I felt exceedingly small, but also exceedingly large, and the things that had once seemed so important now appeared trifling. Actually, those things had never even existed. I’d imagined every last one of them. Nothing ever really existed. Somehow, just then, navigating that cosmic ocean of sky, this was everything I needed to know.

Ever since learning I wasn’t the only unreal person in the world, I’d developed an annoying habit of studying people to determine their true ontological status. I studied people in class, the library, the cafeteria, my dorm, around campus, while running the Gargoyle Castle Loop. Now, under the influence of acid, I began to suspect everyone was unreal. That behind all the masks and makeup, the smiles and laughter, the quips and repartees, there was a good chance of finding absolutely nothing.

Jefferson Street at Halloween made a Grateful Dead concert look like a Quaker fish fry. I wanted to be the curious little cell that moves among all the other little cells and gets to know every last one of them.

And then I found myself losing myself.

I was dying. Of course. This was it. Curtain. Finis. I dropped to my knees on the sidewalk and prayed to Jesus for another crack at life. But then I became confused, unable to recall who Jesus’s father was. Why this should have been important I can’t venture to guess, but it got me on the subject of fathers. I realized, with an incredible sensation of vertigo, I was old enough to be my own father.

If I was to survive, I must literally believe myself into being. This, of course, was essentially no different from what I'd always done. I'd simply believed in myself until, in fact, I existed.