My friend Amanda recommended Eat, Pray, Love a few months ago over coffee, and though I didn’t fully grasp the pitch/concept/plot I filed the suggestion away on my to-read list. Much like my interludes with The Celestine Prophecy and On the Road; I resisted the book at first, based on…nothing. Vapor. Air. Absence of knowledge.

Weeks later during a binge visit to a local book store in preparation for the beach, I bought the book up and threw it in the stack along with What Jesus Meant , The Company of a Courtesan and a few others.

In the stack is where it sat until last week, when it was paroled for good behavior and I packed it up for the road trip to visit The Mc’s mom. Now - much like the others that sunk my mental Battleship - I know.

I opened the pages and found a familiar voice: one of a thirty four year old divorcee who found herself on the bathroom floor one night crying at the realization she didn’t want to be married anymore. That she didn’t want babies. That her dream looked considerably different from everyone else’s and that it was going to hurt to chase it. Then she went back to bed.

The font is tiny and the margins are slim and though that packs plenty of words on every page I’m still almost resentful the reading is so easy and enjoyable because the pages fly by and I want her adventure to last like those thirty minutes you find in between seven minute snooze button explosions. I tried to slow my progress with a margarita or three, and it worked. I made it through Italy (which I’m now yearning to visit) and stopped at India because a) it got too heady for someone a wee tipsy and b) drinking and philosophy don’t mix c) I felt sacrilegious.

A conversation documented in the book suggests every city has one word that describes it: for Rome the word is Sex, and for New York the word is Ambition.

So here I am the morning after and the book is still hanging with me like a sunburn and at the risk of starting a damn book club with you, I have to ask this: what word describes your city and what word describes you?

If you ask me (which I just did) I would say the word for Atlanta (the whole, mind you, not pockets of community) could be Lost and me? I’m still thinking about what my word is. Maybe Restless.

What’s yours?