The sand dunes crouched along the back of the beach like tired hounds, resting; and the waves gently practiced at striking, and hissed a little. The night was cold and aloof, and its warm life was withdrawn, so that it was full of bitter warnings to man that he is alone in the world, and alone among his fellows; that he has no comfort owing him from anywhere.

From “Tortilla Flat,” by John Steinbeck

In this elegant literary snippet, John Steinbeck stresses man’s loneliness in this immense universe full of stars, loneliness that persists even in the presence of our fellow man. We are responsible for our own happiness, no one else is.  To stress this forlornness, Steinbeck’s poetic prose instills life into inanimate matter: “The night was cold and aloof … was full of bitter warnings to man …”

This man’s loneliness extends to my blog. I have only a few visitors, but this does not frustrate me. It makes me happy to read and reread those lovely paragraphs written by giants of the English literature and launch them into the immense universe of the web like infrared rays that bounce nowhere.  The mere idea amazes me.   It reminds me of the music that NASA sent into deep space in search of alien civilizations.