Proclomation

Cat in the Hat refuses to leave the house since I've gotten back.  She will look out the window, but she runs away as fast as she can if I open the door.  Tonight, I came home and found her in the exact same place that she was when I left in the morning.  I swear she had not moved.  When I sit down, she will not leave me alone.  What can I do?  This is an appeal, not a rhetorical question.  If I don't pet her, she sits and stares at me for fifteen minutes at a time without moving.  It is unnerving.

I know I am becoming unhinged here at the cafe.  And I think I know why.  In part, it is that I have done the work and now there is about to be a modicum of success.  The number of people coming to this site grows steadily, and I am uncertain why.  I mean, I don't hear from most of the visitors and am not sure why they come.  I know that I get a lot of visitors just now who Google "Vintage Christmas Cards."  Hundreds.  This site ranks high on a lot of crazy Google searches.  So I know why those people come (I would like to know how many of them come back).  But as the number of returning visitors grows, I have wondered what particularly attracts them.  They are not people I know, not friends nor acquaintances.  Half of them come from overseas.  Do they read the blog or only look at the images?  I want to keep them, of course, as all of us want to be validated for what we do.  But this has happened before, and when the numbers drop off, it can be demoralizing.  So I've been thinking more about what I need to do to keep them than about what I want to do and why.  And of course. . . that way lies madness.

Last night, I finally got to watch the American Masters three hour, two part special on Woody Allen.  For me, it was fantastic.  I'd forgotten how many movies he has made, though I have seen them all.  I'd forgotten how many Oscars his films have won.  What I hadn't forgotten is how few people watch them.  Here is a fellow who makes a movie a year without regard for mass popularity.  He makes them, he says, for the few people who enjoy them.  And until "Paris," that had been a very few.

In the interviews, he reaffirms over and over that he make films about the meaninglessness of life so that he doesn't have to think about it.  He stays busy creating so that he doesn't have to think.  He doesn't care, he says, what people say about his films or about his life.  He was surprised that he was famous enough that anyone cared about his personal life he said in reference to his break up with Mia Farrow and marriage to Sun-Yi.  Of course, this seems obtuse enough.  I mean, perhaps he wasn't, but Mia Farrow was.

But, he says, he got to do everything he ever wanted.  He's performed onstage, acted in films, published books, and made movies.  And in the end, he says, he thinks that nothing he has done is much good.

I remembered why I have always been affected by Woody Allen.

And I remembered why I began to write this blog and to make pictures.  It was so that I didn't have to sit and think about the horror that we call life.  I wanted to work at what I had to say about it rather than sitting and brooding about it all the time.  It was simple.  I was here.  This is what I saw.  Here is what I felt.  In the end, it doesn't matter.  Here it is.

So I am going to get back to that.  I don't care if people like what I do, if what I do is right or wrong, good or bad.  I'm going to make things that feel good to me, that I like.  And not worry when I change my mind later on.

Some of you will stick with me.  A few.  As for growing this from a few dozen to a few thousand--who cares.  Have you ever gone to the mall?

O.K.  I've decided to go watch the American Masters piece again.  It is simple, droll. . . and magical.