Fancy Free: Meeting the Spirited Author

"There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in."
~Elizabeth Gilbert ~

About two years ago, I picked up a book that I had been seeing in the hands of countless people both on my daily commuter travels and at bookstores. People, mostly women, engrossed so thoroughly in its pages that I felt I had to know what the big deal was about. I picked up the book, and like so many others before, it found a home on my crowded shelves.

Not long after that, I was watching an episode of Oprah and she was interviewing a young, vibrant author who, if I remember correctly, seemed to me to be glowing. Surely she is pregnant, I assumed. That author was Elizabeth Gilbert. Her book, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, was by then a bona fide worldwide phenomenon.

As I sat back and listened to Liz Gilbert discuss the adventures – across Italy (to eat), India (to pray) and Indonesia (where she found love) - that led to the telling of her nonfiction tale, I learned a couple of things right away. The first, Elizabeth Gilbert was glowing, but she was not pregnant. In fact, her ex-husband’s insistence that they have children became part of countless reasons of why her world one day had to change so dramatically. Liz Gilbert did not and does not want to be a mother. Liz Gilbert did not find comfort and joy in the pseudo-perfect role of suburban wife and mother living in a big house with a handsome husband and a minivan. Of motherhood, Liz wrote, "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit." Clearly, Liz Gilbert had other plans. While I personally do not understand that school of thinking, I respect her and her reasons for choosing a different path for her own life. It is better to make an unpopular decision than to saddle an innocent child with a mother who never wanted him.

The second thing I learned was that my eyes were not deceiving me. She was in fact, glowing. But her glow, as she told Oprah, was more about her leap of faith and her encounter, however brief, with the hand of God. Spirituality via prayer, yoga, meditation and self-discovery, gave Liz the wings to write her story. Of the experience, which she had while in an Indian ashram, she wrote: "There is a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time." Like Oprah and others in her audience, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. As I watched all I could think to myself was: This is so cool!

As the show credits rolled, I remained seated on the sofa still mesmerized by the inner light this woman exudes. It occurred to me that I might own Eat, Pray, Love and possibly had forgotten I even bought it. That is not so odd a discovery in my bookish world. So I made my way to the bulging shelves and spotted the now familiar title and lettering and pulled it out. Yes! I owned it!

I read Eat, Pray, Love with the voracious hunger of the spiritually lacking. Why was this woman’s unlikely odyssey to escape the sepulcher of divorce so intriguing to me? I had (and have) no intentions of divorcing Joe. He is – to use a term Liz Gilbert finds somewhat disturbing – my soul mate. So what do I have in common with this woman?

As I read, I realized that even if you never thought of, or had ever gone through a bitter divorce such as she had, you could grow and learn and draw from and change spiritually from this book’s countless soft-edged teachings. Liz Gilbert never comes at you with an: “It’s my way, or the highway” attitude. She comes at you with a no-pressure: “Hey, I have no idea if what I am doing is right, but it is right for me right now”. And just to know that she is flawed, as we all are, and seeking the near perfect, as we all seek, is enough to give her the mass appeal she enjoys.

January 5, 2010 was the much-anticipated release date of Liz Gilbert’s latest work of nonfiction, Committed. Part apology, part understanding, part acceptance of her own humanity, Committed is a kind of sequel to her best-seller, but one she never expected would be written.

In Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert swore off future entanglements of marriage for all eternity. Instead of settling down, Liz chose the less conventional gypsy lifestyle of love with her Indonesia-found, Australian-citizen, Brazilian-born lover, Felipe. In her world, they would traipse through the planet living like nomads, sleeping as easily on patches of sun-warmed grass as in beach-side residences, or tiny alcoves in third-world countries. Reading about the dawning of their love made one’s toes curl. The detail and words with which Liz weaved her tale made you catch your breath. A love like that seemed untouchable. A passion like that seemed unequaled. And to read her explanations of its sacredness and uniqueness made me understand why she wouldn’t want to go from the passionate girlfriend and lover to the mundane sounding designation of wife. After all, the girlfriend gets all the accolades and the wife ends up with the laundry.

As luck would have it, it was the Office of Homeland Security that ended up having a hand in her agreement to finally marry Felipe. To hear her tell it, it was more a defeat of promises to remain together but separate – a calf led to slaughter - than it was an easy, natural next step in a relationship.

After both she and her lover had managed to remain under the radar, existing in no real organized manner, the powers that be pointed out the obvious: Felipe was not a citizen of the United States of America and as such could not just enter and exit the country randomly and at will, especially during these times of turmoil and terrorism.

Yet, here is the new book Committed – quite possibly a play on words, since Liz Gilbert loves words so much. To find one’s self committed, as in a relationship, or committed, as in certifiably insane, is both different and the same. Because, after all, you have to be slightly certifiably to enter into a societal institution that limits freedoms – to a degree - insists on faithfulness – for all time – can be both energizing and depleting - and is so damn…permanent. How do we, how does anybody, agree to such a thing? Well, we do and we have for centuries. Liz Gilbert credits a friend named Annie with the following conclusion on marriage: “Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?” If the answer isn’t a screaming, all-out YES in capital letters, then run, fast, in the opposite direction. Divorce is not for the meek.

So back to January 5, 2010 – a mere five days into a New Year and decade. The start of great things! On this day I met Elizabeth Gilbert. Great thing! She was at a book signing in the Barnes & Noble store in Union Square and – my being so close to it – in more ways than one – I could not possibly pass up the opportunity to see her and listen to her as she read from her new book – in person.

She did not disappoint!

Arriving on time in a simple, brown sweater dress, jeans and tall riding boots and her hair pulled into a messy bun, Elizabeth Gilbert made her way to the waiting podium and immediately enchanted the massive crowd of her adoring fans. The flash bulbs of the few photographers in attendance momentarily blinded the camera-shy author, but she graciously stood against a store logo backdrop for the requisite poses. Then it was on to the book!

At the store’s event space, it was standing room only. I was fortunate enough to be in seat 3 of row 1. Ah, the perks!

Liz entered joking and had the crowd in the palm of her hand in no time. She asked, seriously, that we all buy her book – this same week. She apologized for even asking such a thing. Then she said her goal was to topple Sarah Palin from the weeks-old perch of best-selling author at the top of the list, which Palin is no doubt enjoying. The crowd roared with applause. Guess she knows her audience pretty well to make such a bold statement and they did not let her down. After that, we were hers to do with as she pleased.

She read from her book and I was drawn in by her eloquence, her presence, her wit and ease and her incredible ability to put herself out there, naked as a newborn, in all of her human, flawed ways. I was awed by her simple, self-deprecating ways – honored that the “beautiful” Julia Roberts is playing her in the Eat, Pray, Love movie – while remaining unaware, as most women are, of her own incredible beauty. I love that she calls herself a writer – leaving the title of best-selling author for others to enjoy.

I admire her for allowing us to see her for who she really is today – a married woman, living in New Jersey (“because where else would two world-travelers end up?”), with her foreign-born mate, still madly in love and committed to staying that way by simply accepting what we all should accept before we leap into marriage: The other person need not ‘complete’ you. You should be complete when you enter the State of Marriage. Your mate is not perfect. Stop expecting him (or her) to be perfect. You are not perfect and that person deals with your imperfections, just as you do with theirs. Your spouse cannot be all things to you. You have to be some things, too. And straight from Eat, Pray, Love is this: “The mysterious magnet (between lovers) is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor.” Oh, boy! Can I relate to that statement!

Once her reading was over, Liz Gilbert autographed her book for the masses in attendance. Again, my place on the line allowed me to be one of the first. Never have I seen someone sign so quickly, but she did, knowing that she could potentially be there all night, if she wasn’t quick about it. But even as she signed and moved the line along, her smile was vibrant and her glow was still there.

As I left the store, my autographed books in tow, I took a tiny bit of Elizabeth Gilbert’s zest for life and her Zen for living with me. It was not difficult because she puts it out there and she shares it. On my ride home, it occurred to me that to be that comfortable, that real, that alive in one’s own skin has little, if anything, to do with whether or not you’re ‘committed’ and almost everything to do with whether, or not you're content. At the end of the day, it is your own contentment with your own being and your own existence that ultimately determines the extent to which you will allow happiness to be committed to you for always.