Got reality? On the written page, we stand at the very boundary between reality and illusion. The surprising discoveries of 20th century science prove that reality is on the far side of the page from us, in the noetic world. We are the illusion. We carry death on our shoulders. This awareness is a lifelong ferment. The king in The Epic of Gilgamesh responds to his deathward agitation by erecting a wall, a memorial to himself. It is the ambition of the dead to be remembered. But not everyone builds. The most common reaction to our mortal limits is simply making a lot of noise, like an apparition trying to catch attention, trying to reassure itself of its reality. Here I am! I'm still kicking! It is the ambition of ghosts to be seen. Monuments and appearances are the human unreality to which our species dedicates a lot of time and effort. Our actual existence is, in fact, a terrific ferocity. We're too fragile to last. And we're far too infinitesimal for the universe to notice. For one moment of Earth's moment, each of us is a dazzling rightness. By avoiding the absurd ambition to survive and the vanity to be recognized, we acquire sufficient power and presence to pierce the agonistic surface of the page and create verbal textures that enact transcendence and that reverberate with the lunatic force that is our authenticity.