Day 2: The unrequited love poem

It’s only the second day of this writing project and I’ve hit a snag already. Today's exercise being:
The unrequited love poem. How do you feel when you love someone who does not love you back.

Writing a poem about unrequited love … that’s not gonna work. Not that I can’t write a poem, I can rhyme with the best of them, but writing about love … no, that doesn’t suit me at all. I don’t believe in love.

People may love each other when they first meet, and love each other again when they’re in their golden years, but the years in-between can be hell on wheels. Why else would the divorce rate stand at over 50%?

I’m probably so cynical because I was married. We had a wonderful wedding and a romantic honeymoon, but 18 years later we had an even more wonderful divorce.

I sometimes wonder if men and women really suit each other. I mean, think about it. When two people meet and fall in love, they want to spend all their time together. No sooner are they married or everything changes. Maybe not in the first year, maybe not in the second, but eventually.

Men will start to pull on the reigns and want to spend time with their friends. They’ll want to go to sports events with their buddies, they want to go drinking with them, or do something else that takes him away from home. Maybe they’ll get lucky and meet someone who is after some casual adult fun. All too often I hear men refer to their wives as ‘The old ball and chain.’

Women are no better. They want to go shopping with their girlfriends, have lunches here and there, go to spas, go clubbing, and generally have a good time. Going shopping with a man is no fun, they just don’t have the interest to admire shoes, rifle through lipsticks, or try different perfumes. And yes, of course, there are those ladies who wouldn’t mind a bit of casual adult fun too.

So why get married in the first place? What drives people to bind themselves to others? Do they really think that a ceremony will make the other person stay ‘until death do them part’? Of course not. If the relationship is good, a man or a woman will stay, if the relationship goes south, they will leave. A marriage certificate isn’t going to change that.

Sometimes I wonder why people are so keen to get married anyway. I can understand why a man wants to get married, once he has a wife he no longer has to go looking for sex or pay for it, but it’s quite a bit different for a woman. Unless the couple can afford outside help, once married a whole heap of responsibilities land onto a woman’s shoulders: cleaning the house, doing the shopping, cooking the meals, washing and pressing clothes, and 101 other things. Then when the kids come along, her responsibilities double or even triple.

No, I don’t understand this keenness on finding a man and entering into marriage. I’ve been there and done that and I can say one thing for very, very sure … NEVER AGAIN!!! So if you’re waiting for an unrequited love poem … you’ll wait a long, long time.

Eat, Pray, Shove

After seeing the movie “Eat, Pray, Love” (a few times), I got curious about the book.

Some told me it was good, but not as good as the movie, some said the book was a disappointment, while others still loved the movie but downright hated the book.

With so many different opinions, I wanted to compare for myself.

The first thing I noticed was that Liz’s four months in Italy seemed weak. Having a thorough knowledge of Italy, in particular of Rome and Naples, I found the writer’s description of the cities amateurish. Almost as if she had researched the cities online, rather than actually spending time there.

Her description of the ashram and her spiritual journey in India I found fascinating, although it bothered me that she continuously grieved over her failed marriage. 

As a happily divorced woman myself, I can understand that she mourned lost love when she first separated from her husband, but she divorced the guy for heaven sake. If she loved him that much, she should have stayed with him. 

Still, I continued reading. That is until I got to the deep meditation part. I found it a little hard to swallow that Liz’s one and a half hour of pray singing every morning at the crack of dawn helped her nephew, who was thousands of miles away, sleep better. But okay, I could get past that.

What I couldn’t get past, and what I thought was complete baloney was her statement that she had seen God, been with God, even been inside God. That did it for me. I had enough of this and abandoned the book.

Now it so happened that a few days later I met Amid, a young Indian man from Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta. 

Ever curious about other countries, their customs and their people, we got to talking and I asked Amid if India  was as poor and desolate as some stories led on.

“Not at all,” he chuckled. “India is a thriving country with beautiful architecture, many businesses and young entrepreneurs, luxury homes and exotic cars such as Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bugatti and of course Porsche.”

One topic led to another and I asked if he had ever been to an ashram. Amid shook his head, an ashram was not his cup of tea. He knew about them of course, but he wasn’t keen on them.

“They’re for people who want to get closer to God, right?” I asked him.

“Ashrams are for rich people who want to get closer to God,” he corrected me.

“And the poor people?” I asked.

Amid shrugged. “They have to find God elsewhere on their own.”

He was familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert’s story, “Eat, Pray, Love” and had nothing good to say about it. He loved the movie and he loved Julia Roberts’ performance, but the book he classified as absolute rubbish. 

According to Amed, Gilbert romanticized the ashram experience and exaggerated shamelessly. He classified her as an attention seeker who had but one goal … to have her story published and would have gone to any lengths to do so.

I tend to agree with him. Some parts of the book were good, but Gilbert went a little too far, thus turning an educational story into a bunch of nonsense.

What bothered me about this author is that nobody can reach her. Plenty of bestselling authors have a “contact me” button on their website and a page on Facebook. They encourage their readers to get in touch with them and are happy to hear from them. 

Not Gilbert. She can’t be reached through her website and neither can anyone send her a message via Facebook. 

What is Gilbert so afraid of? 

After reading a few reviews on Amazon, I found a lengthy one of Lynne701 that hit the nail on the head. Rather than copying the whole review, I’ll limit myself to merely mentioning Lynne’s second last paragraph which states:

My biggest problem with this tome is that this 30-something woman basically is looking for applause for running off for a year, ostensibly supported by a $200K book advance, to "find God." I'm sure millions of women would love to leave their everyday lives and travel the world to do nothing but self-analyze. If she had done volunteer work, I may have felt differently. If she went through some real hardship, I could sympathize. But she was in an incompatible marriage, then dumped by the guy she left her husband for. She should perhaps speak to those battling life-threatening diseases, or raising children alone, or taking care of an elderly parent, or worried about where their next meal is coming from.

Lynne's review was appropriately titled "Eat, Pray, Shove".