Movie Review: "Eat, Pray, Love"

As much as I wanted to like it, I found "Eat, Pray, Love" to be a pointless movie with a deceptively bad message.

Julia Roberts portrays the writer Elizabeth Gilbert, who ended a dissatisfying marriage and a subsequent rebound relationship with a younger man to live briefly in three countrries over the course of one year in an effort to 'find herself.' The three countries (all beautiful) were Italy, India, and Bali.

In Italy she focused on her physical need for food ("eat"); in India she lived in the ashram of an absent guru ("pray"); and in Bali she succombed to the advances of a wealthy Brazilian ("love") while valuing the advice of a charleton wiseman. That's the story line.

The acting was good, the scenery was nice...so what's not to like?

The main character (not Julia Roberts, but Elizabeth Gilbert).

I did not find Gilbert to be a sympathetic main character I could cheer for. She got off on the wrong foot with me by rejecting her husband of seven years for no apparent reason, despite his protestations. She had simply become bored with him and with married life in general and wanted out. Oh, sure, she is wracked with guilt about it for fleeting moments here and there, but finding herself is a much more important quest than rekindling their love. We, the viewers, are supposed to understand and champion her voyage of self-discovery.

When she decides to leave him, she kneels in prayer and tells God that though she has never prayed before she hopes he [God] knows of her 'ample gratitude.' Bingo! That is exactly what she lacks -- she has no appreciation for her life.

She thinks she will discover herself on the other side of the world, but if she were a quote collector she would know this famous thought from Emerson:

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

But the quote that fits most perfectly with my reaction to the movie is from Horace Mann. I especially LOVE the first line:

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color.

Realization

I've been wondering lately what's wrong with me? Why is it so hard for me to let my two oldest children (and only sons) leave home to go to a university less than an hour from my home? It's not as though my nest is empty -- I still have at least eight years of hands-on parenting left with two daughters at home. It's a bittersweet thing, but usually more bitter than sweet.

Then tonight it hit me as I emerged from a movie -- the reason it is so difficult is that I have enjoyed this chapter of my life so much that I don't want it to end. I don't even really want it to change significantly, even though logically I know it will and it must. My boys have to move on, so I have to move on, too. We're all learning and growing.

And even though I have to accept it as some sort of biological imperative, it's okay for me to accept it reluctantly.

Robert Frost understood, as evidenced by this final stanza of his poem "Reluctance":


Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Life 101

The most consummately beautiful thing in the universe is the rightly fashioned life of a good person. – George Palmer

That kind of life is not an accident. It is a highly creative work of art. – Rufus Jones


The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible. – Montaigne

Eclairs

I decided to make chocolate eclairs today for the first time ever. My mom told me years ago they are very easy to make, and I guess they are, but there are actually three recipes involved (dough, pudding, and glaze) so they weren't all that easy to make. Still, they were good and worth making again sometime when you consider a) how rare it is to find a bakery with really good eclairs, and b) the cost of eclairs at a really good bakery.

These are not picture perfect, but they kind of look like eclairs are supposed to look.

Maybe I will add some culinary quotes to go along with this post:

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage. - Erma Bombeck

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate. - Sandra Boynton

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. - Ben Franklin

My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it. - Buddy Hackett

An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh. - Will Rogers

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. – Voltaire

My mother made me eat broccoli. I hate broccoli. I am the President of the United States. I will not eat any more broccoli. - George H. W. Bush

Our Two Pups

Panda this evening -- picture taken by Scott with his new loaner phone. Looks like she's been tearing up some paper, a frequent problem.

Panda hoping someone is up for a game of 1-2-3 with her omnipresent tennis ball.

Panda will just hold onto the ball in case someone wants to play later.

Sherpa, naturally modest, wonders why anyone would want her picture.

Sherpa curled for a nap.

At our house we have two dogs: Sherpa, who will be ten years old on Oct. 23, and Panda, who will be a year old in November. Both female shih-tsus, they look a lot alike, but Sherpa is definitely more refined and dignified and Panda is more of a ballhog ruffian. They are both huge distractions around the house because they are so adoreable (to us, their family members, that is.)

Shih-tsus make wonderful pets. They rarely bark - only to sound the alarm that someone is approaching our house or that a plane has crossed over the airspace of the back yard. They tolerate a degree of hair and tail pulling by small children. They are also affectionate and independent. We had no idea how wonderful shih-tsus were when we bought Sherpa on the basis of her cuteness alone.

The only drawback is that they require grooming, which can get expensive when multiplied by two. I bought a kit to do it myself, and these pictures reveal that I am still very much on the learning curve. Both dogs are half groomed. Panda's eyes at least have been cleared for better visibility. She has a true bottle-brush nose and when her bangs are long, you almost can't tell one end of her from the other.

I used to be a big dog snob. I didn't think I would like a small breed. Since then I've discovered that dogs come in all diferent sizes on the inside -- some small dogs think they are large and some large dogs think they are small. I've almost never met a dog I didn't like.

Blog Post #2 Without Quotations

I didn't really believe it when I was in my 20s, but wisdom comes with age - probably because implicit within the concept of aging is experiencing, and we usually learn from our experiences. (Which is not to say that all older people are wiser than all younger people, or even that all older people are wise -- that is certainly not the case. My husband, the wisest person I have ever known, was probably wise in first grade and has just gotten wiser.) Anyway, I digress...

I remember a young man who came to visit me when I was 20 as my home teacher. (For those who are not members of the LDS faith, all members are given 'home teachers' who visit each month to give a short lesson and see if you need help with anything.) He was very proud of his knowledge, like me, and gave me some advice I really needed and have thought a lot about since: "Don't take yourself so seriously."

I wasn't offended by this advice - I think someone had probably given him the same counsel at some point and it had helped him, so he was passing it along to the only person on the planet (me) who had ever beaten him at Trivial Pursuit. (I still remember the winning question involved "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe, which he had never even heard of. When I recited the first sentence of the story from memory, he was astounded. It just happens to be one of my favorite first lines from all of literature, but again, I digress...)

Since that time, I have tried to remember to laugh at myself and to let some of my vulnerabilities show, and I've come to realize that people may admire us for our strengths, but they love us for our vulnerabilities.

A vulnerability is not necessarily a weakness, but it is a soft spot, a need, an unfulfilled dream, an indication of our humanity. We can camouflage our vulnerabilities and pretend that they do not exist, but we all have them. They are what make us empathetic to and protective of each other.

I've noticed a similar phenomenon in my reaction to art. I admire the nearly photgraphic quality of a painting that is a perfect refletion of the subject matter, but I love the painting that has human emotion in it even more. Dramatic brush strokes and blurred lines convey something of the artist and not just the object or landscape he painted. I am seeing the subject matter through the artist's eyes.

I have several excellent quotes on this subject which come to mind...but I am trying to express original thoughts, and believe me it's harder than it looks.

Here is the first line of "The Cask of Amontillado":

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. (Isn't that great?!) (Scott said, 'Isn't this supposed to be a blog without quotes?')

A Blog Post Without Quotations

I'm taking my son to the oral surgeon today to have his 3rd molars (his wisdom teeth) removed. Poor kid. We have ice cream in the freezer for medicinal purposes only and his favorite pudding in the pantry (tapioca). He's more afraid of the IV than anything else. I'm looking forward to the drive home when he is loopy, loopy, loopy. That will be my entertainment for today, and it should be good.

I've cleared my schedule (or rather, kept it clear) and I plan to be a mother hen. It's a good day to catch up on mending at the kitchen table so I plan to set up show down there.

See what happens to my blog when I don't have quotes to rely on? I have quotes, of course, but I promised not to use them for a while here -- I promised to have an original thought, and all I can think about is tooth extraction and seam repair.