Michele asks:
How do you feel about me (Michele Princess of Everything) having a blog you can't read, but I'm allowed to read yours?
The short answer is that I've accepted it.
The longer answer is that I understand Michele's requirement serves Michele's interest in that it proves that I can be trustworthy as well as trusting, and that, in turn, serves my interest. Obviously, it's on the verge of being a flagrant abuse of my trust, but I reason that if there's anything there that I should know about, then I will find out about it one way or another. If I don't find out about it, that's on Michele's conscience, not mine.
It is easy for me to feel her having a blog that I can't read is a bit humiliating, disempowering, even emasculating. However, that's a meaning I assign out of my own general fears, not because she has ever shown me that she prefers a relationship like that with me. I can just about completely correlate the worst times in our relationship, for both of us, were the times when I felt the most picked on and helpless; the best times where when I was at my best. In fact, several times I remember deliberately pulling myself out of my helplessness feelings (something I've learned how to do when I choose), and reasserting myself, and then the relationship would take a sudden turn for the better. (This seems only natural.) So I reject that the prohibition from reading her blog is in any way symbolic of power or authority.
I'd also have to add that I would never want to do the same, in reverse. I do have thoughts I don't want to share with Michele. But I don't want to share them with anybody online. My relationships must be personal. Otherwise, it’s not a relationship to me; it’s a sort of reverse voyeurism: living vicariously through the person that I imagine others see me as. Not exactly narcissism, but not far away from it, either. And before you put the word into my mouth that I said this was a bad thing (Michele!), note that I did
no such thing. Most people practice living vicariously through other people, especially using our own imagination of ourselves (only a better version). We do something like it when we read books or watch movies. This is not that much different. But I do the vicarious thing, the reverse voyeurism thing, when I want to be entertained. It can amuse me to believe that I’m actually writing something that someone else will find worth reading.
So what gives with
this entry in
this blog? Ignorant hypocrisy? Unintentional self-satire? Or worse, intentional exhibitionism thinly veiled as a self-satire? No. I write now for two reasons. First, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier entry, Michele has asked me to share some of my thoughts, because she has found them interesting and perhaps helpful. Second, I’ve come to believe that I tend to become a pompous ass when left to my own devices. Writing my thoughts out and sharing them can be an excellent way to pop my big head when I stop to think about how full of myself I must sound to the people who actually know me. This is not to say that I think all bloggers are guilty of either over- or under-self-inflation. I don’t try to answer that; I only know myself, and even then, not very well.
Michele has shared some of her entries with me. I’m curious to read the rest, and I hope to, some day. I’m impressed with the overall experience of reading her stories. She seems to have a talent for balancing the pace, mood, detail, and rhythm of the story. For those who would pick her writing style apart, I would counter with this. Mario Puzo, the author of the novel
The Godfather, and two-time Academy Award
® winner for the screenplays for
The Godfather and
The Godfather: Part II, told Terry Gross in an interview on
Fresh Air® (re-broadcast on
December 10, 2004), that he had no training whatsoever for writing a screenplay when he wrote the screenplays for which he won the awards.
“After I had won two Academy Awards, you know, from the first two Godfathers, I went out and bought a book on screenwriting, ‘cause I figured I’d better learn, you know, what it’s about, because, it was sorta off the top of my head. And, uh, the first, the first chapter of the book said, ‘Study The Godfather I; it’s the model of a screenplay.’ So, so, I was stuck with the book.”
Well, Michele’s writing just works for me. But I get plenty of her stories, told in real time, by the author herself, so I don’t think I’m missing anything crucial. But one of these days, she’s going to get herself really famous and published, and then her blog will be turned in a book, and it will be a best-seller, and then I’ll get the audio version to listen to in my car, and then I will get it all anyway.
Love ya, sweetie. Thanks for letting me spend a lot of time making these entries that only you will read.
