I'm looking at the (wo)man in the mirror

I'm really not trying to create beautiful synchronicity.  For some reason, however, all of the memoirs I've been reading lately seem interconnected.  At the end of The Kid, Dan Savage worries over the age old question: to circumcise or not to circumcise.  Shalom Auslander fretted over the same decision at the end of Foreskin's Lament.  Savage calls God out on his sadism in the following passage from The Commitment:

" . . . the moment you begin to believe you're worthy of the good things in your life - God gets all Old Testament on your ass and does something vicious, something insane, something totally uncalled for.  He give you lupus or He allows Satan to slaughter your children and cattle or He deliver Ohio to George w. Bush." (p. 50)

Sound like Auslander?  In the early passages of The Commitment, where I loll, Savage and his partner Terry are interrogated on family vacation by Savage's mom, step-dad, and siblings about why they don't get married.  His own aversion to marriage is reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert's feelings.  Both authors even do a little sociological investigation.  Her book is Committed.  His is The Commitment.

All of these authors are funny.

To recap:  I am reading funny, irreverent, smart writers who question societal norms and customs while surrendering to them, all the while worrying.  Forever worrying.  Gay, straight, male, female, Orthodox Jew, Buddhist, Recovering Catholic.  They're all me.

And now I'm feeling narcissistic.  Time to read about a Zen athlete, a cocky stockbroker or a roller derby queen.

I am quoted in this article on Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert article in Courier Journal

I thought I sounded slightly more intelligent while having the phone interview, but what can I do.

Onward and Upward

Finished Committed tonight.  Elizabeth Gilbert is a modest and generous writer.  She managed to weave her own fretful story in between the stories of friends, family, strangers she met in Southeast Asia, and historical figures.  She dispels myths and enriches the meaning of matrimony with great humor.  In the end, she decides that, despite her own fears and trepidations (as well as those of Felipe's), marriage is an act of subversion because in the end no church, despot, government or repressive regime has been able to control what happens in the privacy of one's bedroom and cannot prevent the bond that two people in love have for one another.  As Gilbert says, slave owners in pre-Civil War America forbade slavery, but slaves invented jumping the broom as a commitment ceremony, just as today, gay and lesbian couples in the U.S. celebrate their weddings without state approval. She ends the book with her own simple ceremony, in her new home, surrounded by family and friends.  I threw rice.

The Humble One

Coming back to Elizabeth Gilbert after forcing myself to finish Cleaving is like taking a long, hot, sudsy bath after trekking through mud puddles. Ahhhh. Gilbert's voice is soothing after so much self-involved blathering. She is mature, wise, self-deprecating, humble. She roots herself in historical, sociological, sometimes even biological, context. Her own marriage stories are peripheral to the story of the institution. One hundred pages in I have learned much about the constantly changing historical reasons for marriage. And opposed to Julie Powell's example of foreign travel, where she thrusts herself into the most foreign of foreign experiences (hunting with the Masai in Tanzania) only to ponder about how cute she is and then make out with one of the English-speaking guides, Gilbert pays deep respect to the heritage and customs of the lands where she travels. For instance, she and her exiled lover, "Felipe," land in Vietnam and she questions the women of a Laotian village about their experiences of marriage. She asks if they are happy. In response, they laugh! The women do not base their lives around the pursuit of happiness, like most Westerners; they just live. They marry because that is what they are supposed to do. And Gilbert respects this enormous difference by researching it.

I love that Gilbert is politically liberal, but doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve. The purpose of the book isn't to sway opinions about gay marriage (although, she clearly states that she supports the idea) or bash conservative hypocrisy. The purpose is to show how marriage has evolved throughout time and changed depending upon culture. But in so doing, she can't help to editorialize a wee bit: "So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are absolutely correct, but in only one respect - only if they happen to be talking about Judaism." (58) How awesome is that?