Eat Pray Love

Madewell top | Madewell shorts | Birkenstocks | Banana Republic Sunnies | Rebecca Minkoff Tote

I arrived at the beach armed with my phone, book, and cold pressed juice in hand. I sat down and opened up one of my - many - meditation apps and prepared to enter the state of peace that the practice brings me. As I was deciding what episode to select I started listening to the sounds that were already surrounding me. Do the waves always sound that gentle? The mumble of the snowbird’s chatting resonated more harmoniously than they have in the past. I thought to myself, “maybe I don’t actually need to meditate today, this moment might be even more peaceful than anything I could bring on myself.” I took it in for a few minutes and then rolled over and grabbed my latest book, “Eat Pray Love.” Of course I’ve heard a lot of buzz around the story and have been wanting to pick it up ever since the movie came out (because one of my idiosyncrasies is that I must always read the book before watching the movie), but never got around to it until now. I knew nothing of the storyline. About thirty pages in I had to stop, although she’s just setting up the foundation of the book. I had to stop because the parallels between her life and mine were amazing, with some discrepancies of course, but it was strange and beautiful and weird to comprehend. I laid down, closed my eyes, felt the breeze on my skin, and listened to the soft hum of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love” on a fellow beach-goers radio. I let the fact that everyone I know on this planet is miles away from me in this moment really sink in for the first time. I thought “I should feel very alone right now,” but I didn’t. Because I just read about someone, a real person, who I know with certainty has felt the same kind of fear, joy, guilt, and confusion that I have experienced in the past year. Books can do that to you, they can make you feel, as Marina Keegan would say, “The Opposite of Loneliness.”

Photos by Sea + Ink