Gilbert’s Subject Position: From Acorn to Oak (Cue Inspirational Violin Music)

The subject position that Gilbert inhabits as she writes the novel is completely different from the one she inhabits during the events of the novel.  We can see from the writing that Gilbert is funny through her concise, episodic retellings of experiences.  I especially enjoyed the exchanges with Richard from Texas.  Gilbert is confident, spontaneous, and independent; it’s almost hard to imagine her as neurotic and reliant in the past, as she discloses.  We don’t have to actually “suffer” through her experiences, however.  We can follow along the witty and sometimes sarcastic rendition of these painful episodes in her life; this makes for excellent writing.  She writes with the style of a feature writer for a magazine because her stories are factual, yet charged with emotion.  She is still weak in each country, from Italy to India to Bali, until the end of her stay in Bali.  Gilbert’s subject position changes in each country as she becomes progressively stronger in herself.  However, her final, “self-actualized” self is evident from her style of writing.  This self is not so evident in the experiences in each country because she must grow first.  As her experiences help her to grow, her subject position changes for the better.  Language is a helpful tool in each place to this growth.      

In Italy, Gilbert definitely doesn’t inhabit the subject position of the confident, witty journalist.  She has merely pushed all of her problems under her yoga mat, and distracts herself with pleasure.  At this state, she meets with Giovanni and uses language to find a part of herself.  Language helps her to grasp a piece of her life that she had lost- doing something simply for the pleasure of doing it.  She just wanted to learn Italian, and began distracting her troubled mind in a bathtub, in America, with an Italian dictionary.  She says that it took her a few weeks before she could stop thinking about her obligations and start relaxing.  Before Italy, she is at one of the lowest points in her life, and she’s doing all she can to fix it herself.  One of my favorite examples of her witty writing is when she has done her hair nicely and is dressed in new clothes.  When her friend compliments her, she grimly responds, “Operation Self-Esteem.  Day Fucking One.”  She says that she came to Italy “pinched and thin.”  In Italy, her subject position changes from an individual who was starved for self-esteem to one who has “put on weight.”  She feels that she has expanded from herself.  This is the first step to Gilbert finally occupying a comfortable subject position, which will culminate at the novel’s end. 

In India, Gilbert occupies a drastically different subject position.  Instead of living in a façade of happiness, as she did in Italy, Gilbert attacks those problems that she had previously buried.  She uses meditation and contact with divinity to find herself now.  She abandons earthly pleasure, preferring to spend her days in struggling meditation.  She completes five hours of “selfless service” a day, which most often involves scrubbing floors.  Language also helps her grow in this stage.  She says that previous to this trip, she freaked out about mortality.  She says that she didn’t have the “spiritual vocabulary” to manage it with.  Now, she considers prayer to be talking to God, and meditation is listening.  This transmission of language between herself and the divine helps her to move past problems with David, her ex.  She occupies a strong, yet humble, subject position in this section of the novel.  She must fight daily against herself in the meditation room.  She can’t move on to loving another person until she fixes herself. 

In Bail, Gilbert discovers the final stage of finding herself.  She could relate to others throughout the novel, as we can see from the friendly and easy way that she carries on with Yudhi, Wayan, Tutti, Richard from Texas, and Ketut Liyer.  But a romantic relationship deeply involves the self to the extent that she could only have done this at the end of her journey.  When she flirts with Ian at the party, she starts to miss David painfully.  This is proof that she does not occupy the subject position that she writes the novel in (the confident, self-actualized one) even at this final stage in the novel.  Everything she’s learned seems not to have sunk in when she says, “Maybe I should call him (David) and see if he wants to try getting back together again.”  But Felipe helps her to finally move past David.  Her language of love with Felipe is one of trust, and it’s manifestation is in the physical.  When she refuses to kiss Felipe, but instead lets him hold her, she is crossing a boundary of trust.  Felipe’s language of love, while it might not be as verbal as the languages that have helped her in Italy and India, is the final communication that she needs. 

Gilbert vacations with Felipe to Gili Meno.  She’s been there before, but now she’s circled the globe and recovered from a divorce.  She has become a completely different person.  She describes this new subject position as healthy and balanced.  She loves that she did not let a man rescue her- most of the growing was done without a man.  She says that she imagines herself as an oak tree that had grown from an acorn.  The whole time, the older version of herself, the oak, was urging her ahead to get to this present, actualized version of herself.    Gilbert had to grow into the oak to occupy today’s subject position to both heal herself and to make this book a success.    

       

Journal 5: Cha-ching!

Business, in the sense I will use it, is an establishment that can make a profit.  The most powerful example of the profit-making aspect of travel writing is part of Friend’s “The Parachute Artist.”  The World Trade Center attacks proved that travel writing is a serious business.  Lonely Planet laid off 100 people after this event, which was almost one-fifth of the workforce.  The attacks, combined with SARS, the terrorist bombing in Bali, the Iraq war, and the avian flu, caused a massive relaunch of Lonely Planet, because it hadn’t made money for two and a half years.  In times when people are wary of traveling due to “danger” issues, Lonely Planet adopted the strategy of “the information model.”  Providing travelers with the most factual data to reassure them was the best-selling strategy of the time.  Lonely Planet’s experience after 9/11 highlights the business aspect of travel.  Both traveling and travel writing have elements of business in Rome.      

My specifically religious journey has a business aspect.  Consider the carefully-placed stores of religious objects in popular areas such as the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Santa Scala, and the Pantheon (which, even though it had pagan intentions, has now been converted into a good Christian shrine).  There is plaqued art of Christian stories or the Madonna and baby Jesus everywhere.  The number of religious jewelry and icons sold per year has got to be an astounding number.  I cringe when I buy something because I know that the true spirit of the Gospel is one of sharing with the needy, not storing up wealth for ourselves on earth.  I hate to join the multitude offenders to this commandment: oftentimes, Catholics and other religious people.  The Vatican itself is a business, with some individual tours costing up to 31 euro (about 45 American dollars) per person!  We must keep in mind that the Vatican has several admission tickets, all of which must be bought separately: for the museum, for the Gardens, for the view from the top of the Dome, and for the excavation tour of St. Peter’s bones.  Of course, in secular Rome, the same rules apply.  The beauty of Rome must be bought, whether it’s transportation, food, historical sites, or information, such as travel writing.      

The last of those offenses against the wallet is travel writing, which is another very profitable business in Rome.  I rarely see a tourist without a guidebook poking out of her backpack.  But I distinguish creative travel writing versus guidebook writing of facts and locations.  Sure, this information is necessary, but it makes for dull history.  As readers, we are constantly on the search for the story.  I don’t want to know the facts about the sculpture of Laocoon and his sons, I want to know the back story.  The brave Trojan of Virgil’s Aeneid was the only one to warn that the Trojan horse left by the Greeks as a “gift” was not to be trusted.  Everyone ignored him, and one of the gods sent snakes from the sea to kill Laocoon and his sons. 

The business of travel can be assessed at every historical landmark.  The ticket revenues and souvenirs alone comprise the business aspect of Rome.  In travel writing, of which guidebooks are only a small part, I consider the story as much more important that the historical facts.  That is the connection that we need in our travel writing.  The stories that we’ve been reading about, from Dalrymple to Gilbert to Russell, are focused on the human connection to places through story and experience.  That connection is what I will explore in my travelogue, with a spiritual addition.  Though facts help to bolster a story, they are simply that: supporters and nothing else.  When it comes to true travel writing, the story takes precedence.         

Journal 4: Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates, You Never Know What You're Gonna Get

Last week I talked about living on the border as a comfortable place to be: I can experience a new home in Italy, but only temporarily, as my real home is waiting for me in Amurrica.  Living on the border allows one to get deeper into areas of life that one would never have seen without undergoing "a temporary transplantation."  Because I yanked up my roots in my safe, comfortable, predictable life (some of which I didn't realize were so deep), I am able to experience a cultural connection with this country and a deeper identification with my faith.  My subject position is one who has about as much connection as you can get with a place before you've been there.  I have been waiting my whole life to be where I am today, and that's a surreal feeling (at least it was for the first week).  One thing that I have learned about the border is that there are surprises after that surreal feeling fades.  Borders are like the mixture of two paint colors; you know the color will change, but you never know exactly what shade you will get. 
As far as cultural goes, I felt a very close connection with this country, almost immediately, due to both sides of my family being Italian.  When I was outside, I felt so close to the world that my ancestors had grown up in.  Even learning the language back in America didn't get me feeling a powerful connection to my heritage- it was hearing the language I learned, in the mouths of little kids running around the piazza, in the clusters of old men and women relaxing in the shade, in the teenagers laughing boisterously on the metro.  This language was theirs, beautiful and ethnic.  But it was also mine, on the border, as I rest in the Venn diagram overlap in between our worlds.  The most powerful moment in language was when I used it to talk to my great-great-aunt's daughter (my 5th cousin?), Cecilia, on the phone to plan my visit to their house in Milan.  Even though I had to use the help of my teacher, I was still proud to say some of it in Italian. 

However, being on the border does have its downsides.  I was hit with a hard wave of homesickness in week 2, which came with the realization that, though I was in the country of my family, I wasn't experiencing it with my family.  Being in Italy connected me to an entire different sense of family that I mostly hadn't gotten yet, my family's cultural roots, but it separated me from the people that made up my family at home.  These faces were the reason I was here, the present-day family I enjoy in America.  And the communication isn't that great.  I can get in a Skype or a phone call about once or twice a week, and that's not enough to describe the moments in which I feel connected to them throughout the week.  But they will be here soon enough to vacation with me, and I am meeting my distant relatives in Milan in October.  The border has been hard for me in this area, but I am changing.  My identity grounded in family will remain the same, but the ways I can find family even when far away are developing.  I am finding family not around me, but now within.       

In the same way, border crossing has yielded surprises for me in the religious arena as well.  As a Catholic-but-not-so-excited-to-be-one, I was not expecting this trip to be specifically a religious one, or even have many connections to my faith.  I place myself in the contemporary Catholic zone: those just waiting for Vatican III:  allowing women to be priests, priests to marry, and birth control to be used.  I love the changes of Vatican II that make the mass more contemporary and accessible to believers, and I love even more the papal encyclicals on the church's new role in the modern world.

So the idea of visiting the burial sites of saints and popes wasn't too exciting to me before the trip.  I never have asked a saint to pray for me before, or been a fan of the Catholic history I was forced to learn for 12 years.  However, something happened to me during this trip, after I had crossed the border into the country that contains the most Catholic history.  It began with the Basilica di San Francesco, as I've written about before.  I felt such a strong connection to the life of St. Francis and to his contribution to the faith as I prayed in this Basilica.

Similarly, at the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, I saw hundreds of believers crying during mass.  They felt so lucky to be there, and I shared their emotions.  I usually don't get to see that kind of emotion at the typical Catholic mass.  In this basilica, I felt so connected to the people who also practiced my faith and who believed what I believed and felt the emotions I was feeling.  This same connection to emotions was present at the Santa Scala, which are the stairs Jesus is said to have walked on his way to hear the verdict from Pontius Pilate.  As I ascended the stairs on my knees per tradition, I observed the devotion to the rosary that many believers were praying.  Just because the rosary isn't my favorite way to pray, it does not mean that some believers do not find it a powerful way to pray.  In this way, crossing the border helped me to see the emotional side of the Catholic faith and also break down some of my intolerance regarding old-school Catholicism.

At San Giovanni in Laterano, I saw many statues of various saints.  When I gazed up at Peter, holding the "keys" to the church, I felt close to him.  How strange that he had walked in this same place that I did, the man who had given so much of his life to this faith that I now enjoy freely.  I remember thinking, "I never realized how large the Catholic family was."  I truly began to feel connected to these saints that I kept hearing about but never knew.  When I looked at the table that Saint Peter is reputed to have used (in San Giovanni in Laterano), I wrote in my journal, "This is even more of a religious pilgrimage than I had thought." 

I even began feeling close to Mary, which is new to me.  As I gazed upon the various depictions of her in the Uffizi Museum, San Giovanni, and other churches, I came to realize her powerful sacrifice for her faith and how much that she is revered for such sacrifice.  I asked her sincerely for the first time if I could ever sacrifice as much as she did.  I don't know what her response might have been; I only know that I felt a strong sense of peace.  I can't wait for the Vatican museum this week!               

Rockin the Border

While Kapuscinski and Russell discuss far different subjects in their writings, both are border crossers. What borders do you think each writer has crossed? Do those borders matter to you? Why or why not?


After having read about these two border crossers and their journeys, and experiencing a foreign country myself for the first time, I think that travelers in some way always remain on the border. Torn between the familiar and the new, a traveler remains somewhere in the in-between. Kapuscinski was shocked by the natives’ reaction to the ‘sacred river,’ and Russell is torn by the poverty of war-ravaged Bosnia. Both have to cross a language border that perplexes them. I have experienced both an emotional border and a language border in Italy, and these borders do matter to me.

In the “Introduction” to Amazonian, the “psychological journey” of the travel writer is emphasized in new travel writing (ix). As border crossers, these writers delve into their feelings before, during, and after their travels. Kapuscinski recalls his intense desire to have a border-crossing experience and then come promptly back. He wondered how ‘different’ would feel. Since the Suez war prevented him from returning, he had to stay and truly explore these differences in India. He is surprised by the natives’ treatment of the river- families, animals, and starving beggars who can barely walk all make the pilgrimage towards the Ganges. To him, the purification ritual in the water “looks like torture,” but he thinks that the grandmother may even be enjoying this half-drowning (“Crossing the Border” 25). Russell also battles with her feelings, and that is a border that she also must cross in Bosnia. She longs to give Vahid money, but he needs the money she has and he is too proud to accept it anyways. Russell describes feelings that may be similar to other border crossers: she is not able to fix the ills of the new country. She writes, “leaving him, I try to steady myself against the emptiness I feel” (Mirror Images 147).

Another perplexing feeling is the inability to communicate through language. Kapuscinski knew that “every distinct geographic universe has its own mystery and that one can decipher it only by learning the local language” (“Crossing the Border” 22). He notes that one only remembers what one can name. Russell encounters this same barrier that those who have crossed the border encounter. When spoken to, Russell can only nod and smile. She says that their languages get in the way. She wants to tell the woman that Sarajevo is her cosmopolitan ideal; this border crosser wants to move into the realm of Bosnia, but language keeps her in the border area whether she likes it or not.

These borders matter to me because they are things that I am dealing with in Italy as well. The emotional border can be the presence of so many beggars in Rome that you must ignore. Half of them are swindlers, and will pretend to be poor to get your money or to even steal your purse while you are off guard. It breaks my heart to see the poor begging at the side of the road, while everyone walks by and ignores them, off to buy another Gucci something. But it can’t be helped, and that’s a border I’ve had to get used to. I also had to get used to the language. Though I am learning Italian, and I enjoy practicing it, I am unable to say and understand many things. Getting lost is especially frustrating if you can only ask for and listen to directions in Italian. However, though I remain on the border, I still feel happy about that position. I can immerse myself in the culture, while having a constant internal tie to my real home. I’d imagine that many travel writers find that living on the border is a comfortable place.