Eat Pray Love

It’s a beautiful day are Sycamore Lodge. Actually, it has been a beautiful week. I drove down last Tuesday, set up, and since, have been hanging out. This trip has been pleasant, perhaps the most pleasant of all my visits here. The weather has been wonderful--warm but not hot, no storms, sunny, dry. The campground is relatively quiet, 30% occupancy weekdays; 60% over the weekend. With kids in school, the atmosphere is more relaxed.

I feel more relaxed as well, more confident with the truck and trailer. I walk a lot. I’ve met some nice people. This trip, more than others, I’ve enjoyed being on my own. I feel more comfortable; finally accustomed to the feeling of being ‘unattached.’ This is frightening in a way, but also exhilarating. Something every woman should experience this at least once in her life.

This leads me to the book/movie Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Last week I went to the movie with friends. After, I asked each to describe the movie, in one word if possible. Di found the movie ‘trite.’ Gayle was more generous. She reckoned the film as least ‘entertaining.’ And me? I rate the movie, ‘wistfully wise.’

The movie reviewer in the Independent agreed with Di. While acknowledging the beautiful cinematography and Julia Roberts’ performance, he gave the movie just one star. The plot, he asserted, was basically silly. The reviewer can be excused. He is, after all, a guy.

I had a different take on the movie. Two scenes in the movie struck me. The first is the opening scene when Liz walks through her darkened house tormented, unable to sleep, and says (paraphrasing): I was fully involved in every step, every decision in the purchase of this house, yet I am miserable. It is this realization that sets her on her journey.

The same insight comes to her while sitting on the rooftop of the ashram in India. While struggling to forgive herself for leaving her husband, a memory of her wedding day surfaces. Again, she reflects: I planned every detail of this wedding. No one forced me to do anything. She then remembers their first couple’s dance as man and wife--not ‘their’ song, but one of his choosing. A sign, perhaps, that the marriage would be different than she imagined.

Then comes the point to ponder. Liz reflects that she had been with one man or another since she was 15. At no point in her adult life had she been on her own. How could she know what she wanted in life, in love, an ‘eternal’ companion, until she knew her own self, hence her own desire.

This reminds of a Susan, a woman I met in the summer of 1987 when I enrolled in my first graduate class. Across the room sat Susan, another new grad student. Right off, I didn’t like her. She wore low cut tops and sparkly sandals and, painted her toe-nails. That opinion changed as we found ourselves conversing across the room during discussions, each of us challenging or complementing something the other had said. Despite her sparkly sandals and painted toe nails, it was clear she had a sharp mind and the good grasp of literature. One day, we carried our discussion outside to the lawn outside OSH where we talked for two hours. Turns out we were both leaving bad marriages, both wondering what in the hell to do with our lives. From there, a friendship ensued.

Later, when a relationship with a younger man went bad, Susan decided to take a break from men, something she had never done. From age 12 to early her 40s, she bounced from one relationship to another. To change the pattern, a therapist advised her to make a radical change in her life, which she did. She moved into a tiny house, planted a garden, made new friends, took a part-time job, resumed writing. As far as possible, she tried to live “on her own,” just as Liz Gilbert did, albeit in less dramatic fashion. As she said, How can I know what I want in a man (or anything) until I know what I want?

Here, male members of the species have a huge advantage over their female counterparts. Day 1, boys pop out of the womb fully in touch with 1) their subjectivity (I’m the man here); and 2) their desire. This certainty comes early in life. For the female, it’s a much more difficult process. Some come to it sooner than others. Some never do.

Both the movie and book portray how difficult it is for women to know what they want. Young women are bombarded intensely early on with images of what the culture wants them to be, aka, what men want them to be. Few escape this bombardment. It took Liz Gilbert a year away, traveling the world to eat, pray, love to find what she wanted.

How many women can imagine, much less afford, such a journey? Not many. Perhaps the book will inspire new forms/methods for stepping aside to take a break. A wee moment to catch one’s breathe. A space of time in which, quietly, to stop, look, listen.

True Love and Home-grown Tomatoes

I recently finished a French language novel, Ombres du temps (Shadows of Time), winner of the Henri Deschamps Prize 2001 by Haitian-born author Geneviève Gaillard-Vanté.

The novel opens as the main character, Sophie de Lancelot, sits in a cafe in Madrid, Spain, reflecting back on a brief, week-long encounter 20 years earlier (all romance, no sex) with a dashing Spaniard, Alek Rivera. Each, unbeknownst the to other, had fallen in love; yet each realized that their lives were incompatible. She is a young, a student. He is immersed in his career as a world-traveling photojournalist. So, after an enchanting week together, they part, pledging to meet again at the same cafe 20 years hence.

That’s the set up. The novel then shifts to a description of Sophie’s childhood in Haiti, which portrays an idyllic life enjoyed by the ruling French aristocracy in their tropical island paradise. Sophie grows up in her grandparents mansion overlooking the sea outside Port-au-Prince. The scenes, incidents, the personages described paint a vivid picture of the lives of the wealthy French Haitians before Haiti’s descent into civil unrest and chaos.

Sophie’s life spirals downward in the wake of that descent. Returning to Haiti after studies in Europe, she marries a wealthy businessman. She has a child who dies in infancy. She and husband divorce. Her parents are murdered in the reign of terror against the French, forcing Sophie to flee Haiti.

Now 40 years old, divorced, orphaned, exiled from her native country, Sophie de Lancelot waits at the cafe in Madrid for Alek Rivera, the man who, for 20 years, has lived in the shadows of her memory. Sophie wants for several hours, then, as she is about to leave, Voila! Alek appears.

The story follows the inevitable, predictable path. Alek is a successful, world-famous photo-journalist. He married briefly but is now free. He has a beautiful home, stuffed with trophies from his travels abroad. We learn that he, like Sophie, has never forgotten their magical encounter; that his love has never died; that he is madly in love with her. He wants to marry her and live happily ever after.

It’s all perfect! A story book ending until he sets off for a few days (he begs Sophie to accompany him) to complete a project and Viola! he disappears. His boat sinks. Alek drowns in the sea.

The ending, though trite, got me to thinking about ‘true love,’ specifically that fate of, the durability of, the destiny of true love in this man’s world. The author works hard to convey the sense of this romantic, magical type of love that floats above the bump and grind of day-to-day life. This mystical attraction between man and woman transcends lower orders of sexual lust, rendering Sophie and Alek alternate versions of Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde--lovers whose love can not endure life as we know it. It is inevitable that Alek must drown in the sea. The couple cannot marry because marriage and true love cannot coexist, making death the only possible outcome. Alek dies that their love may live on where is belongs, i.e. in the ‘shadows of time.’

Reminds me of a song sung by David Henry: “Ain’t nothing in life better than true love and home grown tomatoes.” Both, it seems, are perishable commodities.

Bus's Movies

Upon learning of plans for Nanny’s 90th in June, I determined not to go. No way! I said. I want to stay put and settle into a routine of writing. I want no more distractions, no more interruptions in my life. Yet, in the end, I went.

The blame, if blame there be, was ‘Bus’s Movies,’ that comedy-of-errors, study-in-disaster video editing project turned spiritual experience which consumed me for three weeks. (Everyone called my dad ‘Bus,’ short for Buster, to distinguish him from his father of the same name.)

Once I got into the project I realized that the project wasn’t about Nana. It was about Bus and the family that he fathered. In working through the video clip, I came to appreciate the strength and goodness of that family: the work of each parent, their investment in the family; the fun, the many good times we had together. On July 26, Nanny turned 90, the first in her family to reach that milestone. On September 15 comes another milestone--the 30th anniversary of Bus’s death. This, too, was an event worth remembering.

Many of us knew Bus; but, most of the 60 plus grand and great-grands did not. In the editing, in the selection of music, I wanted to convey both the scenes of our childhood, and, a sense of the man behind the camera. Bus’s vision of the family. His values. His sense of humor; his practicality and good sense. His shaky camera hand and bad eyesight. Bus was a ‘family man.’ He cared our family; he cared for each of us. It was an immense loss to lose him at age 61.

The three-day celebration/family reunion held at the Homestead a was great success, thanks in large part to Marie’s planning and initiative. We left the schedule open, allowing people to come and go, to do what they liked. We asked only that they gather at 5:00 on Saturday, in their t-shirts, for pictures.

At 5:00, they came, 80 plus family members. After pictures came dinner and a short program. We sang “Happy Birthday” as Nanny opened presents. The first was a small box wrapped in brown paper. She help up the box and said, “I hope there’s a man inside.” Sure enough, there was. A wind-up muscle man in red briefs. The grandchildren thought this was very funny.

The slideshow was a big hit, mainly because it wasn’t too long, just 15 minutes. The show opens with pictures of Nanny’s childhood accompanied by a Schubert piano sonata. “That’s my mother playing,” Nanny declared. No one could convince her otherwise.

After a few closing remarks from Marie, Nanny responded. She thanked everyone for coming. “In my long, long life I have never had an evening like this,” she said. “Thanks so much for coming. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you all.” A snicker went across the room as people realized that she didn’t recognize that the faces before her were those of her family. But then, it didn’t really matter.

And so it was. Nanny’s 90th. A farewell to our mother, our father, our family. There will not be another event like it again. Yes, I’m glad to have been a part of it.