Eat, Pray, Love, the book and the movie.

The first I ever heard of Eat, Pray, Love was when my friend called me up and said, "Hey, let's go see a movie." 

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

He ended up taking me to see Eat, Pray, Love, and within the first 5 minutes I knew it was a book. How did I know? Because the story felt so rushed. And after watching the full 2 hours of the movie, I had the sense that everything that could possibly be squeezed into 2 hours, was.

I didn't like, either, that 5 minutes into the film, after portraying a woman living in a big house in New York, who was obviously making very decent money and appeared to have loving, caring friends, found the biggest challenge in her life to be wanting a divorce. She kneeled down on her bathroom floor in the middle of the night praying and crying, saying "I'm in big trouble." If needing a divorce is the biggest obstacle she's had, then I can hardly relate to that. Seemed like a very 1st world problem to me. Although being unhappy is a big dilemma, it's not the most horrific of suffering out there.

Then, at the end of the film, just after taking a year to get to know and build herself up, she meets a man. And at the end of the film, when she is unsure about entering into yet another relationship (she expressed earlier in the film how she's never taken a break from men since she was 15 years old), her companion tells her something along the lines of, "If you don't come into this relationship, you forfeit the opportunity to be happy." I laughed at this. Oh, I see. So she needs a man to be happy.

But who knows? Maybe she does.

Part 1: Eat, or Italy.

Part 2: Pray, or India.

Part 3: Love, or Bali.

After seeing the movie and being somewhat entertained as much as I was disappointed, I was, of course, interested in the book. Less than a year later, I borrowed a friend's copy and read it quickly. It was good, to say the least. There were still the 1st world problems, but the adventure and the writing made me forget about that in no time. Here is this woman, a writer, traveling, being independent. Sounds a lot like me (minus the money). I would recommend the book to anyone, period. Plus, I love me some memoirs.

So yesterday I saw the movie at the library and decided to give it another go. I have been ITCHING to travel. I mean ITCHING. It's an itch I haven't scratched. I've tried to put calamine lotion on it, but it does NOTHING to tame the intensity. So all that I can do it scratch it. Scratch it scratch it scratch it. And the time to scratch it is coming near, I feel it.

In the meantime I can read my Jack Kerouac novels and watch movies of other people traveling. And what I got out of Eat, Pray, Love this time was travel and adventure and just DOING IT. Just GO. Come one, GO.

I ignored the rest and drank up the scenery and feeling of what it would be like to be me experiencing all that.

Soon. It would be too soon.