Sometimes you have to go through some ice-cream...;-)

I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search For Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia".

This super dose of womanness came to me as it should, in the form of a well-thumbed copy passed on from a darling friend who let me keep it for for-EVER (only to read it non-stop when i finally picked it up!)

Elizabeth, as herself, shares the intimate journey that is womanhood, in the pursuit of life's purpose, laughter and love; of losing all three and finding them again. I enjoyed this book for its forthrightness especially in those difficult dark moments we all struggle with. It is her story to restoration, unabashed. There are parts i felt were a thin line between humour and sensibility, where the latter risked being offended in a cultural perspective.

Her quest is still inspiring and the woman she becomes admirable. A wry reminder that in whatever moment of life, spiritual search, relationship or career a woman finds herself, she has it deep within her to be the amazing being she is meant to be.

For those who, like my sweet little sister, confess to falling terribly ill if they have to read books, there's the movie! Starring the inimitable Julia Roberts (who else?!), see the trailer here. I'm yet to watch it (voting books always!)

Book or movie, what's your most defining moment as a woman?

And as you tell me, some excerpts i enjoyed below.

And three, of course, is the number representing supreme balance, as anyone who has ever studied either the Holy Trinity or a simple barstool can plainly see. p. 1

...i have been walking endlessly and aimlessly, and i did finally find a tiny little place that a friendly bus driver informed me sells The Best Gelato in Rome. It's called "Il Gelato di San Crispino." I'm not sure, but i think this might translate as "the ice cream of the crispy saint." I tried a combination of the honey and the hazelnut. I came back later that same day for the grapefruit and the melon. Then, after dinner that same night, i walked all the way back over there one last time, just to sample a cup of the cinnamon-ginger. p. 38-39

Needing to be cheered up after the game, Luca Spaghetti asked his friends, "Should we go out?" I assumed this meant, "Should we go out to a bar?" That's what sports fans in America would do if their team had just lost. They'd go to a bar and get good and drunk. And not just Americans would do this - so would the English, the Australians, the Germans...everyone, right? But Luca and his friends didn't go out to a bar to cheer themselves up. They went to a bakery. A small, innocuous bakery hidden in a basement in a nondescript district in Rome. The place was crowded that Sunday night. But it always is crowded after the games. The Lazio fans always stop here on their way home from the stadium to stand in the street for hours, leaning up against their motorcycles, talking about the game, looking macho as anything, and eating cream puffs.

I love Italy. p. 73-74

"Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword" On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where "all is correct." But on the other side of that sword..."all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course." 
p. 100

You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions. The [other] problem with all this swinging through the vines of thought is that you are never where you are. You are always digging in the past or poking at the future, but rarely do you rest in this moment. p. 139

"The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and arguments, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go." p. 149

Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If i want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, i'm aiming for, how will it ever occur? p.186

I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to it's good attainments. p. 272.

This is a practice i've come to call "Diligent Joy." As i focus on Diligent Joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once - that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. p. 273

She wiped the last of the green herbal goo off my leg, then sort of jiggled my kneecap around for a bit, feeling for something. Then she felt the other knee, closing her eyes. She opened her eyes, grinned and said, 
"I can tell by your knees that you don't have much sex lately."

I said, "Why? Because they are so close together?"

She laughed. "No - it's the cartilage. Very dry. Hormones from sex lubricate the joints. How long since sex for you?"

"About a year and a half."

"You need a good man. I will find one for you. I will pray at the temple for a good man for you, because you are now my sister. Also, if you come back tomorrow, I will clean your kidneys for you."

"A good man and clean kidneys, too? That sounds like a great deal." p. 271

She said, "I know cure for broken heart." Authoritatively, and in a doctorly manner, Wayan ticked off on her fingers the six elements of her Fail-Proof Broken-Heart Curing Treatment: "Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel far away from the person you loved, meditate and teach your heart that this is destiny." p. 276

So what will become of me and Felipe? Now that there is, it seems, a "me and Felipe"? He told me not long ago, "Sometimes i wish you were a lost little girl and i could scoop you up and say 'Come and live with me now, let me take care of you forever.' But you aren't a lost little girl. You're a woman with a career, with ambition. You are a perfect snail: you carry your home on your back. You should hold on to that freedom for as long as possible. But all i'm saying is this-if you want this Brazilian man, you can have him. I'm yours already." p. 327

I think about the woman i have become lately, about the life that i am now living, and about how much i always wanted to be this person and live this life, liberated from the farce of pretending to be anyone other than myself. I think of everything i endured before getting here and wonder if it was me - i mean, this happy and balanced me, who is now dozing on the deck of this small Indonesian fishing boat - who pulled the other, younger, more confused and more struggling me forward during all those hard years. The younger me was the acorn full of potential, but it was the older me, the already-existent oak, who was saying the whole time: "Yes - grow! Change! Evolve! Come and meet me here, where i already exist in wholeness and maturity! I need you to grow into me!" And maybe it was this present and fully actualized me who was hovering four years ago over that young married sobbing girl on the bathroom floor, and maybe it was this me who whispered lovingly into that desperate girl's ear, "Go back to bed, Liz..." Knowing already that everything would be OK, that everything would eventually bring us here. Right here to this moment. Where i was always waiting in peace and contentment, always waiting for her to join me." p. 345

You know, it's a funny thing. The only Romance language Felipe doesn't happen to speak is Italian. But i go ahead and say to it to him anyway, just as we're about to jump.

I say: "Attraversiamo."
Let's cross over. p. 346