Take That Tablet Up Again; or: For the Love of Eat, Pray, Love

Let's get down to it. Let's shove all those Massively Important Ideas and Aims aside for the moment. Let's admit it freely: I love to laugh! (Why does that sound so familiar . . . ?) I love books that make me laugh! And I love exclamation points, Strunk and White be damned.

I love paying attention to things that I love. To things that excite me. To whatever gleams with promised adventure. This seems like it should be obvious, or even easy. What could be easier than loving what you love? Than following a trail of goosebumps across the horizon? But as in so many things, it takes some attention, some power against forgetting and slacking. Focus, determination, persistence, patience! (Thus I chide myself. Do I love chiding myself?) What else do I love? I love fixing my eye on a far-off landmark and heading across the desert. I also love sitting still with no compass and watching the lights of the world swim by.

To be brief[er than I could be] and to get this posted before my battery cuts out, I'm delighted and inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. It's hilarious. It's meaningful. It admits to the very imperfections and neuroses and superficial predilections I often downplay in myself lately. It keeps me glued to its sentences like a hungry fox to a rabbit's path. Rather than talk any further, why don't I read you a few bits:

Now, to the innocent eye it might appear that I already am traveling. And longing to travel while you are already traveling is, I admit, a kind of greedy madness. It's kind of like fantasizing about having sex with your favorite movie star while you're having sex with your other favorite movie star.

. . . Maria, annoyed, says this is only further evidence of the Protestant-Catholic divide. This divide is best proven, she says, by the fact that Italians—including her own husband—can never make plans for the future, not even a week in advance. If you ask a Protestant from the American Midwest to commit to a dinner date next week, that Protestant, believing that she is the captain of her own destiny, will say, "Thursday night works fine for me." But if you ask a Catholic from Calabria to make the same commitment, he will only shrug, turn his eyes to God, and ask, "How can any of us know whether we will be free for dinner next Thursday night, given that everything is in God's hands and none of us can know our fate?"

Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always 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 it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to—I just don't care.

(Dear Penguin Books: If my quoting and gushing ecstatically without commission about this book you have already sold a mazillion copies of bothers your lawyers in any way please let me know before suing me—thanks—love ya—Jonathan.)

So there you go: A bestseller is not such a bad thing. It feels good to be reading books again and it seems to be priming the pump of my inkpot as well.

Cheers to y'all. I'll be seeing you here again soon!