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I have had Elizabeth Gilbert’s (author) books on my ‘to read’ list for almost a year now. Every time I settle down to find one at the library, or go to Borders, I get hung up on a different book – something more accessible on my own bookcase library. So, it was to my great surprise (and utter joy) to pull a book out of a ‘happy mother’s day’ bag that a very, very dear friend presented to me. Not only was it one of her books, but it was THE specific Gilbert book I had been waiting for. Eat, Pray, Love. One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia. Lets just say, I took it as a sign that now was the time – and I’ve not been able to put it down. I am still savoring the Italy section. Every word, every detail – it’s like taking a walk through heaven. I have to admit, I told my husband as I embarked on this soul-journey of a book, “babe, you may see me spending some nights wrought with insomnia, and urged by the very inclination that this woman did exactly what I was designed, through every inch of my being, to do – drop it all and travel.” No, but not just travel – live. LIVE in a place and bury my green, inexperienced, clumsy ‘I know nothing about your culture but what I’ve read in books’ hands into the earth of another place. I told him that reading this book may, in fact, put the plans to move to Italy in over drive…and I might very well blow a few important blood cells on this very visual and biographical journey. So, all that to say that this is, by far, one of the best books I’ve read and I’m only half way through. Not to mention, she LIVES (dolce vita!), soul searches….and basically finds herself in some of the countries I’ve been dying to see since I can remember picking out my first “babar goes to…” book at the library. Yes, I could put down whatever it is in life I’m doing, and travel for the rest of it. (now to make a fortune…hmmm) ha ha.
Anyway, if you dare spend more time reading the following as I spent writing it (yes, though I do type 90 wpm….dang office jobs, you know…still!), you will get a heart full of understanding…..just a slight little sliver of why this is such an amazing book….and, selfishly, why I’ve always loved Dante (I KNEW there was a deeper reason I combed over the Divine Comedy!)….and why…I just adore Italy. (Yet another reason.)
(Little extra: apparently Plan B (B. Pitt’s production company) has picked up making a movie out of it – currently starring Julie Roberts in the Role of Gilbert – can’t wait…especially, I’m sure…because there will be amazing footage of Italy! MOVIE link)
One favorite excerpt From Eat.Pray.Love:
“As I will find out over the next few months, there are actually some good reasons that Italian is the most seductively beautiful language in the world, and why I’m not the only person who thinks so. To understand why, you have to first understand that Europe was once a pandemonium of number-less Latin-derived dialects that gradually, over the centuries, morphed into a few separate languages – French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian. What happened in France, Portugal and Spain was an organic evolution: the dialect of the most prominent city gradually became the accepted language of the whole region. Therefore, what we today call French is really a version of the medieval Parisian. Portuguese is really Lisboan. Spanish is essentially Madrileno. These were capitalist victories; the strongest city ultimately determined the language of the whole country.
Italy was different. One critical difference was that, for the longest time, Italy wasn’t even a country. It didn’t get itself unified until quite late in life (1861) and until then was a peninsula of warring city-states dominated by proud local princes or other European powers. Parts of Italy belonged to France, parts to Spain, parts to the Church, parts to whoever could grab the local fortress or palace. The Italian people were alternatively humiliated and cavalier about all this domination. Most didn’t much like being colonized by their fellow Europeans, but there was always that apathetic crowd that said, “Franza o Spagna, purche’ se magna,” which means, in dialect, “France or Spain, as long as I can eat.” All this internal division meant that Italy never properly coalesced, and Italian didn’t either. So it’s not surprising that, for centuries, Italians wrote and spoke in local dialects that were mutually unfathomable. A scientist in Florence could barely communicate with a poet in Sicily or a merchant in Venice (except in Latin, of course, which was hardly considered the national language.) In the sixteenth century, some Italian intellectuals got together and decided that this was absurd. This Italian peninsula needed an Italian language, at least in the written form, which everyone could agree upon. So this gathering of intellectuals proceeded to do something unprecedented in the history of Europe; they handpicked the most beautiful of all the local dialects and crowned it Italian.
In order to find the most beautiful dialect ever spoken in Italy, they had to reach back in time two hundred years to fourteenth-century Florence. What this congress decided would henceforth be considered proper Italian was the personal language of the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. When Dante published his Divine Comedy back in 1321, detailing a visionary progression through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, he’d shocked the literate world by not writing in Latin. He felt that Latin was a corrupted, elitist language, and that the use of it in serious prose had “turned literature into a harlot” by making unisersal narrative into something that could only be bought with money, through the privilege of an aristocratic education. Instead, Dante turned back to the streets, picking up the real Florentine language spoken by the residents of his city (who included such luminous contemporaries as Boccaccio and Petrarch) and using that language to tell his tale. He wrote his materpiece in what he called ‘il dolce stil nuovo,’ the “sweet new style” of the vernacular, and he shaped that vernacular even as he was writing it, affecting it as personally as Shakespeare would someday affect Elizabethan English. For a group of nationalist intellectuals much later in history to have sat down and decided that Dante’s Italian would now be the official language of italy would be very much as if a group of Oxfod dons had sat down one day in the early nineteenth century and decided that – from this point forward – everybody in england was going to speak pure Shakespeare. And it actually worked.
The Italian we speak today, therefore, is not Roman or Venetian (though these were the powerful military and merchant cities) nor even really entirely Florentine. Essentially, it is Dantean. No other European language has such an artistic pedigree. And perhaps no language was ever more perfectly ordained to express human emotions than this fourteenth-century Florentine Italian, as embellished by one of the Western civilization’s greatest poets. Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in terza rima, triple rhyme, a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating three times every fives lines, giving his pretty Florentine vernacular what scholars call “a cascading rhythm” – a rhythm which still lives in the tumbling, poetic cadences spoken by Italian cabdrivers and butchers and government administrators even today.
The last line of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante is faced with the vision of God Himself, is a sentiment that is still easily understandable by anyone familiar with so-called modern Italian. Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, “l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle…” “The love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
My mother is by far the most incredible woman I know. She isn’t held back by anyone or anything…has always given thought to personal and relational development and is highly driven to pursue dreams, interests and passion. She has been a source of wisdom that I marvel at often….one that has amazed me with her ability grow when odds are against her, and to see the things in life to keep being thankful for. I attribute my confidence in abilities to her. The determination to learn something new…and enjoy every second of it. I have been built by her always encouraging words, her faith in our talents and her very dramatic and flamboyant way of simply loving her family. She has never ceased to amaze me. I’ve taken a few relics of the past that remind me of her and tried to photo them in a way that displays a few of her unique facets. Sleek, classy, calm, stable, inspirational….timeless. The lilacs are from a recent photo walk – my great great grandmother was someone my mother adored – and they would spend hours tending the lilac bushes on my great-grandmother’s farm together – “Grandma GG” was a homesteader – self made, self taught…and full of life, just like my mom. Everytime I see lilacs, I think of them and how the older builds the younger and how thankful I am to have such rich and amazing women in my family (for generations). (Not to mention, they have all been stunningly beautiful.)
I really couldn’t get past this day without taking a few moments to pray for the 22,000 + deaths in Myanmar. It’s a staggering number, especially when you think on an individual level and how people’s lives have been affected on the large scale. It’s in these times, that I wonder what one single person can possibly do.
I decided long ago that life is better spent with those I love. Being so independent, it’s hard not to strike out on my own and do things solo quite often, so I don’t always merge my passions with my favorite people. But lately I’ve felt the deep desire to bring to life those bonds that I share with others in our similarities. My Aunt, sister and I started a little vintage, dry goods shop here because we are all treasure hunters. Now, my sister (who sadly lives very far away from me) and I decided to try to stay connected a bit more through blogging together. Please take a peek and get lost in her very deep ocean of words. (She’ll be famous one day, she is already among us.)
My Aunt, sister and I love to seek treasures. We frequently find really great things. Now we have a little shop. Come check us out.
Though today feels like a curl-up-on-the-couch-with-THIS-good-book-and-toasty-blanket day, I need to do a long-run-for-marathon-training/finish-up-my-4th-grader’s-science-lesson/hit-the-library with-two-crazy-toddlers/get-dinner-going-by-5 sort of hectic fly through life day. I’m praying that my long run does entice me to complete it with promises of an off day tomorrow. Oh, life! I envy all you singles or newly-marrieds-with-no-kiddos people out there right about now! And, how I took for granted a comfy couch and nice book in my childless years! Never again!
(Yet, when he proclaims, “Mommy! A pirate!” after spotting a rather unique homeless individual on the street…then, “but where’s his parrot?” in deathly serious tone….I do sideline my ‘whys’ of motherhood for a few moments!)
AHHHH.
My your days be filled with peace (or at least the anticipation of its coming!)
I am in love with details. They are riveting to me. A song, poem, photograph, something created – all my attempts at collecting and cataloging them. It’s my way of hoping that I won’t forget…the way Sam says “cheers!” at nearly two and clinks his plastic juice cup against my wine glass…or the smallest breath of light filtering through a heavy velvet burnout curtain in our cold winter bedroom….a spark of energy behind a stranger’s eyes….or a simple “I’m happy to see you”…the moments I never want to forget. Perhaps it’s why I feel lost most days, because it seems life is chaotic and fast and there are only moments to savor and slow down with…but I long for those details, those savory moments…those passages of time, to stay – lock the door and stop the clocks.
I’m a bit overloaded with life, kids, work and trying to let my creative nature breath rather then get suppressed in the day to day. Little bits of inspiration trickling into the day are always helpful to give a little adrenaline rush to the creative mind. Today, I found these little tags on Etsy and they made me giggle like a little girl – simple, cute and polished. Inspiring. They reminded me that creating something, no matter what it is, doesn’t have to be the absolute most grand you can muster, or doesn’t even have to be something that can be sold or given – but rather something to be proud of, or merely a reflection of what ticks around internally – something that might inspire someone else.
Some visuals, words, music….movement…bring the deepest inspiration. Lately, it’s been getting wound up in my heart, not able to escape. Time seems to be an anxious companion rather then a romantic dance partner. To the things I love to find time for, may this weekend be yours! Some people express themselves beautifully – Nectar and Light, a favorite blog of mine, is one of those people. A few things I gained inspiration from there – Today, I was inspired to watch Amelie again by these two photos and this photo set. Here, here and here. (one of my most loved shows). I was also reminded of this from a picture there and now can’t seem to move on with my day. Someday……
