Eat, Pray, Love

humorous eyes (who used to be a nun in South Africa)—this was my circle of close friends
here, a most vibrant crowd of characters whom I never would have expected to meet at an
Ashram in India.
So, during lunch one day, we were all having this conversation together about marriage,
and the plumber/poet from New Zealand said, “I see marriage as an operation that sews two
people together, and divorce is a kind of amputation that can take a long time to heal. The
longer you were married, or the rougher the amputation, the harder it is to recover.”
Which would explain the postdivorce, postamputation sensations I’ve had for a few years
now, of still swinging that phantom limb around, constantly knocking stuff off the shelves.
Richard from Texas was wondering if I was planning on allowing my ex-husband to dictate
for the rest of my life how I felt about myself, and I said I wasn’t too sure about that, actu-
ally—so far, my ex still seemed to have a pretty strong vote, and to be honest I was still
halfway waiting for the man to forgive me, to release me and allow me to go forth in peace.
The dairy farmer from Ireland observed, “Waiting for that day to arrive is not exactly a ra-
tional use of your time.”
“What can I say, guys? I do a lot with guilt. Kind of like the way other women do a lot with
beige.”
The former Catholic nun (who oughtta know about guilt, after all) wouldn’t hear of it.
“Guilt’s just your ego’s way of tricking you into thinking that you’re making moral progress.
Don’t fall for it, my dear.”
“What I hate about the way my marriage ended,” I said, “is that it’s so unresolved. It’s just
an open wound that never goes away.”
“If you insist,” said Richard. “If that’s how you’ve decided to think about it, don’t let me
spoil your party.”
“One of these days this has to end,” I said. “I just wish I knew how.”
When lunch ended, the plumber/poet from New Zealand slipped me a note. It said to meet
him after dinner; he wanted to show me something. So after dinner that night I met him over
by the meditation caves, and he told me to follow him, that he had a gift for me. He walked me
across the Ashram, then led me to a building I’d never been inside before, unlocked a door
and took me up a back set of stairs. He knew of this place, I guessed, because he fixes all the
air-conditioning units, and some of them are located up there. At the top of the stairs there
was a door which he had to unlock with a combination; he did this swiftly, from memory. Then
we were up on a gorgeous rooftop, tiled in ceramic chips that glittered in the evening twilight
like the bottom of a reflecting pool. He took me across that roof to a little tower, a minaret,
really, and showed me another narrow set of stairs, leading to the tippity-top of the tower. He
pointed to the tower and said, “I’m going to leave you now. You’re going to go up there. Stay