...I still have NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS "VIRTUAL INSANITY" VIDEO.

Not surprisingly, the answer is no.

I had an immediate, visceral reaction when I found out Viking Publishing paid for Elizabeth Gilbert's year-long trip to India, Italy and Indonesia. While it's not out of the ordinary for publishers to pay authors for travel writing, I couldn't stomach the fact that Gilbert's vacation was packaged and sold as some new form of accessible spirituality.

Having read and listened to some interviews, I think that Gilbert had life-changing, truly spiritual moments on her journey.
I think that there was a palpable shift in her very being as a direct result of this journey.
I also think that this would have been a completely different book if Gilbert had to beg, scrimp, and save to go on this journey. (This, from the completely biased view of someone who has to beg, scrimp and save for a journey across town. Noted.)

I just don't know how I feel about sponsored enlightenment. 

On the one hand, I've purchased gift certificates for a friend to get a massage. To a new parent or a server that works on their feet all day, that's liken to enlightenment, sponsored by me. A lot of people gift their friends yoga classes, or spa retreats. Some people even pay for their friends to go on vacation. None of this crosses my radar. And, full disclosure, I've actually purchased a copy of "Eat, Pray, Love" for a friend, after she went through a tough time and specifically mentioned wanting to read this book. So why do I feel so unsettled by this book, or the way this book came into being? Would I feel differently if Gilbert had gone on a year-long tour with clear-cut objectives and deadlines instead of a one-year, "unscripted" sabbatical? Or if she was somehow worse off before she started this book - an underpaid office jockey who took this trip as a consolation prize to being fired from her stressful, trivial job? Would I feel differently about this whole thing if I had actually read the book?

Well...YEAH.

I know I bring the massive structure of personal baggage I carry to my treatment of this book, this author, and this trip, and that I'm looking at it through a rather opaque lens. Which is just a wordy way of saying  that I hate talking about books I haven't read, and I realize that, as a writer, I'm probably a little bit jealous. I like it when books are born out of struggle, either internal or external. But with this particular juggernaut, I know more about the author and the way this book came to light than I do the book itself. And truthfully? I really liked her TED talk, and have watched it more than once in the past year or so.

Here are the two articles that sparked my interest in this topic again:

• Eat, Pray, Spend - Bitch Magazine
  Priv-lit, the industry of enlightenment, and Oprah. "It’s hardly reasonable to demand that every woman who wishes to better her life be poor, or nonwhite, or in some other way representative of diversity in order to be taken seriously. But Eat, Pray, Love and its positioning as an Everywoman’s guide to whole, empowered living embody a literature of privilege and typify the genre’s destructive cacophony of insecurity, spending, and false wellness."
• If Women Like It, It Must Be Stupid - Women and Hollywood
  "And we all know it’s not just movies.  I think it may even be worse in the book world which continues to perpetuate women’s work as chick lit and men’s work as literature. "

Should we be supportive of the "Eat, Pray, Love" machine simply because it directly opposes the phallocentric Hollywood machine? Or should we be concerned with this new breed of "snake oil" salesman that insists money (or a base amount of financial freedom) is the true path to enlightenment? Both of these articles had me really considering this book (movie, clothing line, candle company) from two completely different perspectives.

I spend a lot of time alone.

Some people think this is odd. I live with my boyfriend, and we've been in a relationship for almost 5 years. How is it possible to be alone when your life is so wrapped up in someone else? Doesn't that mean something is wrong?

I learned how to be alone as a child, when lonliness was forced upon me. Poor and black with weird hair and bad clothes in a town that offered the exact opposite, my existence was too much for kids my age to figure out. I wasn't an easy friend. There were always too many questions. Sometimes the questions were asked; unsatisfied with the answers, I was left alone. Most of the time they couldn't be bothered.

Between grade school and high school, lonliness shifted into being alone. I chose to be by myself. I wanted to get away from people. I needed do my own thing. Lonliness is sad; being alone is powerful. I hopped on buses and walked around new towns and cities when I should have been sitting in class, alone. I went to movies, concerts, Broadway plays, alone.

I always talked to strangers.
I always lied about my age.
I always trespassed.

After high school graduation, people commented loosely on lonliness. Now you'll really be on your own. You're all by yourself, kid. They didn't know I'd been alone for most of my life, or that my greatest strengths would stem from time spent alone. I would move to new states alone, find new jobs and friends alone. I'd hop fences and sneak into abandoned houses alone. I would drive all the way to Alaska alone.

I do everything alone. All of my hobbies are solitary ventures. I knit, I sew, I draw, I read, alone, alone, alone. I turn off my phone and spend entire nights by myself. I still go to movies, concerts, and plays alone. I'd rather be by myself than with anyone else. Being lonely ultimately helped me to like myself, to enjoy my own company.

Both Seth and I do things alone. We sit in the same house for hours, in separate rooms, doing separate things. We go out alone, for drives or walks or dinner with friends. We travel together, and then spend entire days exploring different cities on our own. I think this is healthy. I think this is necessary. When we're alone, we discover different things, about ourselves and others. We have so much to talk about when we eventually come together, the "You'll never guess what I saw!" and "I ran into" and "I can't believe I saw" that would normally pass us by.

Being alone makes the time we spend together that much more dynamic.