eat, pray, love...the title of my beach read (elizabeth gilbert, author) from a couple of weeks ago, and furthermore, what i'd like to claim as my life's new mantra, although perhaps not in that exact order. i wanted to take an actual bite out of this book, it was so good. we did a lot of these three things while at the beach, me and the girls.
we ate like royalty, with a different handwrought cocktail and lovely meal each night, mostly prepared by me, which is the way i always want it. it's my wind-down after a day of salt, sand and sun...a quick shower, cue the music, pour the [insert beverage] and put a decent knife in my left hand. this girl's a happy one.
at dinner one night, as ann offered thanks, so effortlessly she said, "fill our words with life, our hearts with hope, and our minds with thanksgiving." and we did some in-depth conversing most nights, which can be a form of prayer, but then there were also the millions of little prayers of gratitude i breathed to the Father for making such a glorious thing as the seashore.
and we loved...there aren't many gals i love more than the ones with whom i was vacationing. our time together was so imbued with sincere affection, such laughter and kinship, and a spirit of thankfulness to know one another as we do. okay so, without further ado (or further gushing) the excerpt below from the book made me heave a sigh and my eyes all but rolled back in my head. it thumps a chord deep in me...........
"i walk through the markets of this crumbly town and my heart tumbles with a love i can't answer or explain as i watch an old guy in a black wool hat gut a fish for a customer (he has a cigarette in his lips for safe-keeping the way a seamstress keeps her pins in her mouth as she sews; his knife works with devotional perfection on the fillets). shyly, i ask this fisherman where i should eat tonight, and i leave our conversation clutching yet another little piece of paper, directing me to a little restaurant with no name, where -- as soon as i sit down that night -- the waiter brings me airy clouds of ricotta sprinkled with pistachio, bread chunks floating in aromatic oils, tiny plates of meats and sliced olives, a salad of chilled oranges tossed in a dressing of raw onion and parsley. this is before i even hear about the calamari house special.
'no town can live peacefully whatever its laws,' plato wrote, 'when its citizens...do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love...' but is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? just for a few months of one's life. is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? and then to do it again the next day?"
right on, sister gilbert.
