quick thoughts after just seeing EAT PRAY LOVE…

not a movie for everyone. and not a movie for everyone that thinks it might be the movie for them. it is a movie for people who have lived and who have tried to love and who are hurt and who are also brave enough to seek out a path of healing.

it is quite beautiful, it is moving (i was in tears right from the opening scene) but it is exhausting and by the time it’s over you are as weary from Liz’s journey as she is.

things that resonated most with me:

love someone every chance that you get. do not pass up the chance to be in love with some one. no matter how risky or ill conceived it seems. there is nothing richer than the experience of being in love and there is nothing as equally powerful as having a broken heart. to live in the middle ground where you know neither of these experiences is to not live.

travel. especially get your ass to Italy. my #1 dream destination has always been Paris, and i still hold up that prayer card but if i got on the wrong plane and ended up in Rome by mistake, i don’t think i’d complain.

i could write my own version of this book/movie but it would more likely be called DRINK PRAY DESIRE, and i am trying to write it. it’s hard though because i don’t want to tell the truth about everything that’s happened to me, yet i do, so i don’t know how to write it…

strikingly the guru and the ashram in India in the film appear tremendously similar to Gurumayi and her ashram and it’s practices in Ganeshpuri. the practice of seva and the morning chanting of the guru gita are straight out of the siddha yoga ashram schedules. also, it was very true to form to see that the people at the ashram were suffering. ashram life is not bliss. not from the start at least. it can become blissful after you become established in the routines of selfless service and rising at 4:30 am to meditate and chant. but it takes time and it may never happen for you. a lot of people never tap into the bliss of guru’s grace.  i’ll write chapters about my ashram years in the book.

after seeing Julia ride her bike around Bali neighborhoods i felt inspired to ride my bike and as soon as i got home i got my bike out and waked it down to the gas station to inflate it’s tires. (i took the bike out of the garage in April in anticipation of wanting to ride it during summer evenings from being inspired by the Tour de France – never happened though because our cable service was out for the entire month of July and i missed the Tour AND the World Cup.) but at 1:30 this morning i was pedaling around downtown San Ramon. went to Safeway and bought a St. Jude candle and rode over to St. Joan of Arc church and lit it, sitting it at the feet of her statue there in honor of the flame of the guru that burns inside my own heart.

oh, and ask me how old i am next time you see me and i may tell you that i’m 88 years old… or maybe that i’m only 51, because i forgot <3

young women, find yourself a wise old man for a friend and keep us a secret if you have to. in this country, we are hard to find and we won’t live forever.