Eat, Pray, Love, Repeat.

(written 5 November 2011)
Today, for the first time in 9 months, I started reading a book that is not new to me.  I did so with a bit of...not guilt, per se, but a sense of wasting time.  There's a vast Peace Corps library of books here; I recently started Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier and need to finish it, since it's been on my shelf for 6 months and others may want it.  And Heart of Darkness--shouldn't I focus on that, so that I can finish before Thanksgiving, since it's on my 17-year-old sister's AP Lit reading list and it would be cool to be able to discuss it with her over our next Skype date?   But I had grabbed The Shack and Eat Pray Love off our shelves in Kasama to share with a teacher who'd asked me to pick a book for her.  Both I have read and enjoyed immensely; I thought she, as a devout Jehovah's Witness, would find the former either beautifully heart-wrenching or blasphemous, and I'm curious as to which, and the latter would share a female voice very different from those here.  Neither book was brought for my own benefit; I've read them, and I have dozens of purely-for-pleasure books, not to mention a deep stack of professional manuals and guides, vying for my attention each day.

But I plucked Eat Pray Love from the shelf, thinking I'd just glance over a few favorite parts while drinking Milo (a cocoa-like powdered concoction) and eating Petit Beurre cookies dipped in peanut butter and honey as thunder rolled overhead.

It is every bit as good as I remember.  And dipping your feet back into the waters of an old literary love takes you back not only into the world within its covers but your own past life and the person you were when you first discovered it.  Back on my bed in North Carolina, on the phone with Kevin, who recommended it to me, right around the time (if I remember it correctly) I was considering a drastic move to NYC, a switch from the wooded wilderness to the concrete jungle, from an "office" of rocks and split-log-benches and open air and wood-fire-heated tents to a tiny closet of a cubicle in a slim doctor's office (that more closely resembled a corridor) in Manhattan.

Those of us in the still-single-but-not-actively-looking-but-not-ruling-out-the-possibility-of-stumbling-upon-someone category may think of past romantic encounters as those who have shaped us and our current picture of what the perfect forever partner might look like.  Interestingly enough, several of the people who've most influenced what I'm looking for (though don't read me wrong--it's much more of a "if you see cookie dough ice cream at the store while you're there, grab a container" kind of looking than an actively fueled pursuit) don't make it on the list of Jacobs-have-I-loved.  Nary a kiss was shared, and while in some cases there may have been romantic interest on the part of one of us, it never came to fruition in any official or physical sense.  But there are rendez-vous of the soul, and such is what I shared with Kevin--a brilliantly lit spirit, the kind of wanderer who is never lost, who resists sturdy stability and lives, instead, with a kind of never-ending wonder and appreciation for each new day.  No wonder, then, that he so enjoyed a book about seeking--in the world and in oneself.  It is a compliment to me that he knew I'd like it, too, though of course it was a bestseller (and later made into a film) so I'm not all that special. 

So, my feet well-softened by the swirling waters of these memories, I re-encounter the story, now with 3.5 more years of life behind me.  And I understand better the heartbreak of her divorce and failed new love, having been witness to my parents' own bitter parting over the past 18 months.  (Though I might add that my mother and her co-worker, with whom I saw the film--neither had read the book--last winter while both were in the throes of ugly divorces, lamented that not everyone having such a crisis can jet off, all expenses paid, to find themselves in a year of living abroad.)  And being almost 28 now, I'm closer to Liz's age at the beginning of her book--so while our lives are very, very different, I can get a better feel for the stage of life in which the book is set. 

So while at first I was hesitant about re-relishing a favorite rather than forging ahead and lengthening my list of new written influences, I've decided that I'm not wasting time.  I'm revisiting an old love, but she looks different because I have changed.  Her description of her faith is, though simultaneously more crisply catch and eloquent, almost identical my own.  Did I feel that way three years ago?  Did this book plant a seed, or nourish a change already germinating?  What more in the story will spark something in me in a new or different way this time around?  So I'll savor every bite of this delightfully decadent, rich but tangy book again.  Then I'll get back to my list.