Day 1: Saturday, May (umm…) 26, 2007
Already routine life feels almost surreal -- I feel like we’ve left NY a week ago. Today we saw lots and lots… I took about a hundred gorgeous, precious pictures with my fantastic new camera. I left my incessant mind behind and truly enjoyed the day. I basked in the greenery that was so bright that I wondered who cleared my vision. I hugged trees. I took dozens of up-close shots of flowers. Vermont is blooming with lilacs on every street and by every house. Lilacs make me happy… even if for a fleeting moment.
When the trip just started, we ran into a problem -- the agency sold the same seat (mine) to two people (I guess someone else’s, too). Thankfully, one other seat was empty in the back of the bus, so I am sitting next to a woman, with nothing but a bathroom behind me, but it’s not bad.
Throughout the day, in the quiet moments free from our tour guide’s voice, I read Eat, Pray, Love, a book by Elizabeth Gilbert. What a spiritual book! It’s… well, ringing so many bells for me. I love that she doesn’t preach, but is simply sharing her story. It just makes me want to become so much more devoted to the expression of my own spirituality. That is, through practice, rather than just mental processing. This desire is stemming from a simple place of wanting to truly find happiness -- not from wanting to fix myself. It feels so good to feel this simpler place, so different from the agony of analyzing everything in my mind.
My room number is 333 -- I love it because it adds up to 9 (a favorite number second only to 27, which also adds up to 9). I’m enjoying 100 channels of cable -- it’s set to “mute”, though, so I can write in peace. I’m lying face-down on one of the beds in my room, bathed in comfort. I’m under the influence of Eat, Pray, Love, and I’m also fantasizing about meditating for an hour. I’d do it too, if I didn’t hate myself to pieces when I did it.
|
|
