have to be the sort of person that people came back to after they broke up with them. I have no interest in even googling aromatherapy.
The bit where the sit around and say what they’re thankful for is a bit overdone, I mean obviously real, but I don’t cry in public so I hope nobody tries to replicate it with me. My thanks would probably be for food and the fact the temperatures have finally dipped below 30, but could we possibly get some decent cake in this place?
I think this book is meant for people to have an emotional experience and I’m wasn’t sure if I would be into it but I totally am. I feel real kinship with Elizabeth and she talks about the darker bits of her life really well so I never feel like this is an actual self-help book more like I’m just letting someone talk me through how they’ve changed. It’s pretty cool that she totally wants herself to get better to do because she says some awesome things about doing stuff just because she wants to which definitely do not get said enough by anyone to anyone, even ourselves.
I am happy I chose to do this and I am looking forward to Part 2.
