Everything Is Going to Be Great

I was looking for a rather spiritual travel book (something in the lines of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love) while I was in Seattle when I chanced upon Rachel Shukert's Everything Is Going to Be Great. More than anything, it was the title that caught my eye because I was (and still am) at a time in my life where self-doubt and uncertainty always reigns. Everything Is Going to Be Great, of course it will. What a great selling point for a book about a girl's misadventures and misfortunes as a broke, New York singleton trekking in the archetypal where-to-go-to-have-fun places in Europe. Everything Is Going to Be Great, indeed. It was not advertised, though (by the wonderful geniuses who coined this "saying"), that it has to go downhill to hell and back before one can reach the end.

I don't know what to feel about this book, I guess it was okay. I was very entertained while reading it but not exactly inspired (this may be attributed to my slighty cruel enjoyment of Schadenfreude). The book is technically a memoir about a girl and her travels in Europe, which is not exactly the whole of Europe (All girls can hope!), but an essential three-country sojourn from Vienna to Zurich to Amsterdam. It was supposed to be a grand tour of European cities but I felt that the book zeroed in on Mary Jane Land (Amsterdam!) and simply flew by Vienna and Zurich. I vaguely remember Zurich in the book, and Vienna was just a blur of wine, sausages and a dalliance with an old Italian man. I would love to learn more about Zurich but whatever it is the author left out of the places she should have said a lot about, she more than made up for in terms of humor and the "God, I wish I had this girl's balls" vibe that went on in my head while reading this book. I guess what I feel about this book may be summed up by what I feel about Shukert's entire "tour": Fleeting, but sharp, smart and incredibly solid.

It is definitely a light read but in between the sex, alcohol and truly complicated (sometimes even pathological) relations, I feel that the author has tried to enter a few lessons here and there. In the end, she was kind enough to insert a few sentiments that a lost cause can truly pick up on. It was irrelevant (because we're clearly after the fun and the misfortune) but necessary, for what good is a travel book without the shiteous experience, the sex and the ultimate learnings in the end? The most important lesson I got from this book (aside from the nagging thought that in order to live my young life to its fullest, I have to experience Europe in its entirety--smoke and crystals, filth and glamour) is this: If you think you need to get away to find the what's missing in your life, go ahead. Later on, when you've come back, you'll realize that if you can't find something in your own backyard, then you probably don't need it. At all.

Lonely Hearts, this one's for us.

HOW TO BE ALONE

by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.

There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.

And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community. And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.

And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. Take silence and respect it. If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. If your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

For the brave ones, of The Lonely Hearts Club. ♥

Some Sondre Lerche

I was going to post a subdued My Hands Are Shaking but it's a smile friday in my life so here, have fun with If Only. Part of this music video's appeal is its obscurity, it reminds me of the Science of Sleep, one of my favorite movies. Enjoy! :)