After Inventing Poe

I almost made a mistake when I invented Edgar Allen Poe and everything that he wrote.

I did want all the figments to get acquainted with horror, heartbreak and drugs so I invented Baltimore and Poe right about the same time but I had already broken his heart to pieces by then which made possible catastrophic, doomed romance which continues to flourish in the imagination and sweet sorrow of many figments even today.

The problem is I liked Edgar so much I had him tell the absolute truth several times and, thank the illusion of God, most "people" put his words aside as the ravings of a drunken lunatic high on opium and saw the truth as either art or a morphine fart in a bourbon filled bathtub.

Since this site is so profoundly lipsticked and balmed, I can easily imagine myself or something like me repeating Poe's words right here and feeling safe that they will be ignored once again:

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow-

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

Before totally forgetting about Poe and the truth he revealed, consider the grains of sand that slipped through his fingers which led him to conclude that he was existing in a dream within a dream.

The grains of sand are no accident but rather a reminder that the number of stars in the universe is greater than all of the grains of sand in all of the earth's beaches.

What's a star?

Well the big ball of flame that we call the Sun is a star.

I was down on Cape Cod a few months ago running sand through my fingers and imagining giant balls of fire raining down for miles and miles up and down the Northern and Southern shore. Each flaming grain of sand...one star in one galaxy.

Our Galaxy or what we imagine to be "ours" or a "galaxy" is called, of all things, the Milky Way and there are two hundred billion stars in that great white way. As far as galaxies go there are roughly half the amount of galaxies as there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy so let's go with a hundred billion galaxies.

If the average width of a grain of sand is a millimeter then in comparison to one of the larger stars in one of the larger galaxies, the planet we "live" on is about one millionth of a millimeter of something or other on an endless beach. Of course everything has an end (although since no one has ever survived the end to tell us about it, we can not be totally sure of that either) but since beaches are somewhat tangible thus measurable let's go with the 356,000 kilometers of beach on Earth as estimated by the CIA World Factbook.

That's 356 million meters. Remember Earth, in this model, is one millionth of one millimeter. One millionth of one millimeter as compared to 356 million meters.

And as "Poe" took a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers he almost let the cat out of the bag. Although there isn't a bag nor a cat to be released from the bag.There is only the time we pass here together and that time is always now.

And Poe is still with us.