Eat Pray Love, some of my fav quotes.

    I've been raving about this book for close to six months and I noticed today that I have blogged about it. Please allow me to correct this grievous error of judgement.

   I am so so so so so in love with this book. I love this book more than any i have ever read. Gilbert is such an amazing writer. I want to be just like her, only less liberal and not as skinny. And not as tortured if i can help it. But seriously, it will be one of the great classics twenty years from now. Keep in mind I've probably read more books in the last 15 years than most people have in the last 70.

   The quality of the writing is so awesome, so fantastic, its hard not to love it. It's about one woman's journey “to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India, and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two.”

Here are some of my fav quotes:

"Traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt...that to travel is worth any cost of sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby---I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because its mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to---I just don't care." p. 41

"The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught."p 29

"In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It's like this-- I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me,What kind of dog is that?" I would always give the same answer: 'she's a brown dog.' Similarly, when the question is raised, 'What kind of God do you believe in?' my answer is easy: 'I believe in a magnificent God.' " p. 14

"I want to have a lasting experience of God... Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time, but I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God."

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror—the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you and then they leave. And thank God for it... Problem is, you can’t accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You’re like a dog at the dump, baby—you’re just lickin’ at an empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And, if you’re not careful, that can’s gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable.”

"I warn myself not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve."

"One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation."

"To my taste. the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidfully beautiful. even more beautiful than the Roman women to be honest...They're like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud. The men here, in their beauty, force me to call upon romance novel rhapsodies in order to describe them. They are 'devilishly attractive' or 'cruelly handsome' or 'surprisingly muscular.'"

Am I free or just high on zyrtec?

   I woke up this morning free of my Texas baggage. Yes, indeed. Granted I could be hallucinating from the sinus infection. I have a killer headache. But for real, all the things that used to bother me about where I came from, the little eccentricities of Lubbock that opposed my general beliefs are no more. Let me walk you through it.

   I've been a tad melancholy lately. I know, we are all shocked. Me? Sad? Noooo. But I've felt lately that its the end of an era. I've been in contact with some of my oldest friends lately, ones that whose friendship I have tried to foster since we graduated. These are friends that know where I came from, who knew when i was an entirely different person. And friends that I really don't have that much to talk to about anymore. It made me sad that think that these mainstays, these wonderful were slipping from me. For so long they have been my dock lines, the ropes that tied me to the Texas port of my soul. Just by talking to them I was able to touch back with all the things I left. If I felt sorrowful that they were all getting married young, tying themselves to their high school sweethearts, I could sigh a superior sigh. I was so secure in the knowledge that they were making a mistake. I am still sure of that with a few. Nonetheless, i have always been in tune to where they at in their lives, in sync with what they were feeling. Now they just make me feel old and wizened.

   Sometimes I can't help looking at some of them, with their bright and shiny degrees, waiting to take the world by storm, and thinking that they are out of their minds. They still think everything will be so easy. It's utterly bizarre to me to think that the world is an ally when I try to fight it everyday. I'm so cynical and world weary now. And should that be the way you are when you are 22? Shouldn't you have a fair grasp of how the world works? But if there is one thing I know, living in Texas, especially West Texas, doesn't prepare you for the real world. It is not in any form or fashion the real world and I always feel just sick to my stomach for the people that want to spend their lives there.

   But is that it? Should my only feelings for most of my old compadres be pity? Should it be that most of the time when I think about Texas, it is now with a feeling removal and distance. I'm really not a Texan anymore. It makes me sad to say it. But even the ones I feel closest to seem so shallow, so completely out of touch with everything I value. What does it say about me that I'm just so over it? I've moved on so completely that now I feel adrift, cast out into a sea of yankees. Every time I go back now, I look at it like I would any place I traveled to. Temporary. Its just not home, not a place i want to associate with anymore.

   Thats not to say I don't value my old friends. It's just for the most part, they aren't a part of me anymore. Sometime I think every time I get close to someone, some part of me becomes devoted to them. I'm losing my Texas parts. I just don't understand them anymore. Texas has such a different mindset than Vegas, than anywhere. You have to talk to them, react in entirely different ways. Its like learning a different language and realizing that you have to address people of authority in a different way than you would a peer. I've lost the part of me that can communicate with them, the part that even wants to. Its all such bullshit.

   So i guess today is the end of an era. I'm not a Texan anymore.

Technical Difficulties

I'm having technical difficulties with the blog formatting. Part of this is because I'm on the school computer when I should be working and another is because blogger is Satan. Please be Patient.

Las Vegas is crazy...more than usual I tell you.

What the Hell is happening to this town? First, the clinics reuse needles and don't clean their machines after doing colonoscopies. Then, a guy with enough ricin to kill us all is caught just off the street. My dad's been driving me nuts worried about me in Italy, but, crap I'm headed to Europe to be safe.