WHERE ARE THE READERS?

I am about as sentimental as they come. The older I get, the more easily I shudder and sob – especially in movies, or at concerts where my insides coalesce into goo when I listen to “L’Apres midi D’un Faun.”

So I was sitting watching the highly entertaining, superbly acted, beautifully scripted (thanks to Nora Ephron who can squeeze tears out of a turnip) Julie and Julia.

Julie is a failed writer who works on the phones answering grief-stricken callers following the 9/11 disaster. She decides to write a blog about cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child’s “The Art of French Cooking.”

This is not a critique of the film. I leave that to others. I was, for me, and perhaps for thousands of other bloggers, an event to share. She (Julie) wonders if anyone is reading her blog. She goes to it daily, proceeding with her thoughts as she cooked the Julia Child’s recipes. Perhaps that’s what I’m missing: daily.

I find myself forgetting that I have things to say that are being left unsaid. I will never find myself a faithful reader group unless I start to arrive daily with my thoughts. From time to time I appear on Mark’s Musings, where he never lets a day go by without two items to provoke response. Julie did it too. She did not let a day go by. She built an audience.

I used to have one because I showed up every day and yelled or teased, or grated, or laughed – at the world around us. People phoned.

Now they don’t even bother to write.