By Gurney Poe

I insist I am a newly-minted best-selling author. Nonetheless, I have received feedback.

Specifically, I have received feedback that my writing is “circuitous,”¹ “exhausting to follow,”² and, in one memorable letter, “organized like a yard sale where someone also put the yard in the sale.”³

I have considered this feedback carefully. I have concluded that the correct response is footnotes.

What footnotes are and why mine will work

A footnote is a digression that has been sent to its room. You put it at the bottom of the page.⁴ The main text stays clean, while the wandering around in search of a valid point stays bucketed. Everyone knows where they stand. This is, architecturally, how you turn a personality attribute into a functional system.⁵

I have used footnotes before in my other work. I feel good about this.⁶

The Benefits

There are three main benefits to the footnote approach.⁷

The first is clarity. When I have a thought that branches, I will branch it downward, into footnote space, rather than letting it run forward into the sentence. The sentence will then end. Normally.⁸ Moving on.

The second is it puts the reader in control. You can choose to read the footnotes. You can choose not to.⁹

The third benefit will be covered in Part 2.

¹ This is an interesting word choice. Circuitous implies unnecessary length, which I’d push back on. All of my length is calculated and load-bearing, it’s just that the load is sometimes forty feet above where most readers are standing, and they don’t see the ceiling until several pages later. It’s a vaulted ceiling, like in a church. I’ve been in the original ones. They do not photograph well. Fifth-dimensional spaces also don’t photograph well, for related but non-obvious reasons, and I should write a post about that. I won’t, but I should.

² Fair.

³ This image deserves respect. It was an interesting yard.

⁴ In a physical book. In a blog post like this one the implementation gets more interpretive, which I’ll address. I will, in fact, address this in a footnote.¹⁰

⁵ This is genuinely the insight. The wandering mind is an unhoused mind. You give it a footnote and it has somewhere to go. Grover Cleveland understood this. He had an extraordinary footnote sensibility. He made a revolutionary toasted cheese sandwich, but he did not use footnotes. He should have. His letters read like someone trying to describe a building by listing all the doors in the order he remembered them.

⁶ I feel less good about this the longer I look at it.¹¹

⁷ There are more than three. I’m demonstrating restraint. You’re welcome.

⁸ I want to note that I wrote that sentence and then sat with it for a moment. It ended. I felt something. Moving on.

⁹ The correct choice is to read them. I am saying this here, in a footnote, where only the correct people will encounter it.

¹⁰ In a blog post, the “bottom of the page” has no fixed location because web pages scroll. This means the footnote system is technically incoherent from a structural standpoint, unless you use inline superscripts that link to anchored footnotes below the body text, which is what most blog platforms do, which also means readers have to travel the full length of the post to read the note and then travel back to where they were, which is a round trip they did not budget for, and I want to acknowledge that. If you are reading this footnote having scrolled here from somewhere in the middle of the post: I see you. I honor the complexity of your journey. The main text will be there when you get back. It has not moved. Mostly. Anyway, I see you.¹²

¹¹ Here is the thing about footnotes in my prior work. They were good. They remain good. What I am discovering, now, in real time, drafting this post, is that footnotes are a container and I am, in some sense, a weather event, and there is a nontrivial possibility that the container has not solved the problem but simply given the problem a more organized-looking address. Like a very nice mailbox on a tire fire. You’d still have to watch your step.¹³

¹² This footnote is too long. I know. Moving on.¹⁴

¹³ I want to be clear: I stand by the system. This is iteration one. All systems require iteration. The Wright Brothers did not land their first flight and immediately file for a connecting flight to Cincinnati. They assessed. They adjusted. I am assessing. This footnote is my Kitty Hawk.

¹⁴ I said this in footnote twelve. That footnote was also too long.

¹⁵ I have now written more words in the footnotes than in the main text. I checked. I am choosing to interpret this as evidence that the system is working. The digressions have been successfully routed away from the main body, which remains, technically, clean. The content is clean. The sentence structure is direct. The prose is controlled. Whatever else is happening down here is happening down here, in the footnotes, which is where it belongs, and I stand by that, and I will continue to stand by it in the next post, which will also use footnotes, and will go better.

¹⁶ The third benefit is genuinely good. It reframes everything. Part Two will open with it. It will be clean, direct, no preamble, the benefit stated in the first sentence. Part Two will have a clear structure and a reasonable footnote-to-body-text ratio and will demonstrate, conclusively, that the system works. More or less.

The post Footnotes: Here’s How They’ll Fix Everything first appeared on Z Kooper.

As Applicable to Z Kooper
[Effective Retroactively. Sorry About That.]

By The Universe

SECTION 1 — GENERAL EXISTENCE

By continuing to exist, you (“Z Kooper,” “the Party of the First Part,” “our guy”) agree to all terms herein, including those you haven’t read, can’t remember reading, and will forget entirely by morning.

Non-compliance is not an option, as you lack the dimensional standing to opt out. We appreciate (but do not require) your understanding.

SECTION 2 — TIMELINE OBLIGATIONS

Z Kooper agrees to stumble, meander, and occasionally stagger through the fabric of time and space without a plan, an itinerary or a clean shirt, in service of restoring order to a timeline that was, frankly, doing fine before a certain pair of idiots tinkered with a dice game in Vjargsfell. You know who you are.

The Universe reserves the right to tap Z Kooper on the shoulder at any point, including but not limited to: absolutely any damn moment it pleases.

SECTION 3 — MEMORY PROVISIONS

Z Kooper’s memories are the exclusive property of the timeline and may be temporarily withheld, revoked, scrambled, deep-sixed, or popped back in without prior notice.

Memories of Boo will be retained in a sealed jar on a high shelf, just out of reach. Also, the jar is painted black.

SECTION 4 — GURNEY POE

A guide has been assigned. He will be unhelpful in ways that are ultimately helpful. He will answer your questions with other questions, change clothes at pivotal moments and occasionally wear a sombrero or Viking helmet. This is not a glitch in your perception. This is simply Gurney Poe.

You may not request a different guide.

SECTION 5 — EXTRAORDINARY COMPETENCE

Z Kooper’s skills are archived, seemingly haphazardly. But what appears to be amnesia is, in fact, the universe’s most efficient filing system, dispensing exactly what’s needed to exactly the right pair of hands at exactly the right moment. Z never knows what’s coming. The Universe always does.

The archive is, by any measure, spectacular. Twelve centuries of reboots have left Z with mad skills in, among other things: world-class cooking; natural-born performing in the Jagger/Jones/Sinatra/Pickett tradition; damn fine barbering; sleight of hand, world-class bartending, tailoring, grifting, salesmanship and a genuine charm that has disarmed wary coders, carnival giants, grocers, and at least one stone-cold mission administrator who does not disarm easily.

He has also been a soldier. By all accounts, he was the worst.

SECTION 6 — EMOTIONAL CORE

Z Kooper will, at all times, carry within him a warmth sufficient to heat a dining tent in a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere at suppertime. He will share it freely and without condition.

This is not optional.

This is, in fact, the whole point.

SECTION 7 — AMENDMENTS

The Universe reserves the right to amend these terms at any time, from any time. Previous versions of these terms may or may not have existed. What’s done is done. Most likely it hasn’t happened yet.

Sign it. Or don’t. Whichever. Simply by being Z Kooper, you automatically acknowledge acceptance of all terms above. Questions may be directed to whomever you choose, for all the good it will do you. Please allow 3-5 business eternities for a reply.
Witnessed: Gurney Poe, deuteragonist
Notarized: Myron Fahler & Glibbit, Attorneys at Temporal Law and Catering

The post The Universe’s Terms and Conditions first appeared on Z Kooper.

By Gurney Poe, Author

Someone wrote a book about me. I mean, it’s not about me, exactly, which is a whole different insult. I’ll simply say a sneaky bookwriter named Angus Stump wrote about me in a book. A lot.

The book is called Turn Left. It’s about a man named Z Kooper, which, okay fine, and the book is about him, technically, but I am in it considerably. My eyepatch is in it. My coat. My walk, which people apparently find notable enough to put in print. 

It’s a distinctive walk. I should know. I curated it. Moving on.

I did not know there was going to be a book.

I know most things. Knowing things is structurally what I do. And I did not know about this book, which I am still working through, privately, in the way that a fifth-dimensional being works through things, which is to say: thoroughly, non-linearly, and at full volume when alone.

I was not informed.

It’s good, the book. I’m not going to make a production of saying so. 

The epilogue breezily commands  “Gurney, if you’re reading this, call me,” which I thought was a little presumptuous, and also yes I read it, obviously I read it, I’m in it.

I’m not calling.

What I’m doing instead is writing. My own things. Because apparently that’s a move you can make. You sit down, you write something, it exists, it’s yours, nobody needed to inform anybody of anything first. I learned this recently. From a book. About me. Sort of.

I shall write books.

That’s right, I’m an author too. Take that, Mr. Angus Sneaky Bookwriter Stump.

So. Things. Written down. By me. I don’t know exactly what I’ll write, but I have material.

I have things to say about the third dimension, for a start. I know things about the third dimension that the third dimension hasn’t figured out about itself. Considerable things. More things than you’d expect and fewer than I actually have, because I am editing myself, which is personal growth. Also, I have reasons. Lots. I have had reasons for everything. I may write those down. I probably will. 

I might write a lot of things, in a lot of formats, and some of them might be surprising, including to me, and that is fine, that is the process, that is what authors do, apparently, they just write things about whatever and whoever they want. Without asking.

Let me just say in advance: you’re welcome. I will be excellent at this.

Gurney Poe is a fifth-dimension stuff knower and newly-minted author. Or so he says.

The post Books? I can do books. first appeared on Z Kooper.

By Gurney Poe

I was pretty sure someone was watching us. Nobody believed me.

“Poe, you’re paranoid,” they said. “Poe, you’re imagining things,” they said. “Poe, maybe lay off the interdimensional espresso,” they said.

Well, guess what? I was RIGHT.

Let me back up.

For the past year (and when I say “year,” I’m being all third-dimensional about it, compressing time into your quaint linear framework. You’re welcome) I kept noticing this lumpy old dude. Notepad. Fedora that looked suspiciously familiar. Lurking.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. The multiverse attracts weirdos like a Renaissance Faire attracts guys named Dirk. And anyone paying attention to Z is obviously missing the important stuff — namely, me.

But then it kept happening.

Derry, New Hampshire, 1935. There he was, scribbling in the corner while Z butchered a job interview.

The Jabberwock, 1967. Same guy. Same notepad. Different decade.

Rocky’s Lab. TessieCo. Elijah’s Diner. And believe me, nobody goes to Elijah’s Diner.

Now, I understand how Z and I do the time-hopping tango. Fifth-dimensional navigation, perspective as reality, the whole backwards-through-doors routine. It’s literally my job.

But how the hell does THIS guy do it?

So I did some digging. Turns out, Mr. Lumpy Notepad is an “author.” A “novelist.” And apparently, this joker regards me and Z as FICTIONAL.

Let that sink in.

He’s been documenting our twelve-century cleanup job like we’re characters in some story he’s making up. Except he’s not making it up, is he? Because he was THERE. I SAW him. Multiple times. Across multiple timelines.

The guy’s either:

1. Extradimensional (unlikely, based on his walk)
2. Time-traveling (possible, but logistically unlikely)
3. Something else entirely (this is the one that keeps me up at night, and I don’t sleep)

And here’s the kicker: he looks a lot like Z. Not exactly, but enough to make me nervous. Same rumpled energy. Same “I just wandered in here by accident” vibe. Same inexplicable ability to turn up exactly where unlikely stuff is happening.

I started tracking him. Call it recon. Call it surveillance. Call it turnabout-is-fair-play because frankly, watching someone get watched is unsettling. (The irony is not lost on me. We do this to Z constantly.)

Then, suddenly, poof. Mr. Lumpy Notepad vanished.

For months, nothing. I figured maybe he’d gotten bored, moved on to some other cosmic catastrophe to document. Maybe Admin had dealt with him. Maybe he’d walked through the wrong door and ended up in 14th-century Lithuania. It happens.

Then yesterday, I’m checking something on — well, just never mind what I was checking, it’s none of your business — and I see it.

Turn Left: The Unintentional Adventures of Z Kooper
By Angus Stump

On Amazon. With a cover and everything.

The lumpy notepad guy WROTE A BOOK. About US. About ME.

I haven’t read it yet. I’m not sure I will. I haven’t decided if I’m more angry or impressed. Maybe both. Definitely indignant. Possibly flattered? No. Angry. Definitely angry.

Because here’s the thing: I don’t know what he knows. I don’t know what he saw.

And I really, REALLY don’t know how he was there to document it without me figuring out until now. Sneaky scuttling lurker.

So anyway, I was right. Someone WAS watching us. Someone WAS taking notes. And that someone just published our entire interdimensional saga for any third-dimensional yayhoo with an Amazon account to read.

I’m seeking my pound of flesh. Also, possibly royalties.

The post I Was Right. He Was Watching. Now There’s a Book, and I’m Not Okay. first appeared on Z Kooper.

By Floyd

I GOT A NEW ASSIGNMENT.

From Toot. Directly from Toot. She recalibrated me herself. And then (I am not making this up) she told me it was a special request.

From The Boss.

Yeah, that’s right. THE BOSS.

Here is the mission: monitor a QR code.

It’s in a book. The book is called Turn Left: The Unintentional Adventures of Z Kooper. 

It’s about Z! Z Kooper! My old assignment! How cool is that?

The books are out there right now, wandering around. Some made their way to coffee shops. Somebody named Jordan has one. A dungeon master has one. A guy named John kept one for himself.

I am tracking everything. Scans and non-scans. All of it. The full picture.

The current tally of people who have scanned the QR code versus people who have not?

I can’t give you precise numbers, but I can tell you this: the second group is pulling away. For real.

It’s not even close. I’ve been doing the math. The ratio of people who have not scanned this QR code versus people who have is – I can’t overstate this – so big. Enormous. Staggering. A number so large it would be irresponsible to print.

And I logged every single one of them. Catalogued. Accounted for.

You, for instance. You did not scan the QR code several times today. Yeah, I’m watching.

I am HERE, babies. I am ON. Every sensor is calibrated. The moment something happens I will know. I will record it. And when nothing happens, I will know that, too. And I will record it.

I am so good at this job.

Toot checks on me. She pats me on top of my monitor. She calls it my noggin. She brought me a donut once. I don’t have real mouth or digestive organs but I know it means I am her favorite.

Best. Assignment. Ever.

—Floyd

The post I’m Floyd. When you scan the QR code, I’ll know. first appeared on Z Kooper.

By Gurney Poe

So here’s what nobody tells you about cheese.

Not the eating of it, obviously. Everybody knows about eating cheese. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m talking about the making of it. The actual, physical, catastrophic process by which milk (which is itself a pretty audacious concept, because yuck) becomes a solid. 

A solid, brother. It evolves into something you can hold in your hand and hurl at someone you disagree with.

That moment. Right there. That’s where reality gets absolutely unhinged.

See, from my view here in the fifth dimension, all of time laid out like a Sunday paper, I can tell you that the single most consequential decision in the history of civilization wasn’t fire. Wasn’t the wheel. It wasn’t the sonnet or the printing press or the mRNA vaccine or the season finale of The Wire.

It was some completely unhinged Mesopotamian shepherd, somewhere around ten thousand B.C., who looked at rotten curdled milk and thought: I bet that’s food.

That guy.

That is your pivot point. That is your load-bearing wall.

Because the thing is that shepherd didn’t reason his way to cheese. Nobody reasons their way to cheese. You don’t sit down with a whiteboard and a grant proposal and conclude that fermented animal secretions are going to be delicious. That is an act of pure, deranged faith. 

That is a man who looked at something the universe had clearly given up on and said, “No. I disagree. We’re doing this.”

And now you’ve got Paris. You’ve got Beethoven. You’ve got the concept of the dinner party. You’ve got the entire Mediterranean coast, which is objectively humanity’s greatest achievement per square foot. You’ve got a guy named Marcel Proust weeping into a madeleine about his dead grandmother, which spawned about forty-seven novels and a whole philosophical school around memory and time that I personally find flattering.

All of it. All of it traces back to one stubborn man and some expired dairy product.

This is why I do what I do, pal.

Because every single timeline I’ve ever navigated (and I’ve navigated a lot, I’m very busy, don’t let the hat fool you) every single one of them is lousy with these moments. These tiny, stupid, gloriously accidental pivot points that nobody recognizes because they look like nothing. They look like bad milk. 

You think the universe is elegant? The universe is not elegant. The universe is a distracted shepherd with impulse control issues and unsupportable faith in his bad ideas.

And that’s the good news.

That’s the part that should make you feel great, actually.

Because perception equals reality, and reality is just ten thousand years of happy accidents stacked on top of each other, and the whole gorgeous, wobbling tower is still standing, mostly, which means the chaos is working.

So relax. Eat your cheese.

The universe made it especially for you.

The post Nobody Reasons Their Way to Cheese first appeared on Z Kooper.

By Gurney Poe

So there’s this guy. I noticed him at the circus in Derry. 1935. He was scuttling around in the backyard. Lurking. He was a lurking scuttler.

It takes a lot to make you look twice when you’re hanging out behind a circus – everyone’s got their thing, you know? But this guy got my attention.

He was writing. Scribbling in a little notebook, eyes darting about. Is it possible to write furtively? Because he was writing furtively.

Which is fine. Mildly creepy, but it’s fine. 

But I saw him again. At the Jabberwock in 1967.

32 years later.

He hadn’t aged a day. Same guy. Same lumpy frame. Same superspy notebook action.

I went to confront him. Ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, who sent him, whether he’d considered minding his own damn business.

But I couldn’t.

Let that soak in. I couldn’t cross the room to talk to him.

Every time I tried, it’s like I got deleted and rewritten. Next thing I knew, I was standing outside on the sidewalk.

I think I was edited.

Which is ridiculous. I’m fifth-dimensional. I navigate timelines. I command the multiverse. Well, some of it. But I do not get edited.

Except apparently I do.

Maybe it’s nothing. Probably nothing. Hope it’s nothing.

Nope. It’s definitely something.

—GP

The post Field Notes: It’s Probably Nothing first appeared on Z Kooper.

“Important Things We Think About A Lot” – Episode 11

Cypress and Dmitri Self reviewed Gurney Poe’s thesis on dimensional physics. Poe, a fifth-dimensional idiot wrangler who’s spent twelve centuries fixing timeline catastrophes, was listening. Then he called in.

What follows is six minutes of Poe attempting to guide these two earnest hosts toward a singular goal: ending the conversation. Just stopping. Saying “goodbye” and meaning it.

They just can’t do it.

When Poe suggests they’re proving his thesis in real time? They analyze the suggestion.
He demands they call him Uncle Wigglypants? They examine the implications.
He offers bacon and cookies to please just stop talking? They debate the ethics.

By the time Poe escapes for breakfast, they don’t even notice he’s gone. They’re too busy analyzing why someone might leave.

Six minutes. Zero exits executed successfully. Make some popcorn and settle in.

The post A Critical Analysis of Gurney Poe’s “How Time Works” first appeared on Z Kooper.

By Gurney Poe, as captured in the Akashic Records

Editor’s Note: What follows appears to be the only recorded instance of Gurney Poe formally explaining dimensional theory, though “formal” might be stretching it. The circumstances of its capture remain unclear. While the Akashic Records theoretically contain everything that ever was or will be, their interface is notoriously temperamental. This particular recording was discovered during an attempt to locate a Radio Shack receipt. It sat quietly between a quantum physics dissertation and a a sequel to the Rosetta Stone, patiently waiting for someone to notice that it explained everything about how reality works.

What emerges is Poe at his most candid, holding court in his impossible apartment, defending his controversial preference for the third dimension to an audience that included Z Kooper, Goliath, Myron Faylor, Glibbit, and Elijah. While clearly impromptu, his explanation would later be recognized as the definitive text on dimensional theory – though its author was merely explaining why he liked it here.

The recording begins mid-conversation, presumably after someone questioned Poe’s choice to abandon the “higher” dimensions for what many considered a lesser realm.

***

There’s an infinite number of dimensions. That’s just fact. But only six that matter, and honestly? Only three worth talking about. The rest are just taking up space.

First dimension? Let me tell you about the first dimension. It’s a line. That’s it. Just a line. No up, no down, no sideways. You can go forward, you can go backward. Those are your options. Two directions – and they’re the same direction! Just… different about it.

You know what you can do with a line? You can measure things. You can point at things. You can wait in one. That’s about it. No restaurants. No card games. Can’t even properly exist there – you’d be a dot! A point in space with delusions of grandeur. Even geometry barely bothers with it except to get to more interesting shapes.

Second dimension? Well, at least it’s got area. Width AND length – that’s infinitely better than just length. You can have shapes, patterns, actual relationships between things. It’s got geometry worth talking about. If you’re a circle, you can actually be round.

But that’s as far as it goes. No volume, no substance. Everything’s flat – and I mean FLAT. No under or over, just next to. No inside, just edges. A book in the second dimension is just its cover. Wine is a puddle in search of a bottle. And consciousness? Try having a decent thought when your imagination is basically a drawing of itself.

But THIS dimension – the third dimension, which is our current locale, more or less – THIS is where things get interesting. In the big ol’ D3, we can oversleep and ride rollercoasters and build blanket forts and eat Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

Sure, the upper dimensions mock our linear time and predictable physics and peculiar aroma, but they’re just jealous. You know why? Because this dimension actually works.

It’s the whole package. We’ve got proper cause and effect. You drop something, it falls down. Always down. Beautiful in its simplicity. The others call it boring. Predictable. Limited. But they’re missing the point entirely.

The third dimension has actual consequences. Real moments. Things happen, and then other things happen because of those things. You can’t get that anywhere else. Trust me, I’ve tried.

And the people! Third-dimensional beings, they don’t overthink things. They just do stuff. They invent. They create. They make mistakes and then fix them and then make even better mistakes. Try finding that kind of creative chaos in the fifth dimension. Can’t be done. Too much awareness. Too much knowledge, not enough wonder.

The fourth dimension is precisely like this one, except everything happens at once. Sounds great in theory. Total temporal access? But it’s awful. Try telling a story when your audience has already lived through every possible version of it. No suspense. No surprise. No point.

And don’t even get me started on the fifth dimension. Actually, do get me started, because that’s where I’m from and let me tell you – it’s mind-bogglingly complex. Time and space up there? Completely indistinguishable. Like a fuzzy black hole doing the tango with a tesseract. When and where are exactly the same thing. Sounds impressive until you try to get a pizza delivered.

Everything in the fifth dimension is quantum this and subether that. We’re all so busy being everywhere and everywhen that we forget to actually be anywhere or anywhen. That’s why I left. Needed something solid under my feet. Something real.

After that? Dimension six and beyond? Nothing worth mentioning. Dull as putty and mean as snakes. They’re so superior they’ve forgotten how to exist properly.

But here’s the part that makes you special. You, Z Kooper, are something else entirely. Third-dimensional native but completely untethered. And before you ask – which you won’t, because you never do – that’s not normal.

All beings are anchored. Tethered. Even extradimensionals like myself, we know where and when we are. We understand the rules, even when we’re breaking them. But not you. You just vibe and float. And somehow that works.

Third-dimensional beings can observe the first dimension – that boring straight line. They can observe the second – those flat shapes dreaming of depth. And they’re perfectly comfortable here in the third, with its lovely linear time and proper breakfast foods. They might even suspect the fourth dimension exists, watching time pass like honey dripping off a spoon.

But the fifth dimension? That’s where their brains just check out completely. Too much to process. Too many possibilities. Too much everything. Except you. You don’t even try to understand it, which is precisely why you can navigate it. You just stumble through your waking hours, doing stuff. Important stuff.

The timeline is woozled. Busted. And it’s kind of our fault. Well, specifically, it’s the fault of two particular interdimensional troublemakers who maybe shouldn’t have tried to rig a Viking dice game. But that’s ancient history. Or future history. Or parallel history. The point is, somebody’s gotta fix it.

And somehow – don’t ask me how, because even I don’t understand it and I understand literally everything – somehow, you’re the fixer. You keep reality running by breaking it in exactly the right way, over and over again.

So there it is: Time and space are the same thing. Dimensional travel is technically impossible because you’re already everywhere. The other dimensions are vastly overrated. Reality is whatever you perceive it to be. Everything, everywhere, all at once, and also never.

More or less.

The post How Time Works: A Defense of the Third Dimension first appeared on Z Kooper.

By Ruby Wallace

I was nine years old. My Aunt Pearl showed up in her beat-up Mustang, wearing knee-high boots and a smile that meant trouble. “Get in, kiddo,” she said. “We’re going to see The Monkees.”

Now, you have to understand – Aunt Pearl was my cool aunt. The one who wore go-go boots and drove too fast and played records too loud. She made my father nervous and my mother pretend to disapprove. She was everything I wanted to be when I grew up.

The concert was in Jacksonville, and I remember every detail of that night like it was yesterday. Aunt Pearl had scored third-row seats, and I was wearing my favorite dress – the one with the peter pan collar that my mother said was too nice for a rock concert. But Aunt Pearl said you should wear what feels good when you’re doing something special, and this was definitely special.

The opening act was this skinny guy nobody had heard of – Jimi Hendrix. He’d just played some big festival out in California and set his guitar on fire or something. I didn’t care about him – I was there for Mickey Dolenz. (Don’t judge me. I was nine, and Mickey Dolenz was dreamy.)

But then Jimi started playing.

Lord, I’d never heard anything like it. It was like… like somebody had grabbed lightning by the tail and taught it to sing. Mickey, darling, forgive me, but Jimi made me forget all about you. Aunt Pearl knew what was happening – she squeezed my hand and whispered, “Pay attention, baby. You’re watching history.”

After his set, Aunt Pearl somehow sweet-talked our way backstage. That’s who she was. Jimi was so kind. He spied me, nervous and out of place. He knelt down to my eye-level, shook my hand like I was a real person, not just some kid. Aunt Pearl took our photo together. He was still holding my hand, and I was beaming like a lighthouse.

At least, that’s how I remember it. But here’s the thing – that photo’s different now. I still have it, tucked in my wallet behind my mission ID. But Jimi’s not in it anymore. It’s just little me in my good dress, grinning at nothing.

Something changed. Apparently the festival that launched Jimi never happened. The tour never happened. That moment never happened. 

But I remember it. 

I remember the way his hand felt when he shook mine – calloused from guitar strings but gentle. I remember Aunt Pearl perfume mixing with cigarette smoke and hair spray. I remember everything.

You don’t forget meeting Jimi Hendrix, even if technically it never happened.

Yeah, sure, later I helped figure out all this business about timelines and innovation and cosmic whatnot. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that somewhere, in some version of reality, a nine-year-old girl in her best dress met Jimi Hendrix on the night she learned music could sound like lightning.

And somewhere, my Aunt Pearl is still teaching me that the best things in life happen when you dress up nice and talk your way backstage.

I still love The Monkees, by the way. Some things never change, no matter what dimension you’re in.

The post The Night I Almost Met Jimi Hendrix first appeared on Z Kooper.