A rather well-known personal blogger is in the midst of a family crisis, and is blogging about it.
On a practical level it's not surprising—that's what personal bloggers do. On a cynical level, the same applies.
But on a human level? I don't know. I don't know at all. The telling even of the most perfunctory personal information challenges me, though I never mind to hear it from others. And I'm not alone: witness the horrified awe surrounding reality TV.
It is a stunning good fortune that people ask so few questions, really, because that makes it easy for the most of us to avoid telling our secrets. I'm not sure about the volunteering of them, though. I question the dignity of it.
I question the dignity even of sharing the secrets of others. Example: of all the crazy people in my apartment building, the vampires and the window-breakers, the cartoon guy and Hawaiian-shirt man and the Caretaker, there's one I don't tell about.
Although I come and go and appear to pay no heed to the shifting tides of the blind at her window, the arrangement of chairs and the dying geranium on her balcony, I'm always watching and listening and waiting. With her, the familiar feeling: I don't know what's so wrong here, but I know it is.
Some secrets need keeping.
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