Sitting crosslegged on a half-empty pebble beach in Mošćenička Draga. Everyone around me is reading a book, and so am I. It is The Dhammapada (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1973). Somehow I know no-one else on this beach is reading this book.

Addendum I (September 21, 2003)

When I circulated this piece as an electronic postcard, a few dear friends hinted at my misplaced immodesty. How could I possibly know what the others were reading? And why should I care about the others’ books, instead of focusing on my own book? Indeed, indeed. In my piece I marveled not at my feeling of being alone on that beach to read and appreciate The Dhammapada, but at the knowledge that this was so. All the modesty required was thus invested in the word “somehow.”

Addendum II (September 22, 2003)

Will Hughes wrote in his last electronic-mail message, which I just received, that even if I were reading a bestseller, the chances of someone else reading it at the same time on the same beach must be pretty remote. True enough. The last sentence of my original piece would hold in terms of probability theory alone. And yet, this was not how I arrived at the last sentence. It just popped into my mind as a truth. It allowed for no probabilities, no matter how small. Somehow I knew, and that was that. Just as I wrote it down, marveling. Good try, Will!