Two weeks

It has been two weeks now since I shut the gates. That is to say it has been two weeks since I ceased marketing my blog in any real way. As I knew it would, all the numbers of visitors, those one time visitors. those numbers I try not to look at, have dwindled down  to their core. I slowly adjust. I do not really miss any of those strangers, nor the weird feeling of their complacency and disorientation and disaffection. I like all the people here now, known or unknown, and I doubt there is a single one of you who has not been here before. I miss the numbers, but I don't know what the numbers were. Mostly I try and feel around for what I miss. It is vaporous and swirling with amorphous spirits. It is ghosts. It is all ghosts.

Today is Sunday, casual day at this blog, and so I talk about these things. But, right, I remember. You have been here before and so you know. You know that it is always pretty casual around here, in the way comedy is casual, or the weather in Minnesota, or just life itself. There are a lot of things you can't possibly begin to dress up for.

I wanted to say this: sometimes someone leaves a nice or funny comment, or a friend in a letter writes about talking about my blog with another friend, or someone says they really liked a post, or a co-worker asks me something about the man who almost died maybe, or shares a resonating reaction to Bob Dylan car commercials, and they all seem very, very, very nice to me.

Tonight I was reading about Piglet, who does a Very Grand Thing, and bravely rescues Owl and Pooh by going through Owl's mailbox. Pooh promises, and then writes and sings a song, in Piglet's honor. It's a lovely, sweet study in pride. I love how Piglet's nose turns pink with it. The pink spreads to his ears. And I love his work to appear casual when he feels no such thing.

I used to make a lot of self deprecating jokes about having millions of readers, or not millions of readers, or about adulation, but I just wanted to say to you, who are kind enough to read this, that there is something about just being here, that I am starting to get.