So we were driving across Kansas, and I was in my normal state of sweaty disarray over
this divorce deal-- will he sign, will he not sign?-- and I said to Iva, "I don't think I can
endure another year in court. I wish I could get some divine intervention here. I wish I
could write a petition to God, asking for this thing to end."
"So why don't you?"
I explained to Iva my personal opinions about prayer. Namely, that I don't feel
comfortable petitioning for specific things from God, because that feels to me like a kind
of weakness of faith. I don't like asking, "Will you change this or that thing in my life
that's difficult for me?" Because--who knows?--God might want me to be facing that
particular challenge for a reason. Instead, I feel more comfortable praying for the courage
to face whatever occurs in my life with equanimity, no matter how things turn out.
Iva listened politely, then asked, "Where'd you get that stupid idea?"
"What do you mean?"
"Where did you get the idea you aren't allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You
are part of this universe, Liz. You're a constituent--you have every entitlement to
participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known. So put your
opinion out there. Make your case. Believe me--it will at least be taken into
consideration."
"Really?" All this was news to me.
"Really! Listen--if you were to write a petition to God right now, what would it say?"
I thought for a while, then pulled out a notebook and wrote this petition:
Dear God.
Please intervene and help end this divorce. My husband and I have failed at our
marriage and now we are failing at our divorce. This poisonous process is bringing
suffering to us and to everyone who cares about us.
I recognize that you are busy with wars and tragedies and much larger conflicts than the
ongoing dispute of one dysfunctional couple. But it is my understanding that the health of
the planet is affected by the health of every individual on it. As long as even two souls are
locked in conflict, the whole of the world is contaminated by it. Similarly, if even one or
two souls can be free from discord, this will increase the general health of the wholeworld, the way a few healthy cells in a body can increase the general health of that body.
It is my most humble request, then, that you help us end this conflict, so that two more
people can have the chance to become free and healthy, and so there will be just a little
bit less animosity and bitterness in a world that is already far too troubled by suffering.
I thank you for your kind attention.
Respectfully,
Elizabeth M. Gilbert
I read it to Iva, and she nodded her approval.
"I would sign that," she said.
I handed the petition over to her with a pen, but she was too busy driving, so she said,
"No, let's say that I did just sign it. I signed it in my heart."
"Thank you, Iva. I appreciate your support."
"Now, who else would sign it?" she asked.
"My family. My mother and father. My sister."
"OK," she said. "They just did. Consider their names added. I actually felt them sign it.
They're on the list now. OK--who else would sign it? Start naming names."
So I started naming names of all the people who I thought would sign this petition. I
named all my close friends, then some family members and some people I worked with.
After each name, Iva would say with assurance, "Yep. He just signed it," or "She just
signed it." Sometimes she would pop in with her own signatories, like: "My parents just
signed it. They raised their children during a war. They hate useless conflict. They'd be
happy to see your divorce end."
I closed my eyes and waited for more names to come to me.
"I think Bill and Hillary Clinton just signed it," I said.
"I don't doubt it," she said. "Listen, Liz-- anybody can sign this petition. Do you
understand that? Call on anyone, living or dead, and start collecting signatures."
"Saint Francis of Assisi just signed it!"
"Of course he did!" Iva smacked her hand against the steering wheel with certainty.
Now I was cooking:
"Abraham Lincoln just signed it! And Gandhi, and Mandela and all the peacemakers.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa, Bono, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, Jackie
Robinson and the Dalai Lama . . . and my grandmother who died in 1984 and my
grandmother who's still alive . . . and my Italian teacher, and my therapist, and my
agent . . . and Martin Luther King Jr. and Katharine Hepburn . . . and Martin Scorsese
(which you wouldn't necessarily expect, but it's still nice of him) . . . and my Guru, of
course . . . and Joanne Woodward, and Joan of Arc, and Ms. Carpenter, my fourth-grade
teacher, and Jim Henson--"
The names spilled from me. They didn't stop spilling for almost an hour, as we drove
across Kansas and my petition for peace stretched into page after invisible page of
supporters. Iva kept confirming-- yes, he signed it, yes, she signed it-- and I became filled
with a grand sense of protection, surrounded by the collective goodwill of so many
mighty souls.
The list finally wound down, and my anxiety wound down with it. I was sleepy. Iva said,
"Take a nap. I'll drive." I closed my eyes. One last name appeared. "Michael J. Fox justsigned it," I murmured, then drifted into sleep. I don't know how long I slept, maybe only
for ten minutes, but it was deep. When I woke up, Iva was still driving. She was
humming a little song to herself. I yawned.
My cell phone rang.
I looked at that crazy little telefonino vibrating with excitement in the ashtray of the
rental car. I felt disoriented, kind of stoned from my nap, suddenly unable to remember
how a telephone works.
"Go ahead," Iva said, already knowing. "Answer the thing."
I picked up the phone, whispered hello.
"Great news!" my lawyer announced from distant New York City. "He just signed it!"
10101010
A few weeks later, I am living in Italy.
I have quit my job, paid off my divorce settlement and legal bills, given up my house,
given up my apartment, put what belongings I had left into storage in my sister's place
and packed up two suitcases. My year of traveling has commenced. And I can actually
afford to do this because of a staggering personal miracle: in advance, my publisher has
purchased the book I shall write about my travels. It all turned out, in other words, just as
the Indonesian medicine man had predicted. I would lose all my money and it would be
replaced immediately--or at least enough of it to buy me a year of life.
So now I am a resident of Rome. The apartment I've found is a quiet studio in a historic
building, located just a few narrow blocks from the Spanish Steps, draped beneath the
graceful shadows of the elegant Borghese Gardens, right up the street from the Piazza del
Popolo, where the ancient Romans used to race their chariots. Of course, this district
doesn't quite have the sprawling grandeur of my old New York City neighborhood, which
overlooked the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, but still . . .
It will do.
11111111
The first meal I ate in Rome was nothing much. Just some homemade pasta (spaghetti
carbonara) with a side order of sauteed spinach and garlic. (The great romantic poet
Shelley once wrote a horrified letter to a friend in England about cuisine in Italy: "Young
women of rank actually eat--you will never guess what--GARLIC!") Also, I had oneartichoke, just to try it; the Romans are awfully proud of their artichokes. Then there was
a pop-surprise bonus side order brought over by the waitress for free--a serving of fried
zucchini blossoms with a soft dab of cheese in the middle (prepared so delicately that the
blossoms probably didn't even notice they weren't on the vine anymore). After the
spaghetti, I tried the veal. Oh, and also I drank a bottle of house red, just for me. And ate
some warm bread, with olive oil and salt. Tiramisu for dessert.
Walking home after that meal, around 11:00 PM, I could hear noise coming from one of
the buildings on my street, something that sounded like a convention of
seven-year-olds--a birthday party, maybe? Laughter and screaming and running around. I
climbed the stairs to my apartment, lay down in my new bed and turned off the light. I
waited to start crying or worrying, since that's what usually happened to me with the
lights off, but I actually felt OK. I felt fine. I felt the early symptoms of contentment.
My weary body asked my weary mind: "Was this all you needed, then?"
There was no response. I was already fast asleep.
12121212
In every major city in the Western World, some things are always the same. The same
African men are always selling knockoffs of the same designer handbags and sunglasses,
and the same Guatemalan musicians are always playing "I'd rather be a sparrow than a
snail" on their bamboo windpipes. But some things are only in Rome. Like the sandwich
counterman so comfortably calling me "beautiful" every time we speak. You want this
panino grilled or cold, bella? Or the couples making out all over the place, like there is
some contest for it, twisting into each other on benches, stroking each other's hair and
crotches, nuzzling and grinding ceaselessly . . .
And then there are the fountains. Pliny the Elder wrote once: "If anyone will consider the
abundance of Rome's public supply of water, for baths, cisterns, ditches, houses, gardens,
villas; and take into account the distance over which it travels, the arches reared, the
mountains pierced, the valleys spanned--he will admit that there never was anything more
marvelous in the whole world."
A few centuries later, I already have a few contenders for my favorite fountain in Rome.
One is in the Villa Borghese. In the center of this fountain is a frolicking bronze family.
Dad is a faun and Mom is a regular human woman. They have a baby who enjoys eating
grapes. Mom and Dad are in a strange position--facing each other, grabbing each other's
wrists, both of them leaning back. It's hard to tell whether they are yanking against each
other in strife or swinging around merrily, but there's lots of energy there. Either way,
Junior sits perched atop their wrists, right between them, unaffected by their merriment or
strife, munching on his bunch of grapes. His little cloven hoofs dangle below him as heeats. (He takes after his father.)
It is early September, 2003. The weather is warm and lazy. By this, my fourth day in
Rome, my shadow has still not darkened the doorway of a church or a museum, nor have
I even looked at a guidebook. But I have been walking endlessly and aimlessly, and I did
finally find a tiny little place that a friendly bus driver informed me sells The Best Gelato
in Rome. It's called "Il Gelato di San Crispino." I'm not sure, but I think this might
translate as "the ice cream of the crispy saint." I tried a combination of the honey and the
hazelnut. I came back later that same day for the grapefruit and the melon. Then, after
dinner that same night, I walked all the way back over there one last time, just to sample
a cup of the cinnamon-ginger.
I've been trying to read through one newspaper article every day, no matter how long it
takes. I look up approximately every third word in my dictionary. Today's news was
fascinating. Hard to imagine a more dramatic headline than "Obesita! I Bambini Italiani
Sono i Piu Grassi d'Europa!" Good God! Obesity! The article, I think, is declaring that
Italian babies are the fattest babies in Europe! Reading on, I learn that Italian babies are
significantly fatter than German babies and very significantly fatter than French
babies.(Mercifully, there was no mention of how they measure up against American
babies.) Older Italian children are dangerously obese these days, too, says the article.
(The pasta industry defended itself.) These alarming statistics on Italian child fatness
were unveiled yesterday by--no need to translate here--" una task force internazionale." It
took me almost an hour to decipher this whole article. The entire time, I was eating a
pizza and listening to one of Italy's children play the accordion across the street. The kid
didn't look very fat to me, but that may have been because he was a gypsy. I'm not sure if
I misread the last line of the article, but it seemed there was some talk from the
government that the only way to deal with the obesity crisis in Italy was to implement a
tax on the overweight . . .? Could this be true? After a few months of eating like this, will
they come after me?
It's also important to read the newspaper every day to see how the pope is doing. Here in
Rome, the pope's health is recorded daily in the newspaper, very much like weather, or
the TV schedule. Today the pope is tired. Yesterday, the pope was less tired than he is
today. Tomorrow, we expect that the pope will not be quite so tired as he was today.
It's kind of a fairyland of language for me here. For someone who has always wanted to
speak Italian, what could be better than Rome? It's like somebody invented a city just to
suit my specifications, where everyone (even the children, even the taxi drivers, even the
actors on the commercials!) speaks this magical language. It's like the whole society is
conspiring to teach me Italian. They'll even print their newspapers in Italian while I'm
here; they don't mind! They have bookstores here that only sell books written in Italian! I
found such a bookstore yesterday morning and felt I'd entered an enchanted palace.
Everything was in Italian--even Dr. Seuss. I wandered through, touching all the books,
hoping that anyone watching me might think I was a native speaker. Oh, how I want
Italian to open itself up to me! This feeling reminded me of when I was four years old
