What Matters?

 ...actually I stopped doing that [blogging] a while ago. It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everyone out there in the cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit. And when I multiplied that sad feeling by all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furiously writing and posting to their lonely little pages that nobody has time to read because they're all so busy writing and posting, it kind of broke my heart.

--A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki

Well, don't despair, Ruth, or rather Nao, the character Ms. Ozeki has created in her novel, I know how you feel. Or do despair, that's probably better. It's the least we can do to honor such pitiful anonymity. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity. 

Well yeah, but what the hell, a hobby is a hobby, right?

And so I continue to pluck away on this blog every now and then, though not so often as I once did. And why is that? Well, for one thing, it is painful. No, not the old blood on the page sort of pain, that old cliche, but actual honest to God pain in my neck and shoulder whenever I sit at a keyboard and raise my arms and hands to the keyboard. Like someone's sticking a knife in my neck and then slashing it down to my shoulder blade. That kind of pain.

There's that, and then there's the question, Why? Or its cousin, Who cares? As Nao says. Not that I really care whether anyone cares or is interested. I have always just written as a way of talking to myself. But now even I don't care what I'm thinking, enough to write it down, anyway. 

That said, there is still a bit of drivel left in me. 

I like a particular beach here. I like it better than the others, and I have only recently come to know it exists. I like it because the walkway along the ocean front is amply shaded by tall trees with leaves bigger than my hands. All along the path, the ocean is there, rolled out flat and blue except for the several lines of white wrinkles, and there is nothing in the way, no clunky restaurants, no armies of obscuring umbrellas, no ramshackle warungs. There are just three little beachfront cafes, unobtrusive, unassuming. Humble things. A beach ought to be humble. Grand and humble. 

I like the third cafe the best and sometimes in the evening I stop there for a coffee which is brought out in a handle-less pottery cup, burning to the fingertips at its best. The chairs are comfortable if you get the right ones and there are not many people there and just a few still wading waist deep in the rocking water, brown chests and backs gone golden as the sun takes one last look at the far horizon from which it had risen that day.

I sit and sip and read the book I have brought and suddenly a dog shows up at my knees. A black dog with a white tipped tail and white tipped paws. Hi! he says, and proceeds to climb up in my lap, overjoyed to see me. He's a fairly big dog, but he ain't heavy, as the old song goes (who was that by again?). Eventually, it occurs to the dog that I would like to finish my coffee (or did I actually say that?), and so he climbs down and digs himself a bed in the sand by the side of my table and curls up for a nap. 

I have never seen this dog before in my life. I suspect I will never see him again. 

It's the moment that matters.