Happy 10,000th

Frequent site visits pay off for lucky East Coast resident.

This morning, at 9:51:23 a.m., someone on the eastern seaboard of the United States of America used Internet Explorer 6.0, running on a Windows XP system, to go online through Charter.com and logged on to the Water Dissolves Water blog site.

That person, whomever he or she may be, became the 10,000th visitor to the blog.

Congratulations. As a reward, I will stop posting Jimi Hendrix pictures.

That visitor did not reach the site through a web search for Ray Charles, Norah Jones, Jimi Hendrix or Courtney Love pictures - or through any other image or word search - but logged on to the site directly. He or she most likely had the site bookmarked.

I say "most likely" because the same person also visited the site at 11:08:23 p.m. last night and 11:26:32 a.m. yesterday morning; 6:11:42 and 9:24:44 p.m. Friday night; 6:20:30 and 9:37:06 p.m. Thursday night; and 5:02:57 and 10:09:25 p.m. Wednesday night.

Persistence pays.

At the time of the 10,000th visit, I was in sesshin, sitting through the last of the morning zazen periods before the 10 o'clock dharma talk. I was probably thinking more about the pain in my knees than about who might or might not be logging onto the web site just then.

The dharma talk itself was an outstanding discussion on vijnana (consciousness) and Kyogen's Man in a Tree koan by my friend and teacher, Arthur. Afterwards, L. and I had lunch at Alon's and saw the Romare Bearden exhibit at the High Museum, during all of which we may or may not have broken up again, but at this point, I can no longer keep track (nor am I sure any more of whether or not we were "together" to have broken up in the first place). No hard feelings, no tears or remorse, just an acceptance of what is.

I don't blame the 10,000th visitor for any of this.