Write Me Well

I am catching up on my DVR, and watching last week's SNL with Taylor Lautner. I don't think I have ever used this phrase before, but he's actually kind of bad-ass. He did this whole fighting werewolf routine, and it was impressive. I actually read two and a half Twilight Books, and I'm rereading the second one. Several people I like enjoyed them, and so I'm reading these books to know them better. (And because they are entertaining.) Do you ever do that? Read books to know people better? It's one of my favorite ways to know people. In fact, I can tell the people in my life who know me best by the ones who have read Anne of Green Gables and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Harry Potter and Little Women. And, as a matter of fact, this blog. Hmm. I didn't see that coming. I think I need to be better at that - giving that back, I mean. I think that I need to read my friends. I don't even know if that makes sense. But a neat experiment might be to ask people to send to me their top three formative books...the ones that are imprinted and defining. I will try to read them, and reflect back what I find. That's would be a neat way to do a character study. If that's already been done by someone more clever, feel free to let me know. I'll blame it on the second Fauxmopolitan.

And while we're on the subject, I'm beginning to know that people are reading this. It's kind of exciting, and a little bit scary, and I've found that I'm deciding to divulge more, to lean more toward an open journal than a blog. I'm not sure how much further I'd be willing to go on that path than where I am now, but it's an interesting line to be walking.

Kind of an amazing world, isn't it? Where you can get a glimpse into someone's real mind with the click of a button?

My favorite line in Shakespeare in Love is when Viola says, in her farewell to Will, "Write me well." What a delicious phrase. I don't know if I will ever be able to write someone else well - my mother or my grandmother or my great-grandmother, all with the most fabulous stories to tell. I have fabulous stories - their stories - to tell, and I hope beyond hope that I will figure out how and when to tell them. In the meantime, though, I am trying to write me well...me, my flawed, dramatic, passionate, seeking, gratingly irritating self.

It's a start. It's something. It's a way to connect to people. Maybe not ever in the life-altering, inspirational way, but in the way of knowing that somewhere, there is someone like you. Someone who might not think the same way, but at least thinks, same as you. I have a favorite blog written my a brilliant woman, a mom of three, who I have met in person, and who definitely tells the truth of who she is, and how she wants to be in the world. She's an awesome mother. Flawed and passionate and sarcastic and just so freaking honored to be mothering daughters. I admire her so much, and while she might know who I am, it's merely in passing. And yet I feel like I sit down for coffee with her weekly, hear the stories of her magnificent daughters and her energetic pursuit of happiness, and connect. And it's a click away.

I have this ridiculous secret 3-in-the-morning fear of 2012. I'm actually angry that they made that movie and showed the trailer with the Harry Potter movie. I know it's totally unreasonable, and yet I sort of believe it in the way I believe in the DaVinci Code or National Treasure. (What? Could totally happen, dude.) Anyway, I have been told by smart people that to call it the end of the world might just be a form of ascending. We are shedding old ways and old patterns of believing and making room for new, more open-minded ways of relating to each other. It could be like a Renaissance.

Okay. Okay fine. That was DEFINITELY the second Fauxmopolitan talking. Peace out, friends. Merry merry ho ho ho.