The Solipsist BY TROY JOLLIMORE Don't be misled: that sea-song you hear when the shell's at your ear? It's all in your head. That primordial tide— the slurp and salt-slosh of the brain's briny wash— is on the inside. Truth be told, the whole place, everything that the eye can take in, to the sky and beyond into space, lives inside of your skull. When you set your sad head down on Procrustes' bed, you lay down the whole universe. You recline on the pillow: the cosmos grows dim. The soft ghost in the squishy machine, which the world is, retires. Someday it will expire. Then all will go silent and dark. For the moment, however, the black- ness is just temporary. The planet you carry will shortly swing back from the far nether regions. And life will continue— but only within you. Which raises a question that comes up again and again, as to why God would make ear and eye to face outward , not in?