Creative Every Day

Eatin, Prayin, and Lovin

February 6th, 2007

Sunday was my last day of school and it was a doozey. It totally wiped me out. I cried in the last class when talking about my experience. For all the difficulties, I will miss my classmates a lot. The last class was all about endings and saying goodbye. We did silly superlatives, then a gift exchange where we brought in an object that held some meaning for us, but we were ready to let it go and then we finished with some toning and saying goodbye to teachers. For the gift exchange, we put an object in a basket in the hall when no one was looking and then the basket was unloaded in the middle of the room where we stood in a circle and chose the object that we were drawn to. I brought a bookmark with three spirals on it. I found it at a time when spirals first started showing up in my art and I had looked them up in a book on symbols and found that they represent change, evolving and growth, something that I was going through quite a bit of at the time. I still love spirals and I'm still evolving, changing and growing, but I felt ready to pass on this symbol to someone else, as I feel I'm in a different phase of growth than I was then. One of my good friends, not knowing it was mine, chose it, which was kind of cool. And she's going through a big period of change and growth, so it was appropriate for her.

I chose a book, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It has been on my list of books to read and I was just waiting for the right time. Sometimes books fall into your life when you're ready for them. And so it seemed with this book, which I scooped up quickly when I saw it. And it was from a sweet friend of mine, who said she'd read it several times, lent it out several times and was ready to pass on. I loved the quote she wrote in pencil inside the cover:

If there was already a path, it would be someone elses' ... The whole point is to find your own way.
-Joseph Campbell

What a beautiful quote. And it resonates deep, deep down in my heart. I have so often longed for a path to follow, a road with signs to tell me which way to go, so I wouldn't have to make those tough decisions. But now, I'm revelling in the unknown. I'm so grateful for this weird, wild, winding path with all it's hills and valleys and potholes and unexpected beauty. I'm finally accepting that I need to find my own way and I'm doing just fine.

In a wonderful synchronicity, another classmate called me yesterday to tell me that the author of Eat, Pray, Love was in town and doing a reading at a nearby bookstore. I heard the message in just enough time to put on a sweater and go. It was frigid out, so I was surprised to see how many people were there and I had to stand in the back where I was entertained by a chubby-faced baby who made goofy toothless smiles at me throughout the talk. Elizabeth Gilbert was a great speaker, intelligent and funny. She mainly just talked about some of her experiences that led her to writing the book and then took questions. I loved her stories, one of which I wrote down when I got home, so I wouldn't forget it.

I don't remember it word for word, but it was something like this: She had just been through a particularly rough day in divorce court. She had to run an errand at the post office before going home and she was feeling very low, depressed, and like she wanted to go home, collapse, and cry her eyes out. She said that she was grateful that New York is one of the few places where you could stand in the corner with your hands on the wall praying and no one would pay any attention. She mentioned how some early Christian mystics related praying to plucking on a lute string that was strung from you to God and the prayer would travel like a vibration upwards and the answer would travel back in a similar vibration. And you had to listen for this vibration. So, she prayed in the corner of the post office and what she heard was that before she went home and collapsed, she should look for one beautiful thing out in the world on the way home. When she stepped out of the post office, she saw three elephants walking down the street, tail to trunk, dressed in full sparkly garb, each with a woman standing on its back in equally sparkly dress. And she thought, ok that'll do.

She also suggested that we become good at reading omens, such as the one above I suppose, because what was the alternative? Sure, you could always turn to the logical explanation, the circus was in town, but because she'd asked for help and seen these elephants, they became part of her story. She also mentioned a quote (I can't remember who said it) that I loved, "Be the hero of your own story." I loved this, as a person who pays attention to synchronicities and enjoys them for whatever they may be worth.

I was thinking about all this and I totally laughed out loud when I was walking back to my car and I noticed a big red banner on a brick building that read, "It's a sign!" It was an ad for the Jewish Kabbalah center, but really, how funny is that! I could have stayed to have my book signed, but the line was so long and I'm not really big on signatures, so instead, I looked for a copy of the book I wanted to send out for the book swap and found it in their used book section (bonus!), then I picked up a spinach and chicken pizza for the fiansor and I and went home.

Lovely stuff. I'm still a bit fuzzy-headed from a killer migraine this morning. I'm feeling the need to hit the sack early. Off to bed for me.