I am chuffed to be in a sentence with Meryl Streep, whom I find to be pretty awesome. Doesn’t surprise me that she still knows the price of eggs. And I think she is right about understanding things through direct experience.

Having said all that, to be really honest (hope I don’t lose all that goodwill here…), if I could afford someone to go get the groceries every once in a while, I would do it. But not always. Because I value the brief but consistent connections I have with people in these ways. The guy at the dry cleaning store knows who I am because I’ve been going there so long, and I like that. I like being real to people with whom I am involved in a service transaction (regardless of which of us is providing the service).

And that right there is the reason I’ll never be truly sophisticated. Because on some level it seems to me to involve a level of mutual unreality that I can engage in when necessary, but I just can’t sustain. If I need to not be real to others for a while, or if I need them to not be real to me, I’d just rather go home and read a book. Or maybe watch a Meryl Streep movie (grin).