Kia and Julie

I saw Julie and Julia shortly after it came out. My love for Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci coupled with my appreciation for the way that two perfect strangers can become so closely connected through a common factor resulted in a wonderful two hours of laughing over the nonsensical charm of the Great Julia Childs and the girlish vulnerability of the sweet Julie Powell. Somehow through all that laughter, I didn't think to react in so many other ways. I missed the desperation that led Julie to start a blog in the first place. In the year since it came out, I lost sight of the weight having that blog bore on her life. Most incredibly, I forgot that she was a writer.

I call myself a writer. I won't say I deserve the title. I stopped truly earning it around seventh grade and since eighth grade I've been actively pursuing other fields; fields in which I want to have a career and make a name for myself. Still, when I'm in the same room as a person who writes and they ask how many writers are present, I can't help but raise my hand. Poorly disciplined though I am, it's as much a part of me as my voice or my hair, if not a bit less obnoxious. Still, it's there and I can no more deny it than I can stop breathing. Even if I tried for awhile, my body would eventually resume on instinct the shaping and grouping of words that so rarely make it to a page. Likewise, the thing that makes me a writer, whatever you want to call it, dictates that I feel a certain kinship with all other writers, far away as they are, the same way one is happy to meet a distant cousin simply by merit of the few alleles they have in common. Julie Powell is a writer. Julie and I are kindred. And all of a sudden those two hours are so much more than a funny movie.

There is so much of me in Julie that I didn't see before: we're both struggling through the mundane while still hoping to pull ourselves out completely at some point. We both started off with great potential that fizzled out into dealing with real life. We both have a problem finishing things that we've started. I get into this movie now and marvel at finding a kindred spirit; a bosom friend. We both try...and wish that the fact that we tried matters more. But of course as soon as I see myself in her I take a step back and see someone greater. She started her blog with a purpose, determined to accomplish a specific goal. I started my blog at the end of a long day because I was happy and thought that things to write (things that people would care to read) about would suddenly fall into my lap after something in my life changed based on the choices of someone else and the only intention I had when I started was to flex the writing muscle again. She succeeded and built on her success. I, if only because of the nature of my endeavor, will probably never succeed. She reached out to thousands of people describing how she broke down and fell and picked herself up again. It takes me weeks to get my sister to read through an entire post. We're kindred. We're alike enough to bind us together and we're different enough to make us not want to eat each other if we're trapped in a room together. We're far enough away that one of us can be significant to the other who is perfectly free to go on about her life. So it was with Julia Childs. But being the realist that I am, I have to wonder how much of this kinship is real and how much is imaginary. How much of the bond that's formed between me and my new friend Julie is based on our never meeting each other? How much of this admiration I feel is harvested by movie magic? If I tried to speak to my new friend, would I feel as comforted by the struggle of a woman sitting across from me as I do by the story of a woman trapped in a big box? I'm sure she never doubted the reality of her Julia Childs when Powell first started her journey. She didn't worry that the picture in her head might be blurry or the presence in her kitchen may be more fict than fact. She didn't think to worry about those things when she set out. And when it finally occurred to her, it didn't matter. The picture she had was beautiful. The presence she encountered was comforting. When she found herself in the kitchen, at her cubicle, on the computer, her Julia helped her through. When she was floating and found herself accomplishing nothing, this Julia gave her something to accomplish. This perfect stranger saved a woman, a writer, from fading into banality. She fashioned her rescuer out of nothing but an image on a screen and words on a page. Now I have an image of my own and she is beautiful. I can feel wide blue eyes staring through my screen, an audience of one, and they comfort me. I am as grateful for the release I received from watching her as she was for every recipe. My new friend makes me a little bit more eager to savor the delights that life has to offer. Bon apetite.