Me/Not Me

The veil of secrecy has some teeny tiny rips and tears here and there, I think.  Some word of my blog has seeped out.  I have had a spike in visitors, but it is not from a single place.  It is not that someone has mentioned it on a more important site.  Perhaps it is all my fooling around with titles.  "Jessica Pare Nude" searches continue to bring visitors from all over the world.  I wasn't aware that "Mad Men" was so popular in India.  For every hundred visitors, I guess, there is someone with good taste and a sense of humor who is in possession of a certain kind of intellect.  Surely one or two of them get hooked.  Maybe the ratio is not that high, but there is a ratio.  Of that I'm certain.

So every day, my paranoia grows.  It is fun showing off for a small group of people on a street in another city where no one knows you, but it is another thing when the crowd begins to grow.  And it would be more than daunting to be asked to perform on a bigger stage where others have performed before with your name upon the marquee.  We've all done it, stood on a street listening to a group of college students performing as a string quartet in a perfect state of euphoria proclaiming them the best thing we've ever heard in our lives, then the next night complained about the musical show we just payed money to see.  You know what I mean.  Bruce Springsteen is a hack compared to that really authentic kid I heard one late afternoon on the streets of Park City during the Sundance Festival.  Etc.

I photographed a woman yesterday whom I had photographed many months ago.  As we were talking, she said, "Yea, I saw that on your blog."

Yikes!  It was weird to think about.  I wanted to begin explaining.  "You know, that's not me.  I mean I write it, but it's a character. . . a goofy one. . . I never proof or edit, it is just what I do. . . oh shit fuck goddamn. . . just lunatic ravings off the top of my head. . . . "

And if I were to say such a thing, of course, I would want to hear, "Yes, but what a head!  Sometimes you are a clever boy."

But there is the other response, too, the one of which I am not so much enamored.

I think of the randomness with which some people come here, sometimes once a week, or they forget about it and a month or months go past.  It is an oddity to them, I guess, some temporary fascination.  Take Gorgeous, for instance.  I'll see her once in a blue moon.  She'll send me an email every several months and want to know what I'm doing.  She'll come to town and maybe we'll go out for a drink.  And she will talk about the blog, and I will mention something and she hasn't a clue.  She doesn't "read" it.  She comes by once in a while in the same random manner that she emails me.  What can she possibly think?

Et. al.

I am no Montaigne, though I try somewhat to practice the form.  These are what Huxley called "the personal or autobiographical essay" in a sense, an attempt in fragments to reveal, to look at the world known to one eye and yell "over here."  But whose eye?  I want to say it is "a character's eye," but that is not possible, is it.  We cannot make up character as we make up events.  All twisting and turning comes from within.

I learned early in life that if you wanted to be liked, say little.  And the little you say should be, "Yes.  You are right.  I agree."

Just ask Q.  He'll tell you a thing or two about that (story here).