On the plane today (11/22) I bore witness to a number of little optical miracles. The sun coming through the windows at weird angles doodled halos, streaks, bubbles, arcs, eyelashes. Speaking of: a really special shadow cast by a man’s rhythmically blinking lashes from the side, like a strange sea creature, filter-feeder, a jungle plant with plant-muscles, snatching flotsam from the water or snapping bugs out of the humid air. And gently quaking spots, perfect circles, more perfect than anything I can touch with my fingertips. I wondered if these fleeting little things were not real. Why not? Things linger or flee, no matter what they are, and maybe for us the things we can grab and squeeze and throw seem to stick around a lot longer than the little mirage-comets blinking in and out of focus in the bright sun, but, I mean, if we go to the front of time and stretch our mind allllllll the way out to the very back of it, then what. Maybe there’s no world out there at all really. Or at least not one with a capital-W. Maybe my eyeballs are little green and white and black worlds. Probably not.