Gossip

I was at a baby shower this weekend for one of my younger friends - she is maybe 21 years old. All of her friends were there, this gaggle of young, perfectly coiffed mothers with beautiful basketball-round pregnant bellies or children already in tow. They fascinated me, these young mothers. My cousin (also hot and young, but not pregnant, and never will be for fear of ruining her hot, perfect body) was also in attendance, and so I I tried to pump her for any information about the gaggle of mothers. But my cousin, she isn't one for gossip, so my curiosity was left unsatiated.

I love gossip. It doesn't even have to be juicy gossip. Any plain old gossip suits me fine. I try not to gossip to judge, to tsk-tsk a decision someone has made or to cast judgment on their life. Instead, I try to gossip simply to know, in the most benign way possible. (But I make no claims to absolute success in this department - I am human, after all.) I just like to know about people - what they do, how they live, what kind of choices they make. Everyone I encounter becomes a character in my head, and I add all the little bits I gather here and there until I have fleshed out the person, or character, in my mind.

In my favorite book on writing ever, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes: "If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days - listening, observing, storing things way, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)"

I remember hearing somewhere (The Hours DVD special features, perhaps?) that Virginia Woolf would incessantly quiz people about their day, about the particular, routine details of their life. She might ask things like what had roused the person from sleep that morning? And if it was the sun, what was the quality of that sunlight - crisp, golden, cold, foggy, what? And what did they eat for breakfast? In knowing these mundane details, she could come to know the person, or maybe gain some insight into a character she was working on.

I think this is truly why I love to blog, and why I love to read other people's blogs. It fills the need in me to simply know how other people lead their lives.