My right middle finger clicks the button to wake my mind. Greensboro (NC), 4:30 AM, Sunday morning, Holiday Inn balcony. Complimentary Styrofoam cup of warm coffee and a cigarette disguised as a Canadian cigar. 
    Aware of the last of the garbage trucks slinking through humid morning fog with heads down, two stories below past the vague strip of sickly pine trees that would otherwise hide this six-story warehouse of sleepers from the reality of dingy urban sprawl ... if I wasn’t looking. The trucks fill up with the leftovers, excesses and broken pieces of existence with hydraulic precision and the echoing thud of emptiness as the receptacles are readied for the next load. There is no hunger down there. There are no children who will appear on sad commercials nobody wants to see. There is too much. Apologetic garbage trucks (Please excuse the interruption while our clean-up crew does its work. Thanks for your cooperation.) barely have time to clear space (Lift your legs, please. I need to vacuum here. Thanks.). Rental storage units hold the keepers that have no place to be otherwise. Soon, the garbage trucks will have no room to maneuver between excess and necessary.
    This is the twelfth dimension. This is the visible pattern between me and the reality of the target. I know that beyond this screen the photons hit the target in a random chaos—and that the other side of the target (the back side) is even more confusing. It contains the physics that make it possible. But, what is possible? I can’t even bring my mind to imagine the limit(less) possibilities of the other side of the target. I only know that if I could travel to the other side it would look the same as this side without being this side. I imagine this in order to keep my brain from coming apart in a Holiday Inn. Too early for that. There would be embarrassing questions.
    Moment by moment I encounter the other eleven dimensions of awareness. Each one exists with eleven more possibilities, and on ... and on. Had I parted my hair in another direction at this time in this geographic location ... or another direction, another time in another city ... could I consider that person/those people as me? And what of the photon hitting a target then/there? The question comes to mind ... is the point of origin stationary?
    On this three foot-wide balcony I know the closed sliding glass door behind me is reflecting my back. I won’t turn ‘round to check. I’ve been fooled before. I also know I don’t live here. I live in Asheville (NC). I’m just visiting now. I’m dropping in on the possibilities of a past life to experience what may have been. The woman sleeping inside belongs to me only in my heart. I’m cheating on reality. Do I belong here? Is this part of the future I was supposed to have or, did I somehow miss my train to end up naked, two flights up in downtown Greensboro with this cold cup of coffee by mistake. Is this me or did I get replaced by one of my dreams? Was this part of my original itinerary? Who do I see to have my ticket changed?
    The last part of my cigarette makes a complex movement through my fingers. Gee, thanks brain for all you do without bothering me with the details. I watch distractedly as the stubby ember ends up in the punting position and is flipped into the mist. It lands in a puddle at the feet of a round white man in a white shirt who may have been there, watching me for who knows how long. His head twitches to one side as his focus goes quickly to something located on his level of the world. Obviously, he has no interest in a naked old man standing above him. His interest is the trunk-full of merchandise he needs to display to people who need more merchandise. A trunk-full of pre-garbage truck, storage unit stuff.
    So, in this Sartre novel of a universe, is life creating the universe as it goes along—attempting to explain itself to itself? Is the order in the universe merely a mistake due to our limited understanding of the mathematics we’ve created from our position near a mediocre star somewhere in the suburbs of a mediocre galaxy? Are we a glitch or are we the entire universe? Are we it ... the “I am, I am”? What about our measly concept of time in relationship to galactic time? Are we only watching ourselves watch ourselves? I exist on both sides of the target, but I can’t be the target. I’m not the man in the white shirt. I don’t know his room number. He might not have a room at this motel. He may not exist. I think he does. I guess that’s good enough for now.
    She stirs in the bed behind me. I know this because we are joined by our souls. Our love is a stretchy glue that formed back when we were younger. Even the distance our other lives have placed between us has not damaged or made the glue brittle. She still believes my sagging old-man butt is attractive. I can feel her watching as she stretches her lovely body in the sheets. Is this still me? I smile, therefore I am.
    Tab. My fingers fall on black keys with white, meaningful markers. I’m not really in Greensboro. I was just thinking a “what if” before I headed to the kitchen for a warm-up. This is the only dimension I have for today. Saturdays in Lexington, Kentucky are like that.