Elizabeth Gilbert Eat Pray Love

The first day I was in Singapore I helped these Indian guys unpack all the boxes that had been shipped from Hong-Kong. All Hesters books included. One book caught my eye and I stole it and read it. It's called Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and its a pretty good read. It deals with her life from the age of about 30 when she's going through a traumatic, painful and financially disasterous divorce and then into another painful and disasterous relationship with someone called David who she both loves and hates in equal measure. So down on her luck and bumping along the bottom she gets a publishing advance which enables her to follow her heart and she sets out on a journey to find herself. She moves alone to Rome where she rents a small flat and learns Italian for four months. This is kind of the eat part of the book because she loves Italian food and she puts on weight. She dvours the food and imbibes the language. She then goes to an Ashram in India where she eats vegetarian food looses weight and meditates and prays. The pray part of the book. She is brutally honest and self-deprecating and you can't help but travel with her and walk in her foot-steps. Blog-fans know my views on you-know-who so I won't discus that here. There isn't enough of that in the book to ruin it for me so suffice to say that she is an exquisite writer. All sorts of stuff gets explored. Her sponge like personality absorbs everything and anything and you never know what your going to learn or who you are going to meet on the next page or in the next chapter. After Inda she goes to another country beginning with the letter I.....Indonesia. She goes to Bali where two years previously an old mystic medicine man had invited her to join him and live with him and his family in Uben a small isolated village among the rice paddy fields. She meditates, thinks, contemplates and grapples with her demons She's obviously attractive to men. That comes out also in the book. In Bali she meets a 55 year old Brazilian man who manges to seduce her and end her months of post-divorce celibacy. The love part of the book and on return to Leechpool I couldn't resist Googling her if you'll excuse the expression. And she's not unattractive. She's forty now and I do recommend that you go onto the TED Lectures site and listen to her give an 18 minute speech on "creative genius". It's an engaging and entertaining way to spend 18 minutes of your life.
A little Zen saying for you (which wasn't in the book but I offer it anyway while we're discussing things a little ashram and a little mystic) when you are lost and afraid and full of anquish and what am I doing? or what should I be doing? remember this little nugget. "The Spring comes and the grass grows by itself"
That reminds me! A chap here last week was taken into the Royal Gwent Hospital. He'd eaten daffodil bulbs thinking they were onions. He's in quite a bad way evidently but doctors say he'll be out in the Spring!