Eat, Pray, Love

I don't know what alerts me when it's time to go meet my taxi, but after several hours of stillness, something gives me a nudge, and when I look at my watch it's exactly time to go. I have to fly to Indonesia now. How funny and strange. So I stand up and bow before the photograph of Swamiji-the bossy, the marvelous, the fiery. And then I slide a piece of paper under the carpet, right below his image. On the paper are the two poems I wrote during my four months in India. These are the first real poems I've ever written. A plumber from New Zealand encouraged me to try poetry for once-that's why it happened. One of these poems I wrote after having been here only a month. The other, I just wrote this morning.

In the space between the two poems, I have found acres of grace.

72

Two Poems from an Ashram in India

First

All this talk of nectar and bliss is starting to piss me off.
I don't know about you, my friend,
but my path to God ain't no sweet waft of incense.
It's a cat set loose in a pigeon pen,
and I'm the cat-
but also them who yell like hell when they get pinned.

My path to God is a worker's uprising,
won't be peace till they unionize.
Their picket is so fearsome
the National Guard won't go near them.

My path was beaten unconscious before me,
by a small brown man I never got to see,
who chased God through India, shin-deep in mud,
barefoot and famined, malarial blood,
sleeping in doorways, under bridges-a hobo.
(Which is short for 'homeward bound,' you know)
And he now chases me, saying: 'Got it yet, Liz?
What HOMEWARD means? What BOUND really is?'

Second

However.
If they'd let me wear pants made out of the
fresh-mown grass from this place,
I'd do it.

If they'd let me make out
with every single Eucalyptus tree in Ganesh's Grove,
I swear, I'd do it.

I've sweated out dew these days,
worked out the dregs,
rubbed my chin on tree bark,
mistaking it for my master's leg.

I can't get far enough in.

If they'd let me eat the soil of this place
served on a bed of birds' nests,
I'd finish only half my plate,
Then sleep all night on the rest.

Book III

73

I've never had less of a plan in my life than I do upon arrival in Bali. In all my history of careless travels, this is the most carelessly I've ever landed anyplace. I don't know where I'm going to live, I don't know what I'm going to do, I don't know what the exchange rate is, I don't know how to get a taxi at the airport-or even where to ask that taxi to take me. Nobody is expecting my arrival. I have no friends in Indonesia, or even friends-of-friends. And here's the problem about traveling with an out-of-date guidebook, and then not reading it anyway: I didn't realize that I'm actually not allowed to stay in Indonesia for four months, even if I want to. I find this out only upon entry into the country. Turns out I'm allowed only a one-month tourist visa. It hadn't occurred to me that the Indonesian government would be anything less than delighted to host me in their country for just as long as I pleased to stay.

As the nice immigration official is stamping my passport with permission to stay in Bali for only and exactly thirty days, I ask him in my most friendly manner if I can please remain longer.

'No,' he says, in his most friendly manner. The Balinese are famously friendly.

'See, I'm supposed to stay here for three or four months,' I tell him.

I don't mention that it's a prophecy-that my staying here for three or four months was predicted two years ago