I once tried to write a short story. It was a three-line dialog about a trip a long time ago that these two dudes went on. It went something like this:

“19 miles to midnight.”
“What?”
“Ok, 18.8.”

The only problem was it was too long. I needed a short story, and fast. Two lines would have been nice, but I couldn’t compact the interaction into such a small dialectal space. Surely I had to reverse my thinking and add a line. So I tried it with four:

“How much further, Jim?”
“19 miles.”
“19 miles to midnight…”
“Well, 18.8 to be exact.”

Unfortunately, it lacked a convincing conclusion. How would the story end? Would the passenger fall silent in satisfaction at the respecified 18.8-mile reply, or would there take place some kind of conflict at that? A discreet critique of Jim’s need to speak accurately perhaps? It certainly needed something — either a resolution or dissolution; at this point it was exceedingly flat. But nothing was coming to me…

At some point about a week later on it struck me to limit myself to three lines, as I had originally intended to do, but to sneak in a whole new character as well. So then I had Jim, the driver, the curious cat (to be known as ‘Frederíco’), and another whom I called ‘the old author’, a retired novelist. It went a little something like this:

“Man, I bet it would take you a month if you were gonna hike it.”, said Frederíco, trying with false appreciation to mask what was really impatience.
Jim gave a flat driver’s-grunt and laid out his ETA: “19 more miles to midnight, folks.”
The old author gazed out at the dim rolling dunes and chimed in to keep everyone aware of the stars that would spin and said: “Look!”

At least now the readers could grin knowing that: even outside of his books can the retired novelist write a new fact. And so, from the muse, it was this story I took.

JUST GHOSTS
To define Reality,
we must define Experience,
yet we must also define:
the Experiencer, Consciousness, Life, the Universe, etc.

WHAT IS REAL?
In one model of the Universe, 99.999% of all Matter is empty.
(Think hydrogen.)
A proton’s mass is mostly Energy.
(Look quantum.)
Normal Matter fills *only 5%* of the known space in the Universe.
Meaning we, the Experiencers,
can only directly grasp 5% of what exists materially.
And all of it is empty.
Because 9.999 = 10, just as 3.333 = 3.
(Think fractions, 1/3)

ABSURD LOGIC

Matter is both here and not here and we don’t know how or why.

WE ARE CHASING GHOSTS

Our Reality we generally define by what we sense:
Intuition, feelings, scent, touch, taste, sight, and sound.
A sense of Reality, Freedom, Truth, Justice,
Fashion, Compassion, Whatever.
All of these senses rely directly on the schema/ego of the Experiencer.
And we are able to process
only a small minority of what we are able to sense.
And some sense that they are free to believe anything,
because that is part of their schema.
A schema made up of everything processed during their life…

So, we come up with metaphors and diagrams and theories on
Life and Reality.
Taking, then, our constructs and descriptions and images
as reality.
We tell it to ourselves, and it becomes true.

ABSURD LOGIC

Once in a while, reality comes knocking on the door.
You say, [ Hold on a sec! I'll be right there.
Gotta finish your diagram! ]
Or maybe your diagram is true…
Maybe it was reality knocking on its own door.

THIS TOO IS A GHOST

Come hurricane and they ponder fear me a while.
With a nice breeze they love and bless me some time.
I comb the forest and I find resistance,
howl in the canyon but none take heed.
I’ve got sound but no voice to speak of my journey.
Grinding against the sky I wonder why.

Can’t blow away my rock-hard luck,
factor in the chills of guilt, monotony.
O, won’t you trade with me?
Because the lull just means I’m elsewhere,
and you claim all the stable ground.

Come hurricane and they ponder fear me a while.
With a nice breeze they love and bless me some time.

Many lifetimes have I spanned,
since rocks smashed to make the sand.
Dunes so far and wide, bringing music to the chimes.
Lighting urban skies I wonder why.

Guard all beasts from hot-headed brother,
life-seeds in my pocket, rebirth in my arms,
painting pictures with the clouds in the sky.
And the trees gladly dance to my rhythm.

Come hurricane and they ponder fear me a while.
With a nice breeze they love and bless me some time.

These words now exposed to your scrutiny balance on a knife’s fine edge.
Precarious, they lean between communiqué scraped pragmatically clean
and backward-fantastical-notional-schemes.

But few words can in fact
pass through the Filter of Lucidity twice
to crack open classical infamy tracks.

Amongst these terms tried-and-true
rare is it indeed to find intact
the lustrously gleaming expression the author
had originally intended to trap.

This writing
novelty fully infused
is not to be confused with any existentially tempting blues
any more than you on your quest to find
the needle house in this haywire stack-of-cards
you have been led to peruse.

In other words what you find here is yours to reuse,
an invitation not with haste to be refused.

And so lexical textures,
never before by human-literal-agency sought,
came here to thrive
uninhibited
alive.

Nigh one in ten thousand’s immortal,
but the words, self-actualizing,
populate at maximum hue
a satisfaction threshold that you never knew
until that time comes when jubilance decides to quit
for the sake of the emergent posterity’s mood.

This to make room for the blooming future’s comic wit.
The young need somewhere to sit and you a place in which to fit.
May you find it here.
And realize that your reach extends courageously
both past your grasp and whatever-it-is that you think that you lack.

So, let no one deprive you of this:
Your unequivocally-unlimited-and-ferocious capacity to bounce back,
the soul impossible to sack; to you best of luck on this destiny hack.

“Best of luck to you on this destiny hack.”
– 84adam