Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.

Host: The city lay heavy beneath the thick, unmoving night — the kind of night that smelled of concrete, dust, and faint electricity. From the twenty-third floor of a half-finished building, the world below looked like a restless circuit board — cars pulsing like blood through its veins, screens flickering in windows, the endless hum of a civilization unable to sleep.

A single lamp burned in the open skeleton of an office. Jack sat at the table — unshaven, weary, his shirt sleeves rolled up, a cigarette balanced between two fingers, smoke coiling like thought. Across from him, Jeeny leaned against the window frame, watching the lights below like a woman seeing through the glass into another kind of truth.

On the table between them lay a stack of reports, a laptop, and a dog-eared book of poetry. The line Jeeny had just read hung in the stale air, delicate but cutting:

“Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.” — A. R. Ammons.

Host: The words hovered like a soft explosion — too quiet to destroy, too sharp to ignore.

Jack exhaled smoke, his voice rough, almost amused.

Jack: “Well, Ammons clearly never lived in the age of Twitter. If he thought people were all talk back then, he should see what we’ve become now — professional commentators of lives we never live.”

Jeeny: “That’s exactly his point, Jack. We live in mirrors now — reflections of reflections. We don’t touch the world; we just talk about it.”

Jack: “You say that like it’s new. People have always lived through stories. The Bible, newspapers, theater — same thing. Just different screens.”

Jeeny: “No, there’s a difference. Once upon a time, stories pulled us closer to experience. Now they pull us away from it. Everyone’s narrating — no one’s feeling.”

Host: A gust of wind swept through the open window, scattering a few papers across the table. Jack caught one, pressed it down with his palm, his eyes glinting in the lamplight.

Jack: “You sound nostalgic. You really think it was better when people suffered their truths instead of tweeting about them?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because suffering, at least, was real.”

Jack: “And now?”

Jeeny: “Now it’s aesthetic. Filtered. Performed.”

Host: The faint hum of the city rose — the sound of air-conditioning units, distant sirens, the faint, desperate chatter of nightlife.

Jack: “I think you’re confusing expression with inauthenticity. Just because we talk about something doesn’t mean we don’t feel it.”

Jeeny: “Then why does it all feel so empty? So rehearsed?”

Jack: “Because the audience got bigger. People start performing the moment they know they’re being watched. That’s not new — it’s human.”

Jeeny: “But what happens when we’re always being watched? When every thought is an angle, every emotion a caption?”

Host: Her voice trembled slightly — not with weakness, but with the fatigue of someone who’s seen too much of what she can’t unsee.

Jeeny: “Ammons saw it early, Jack. We’re losing the direct pulse of life. We analyze the rain instead of feeling wet. We discuss love like strategy. Even pain gets curated. Everyone’s aware — but no one’s alive.”

Jack: “You sound like you want chaos. No thought, no filter, just raw experience. You know where that leads? Violence. Fanaticism. There’s a reason we talk — it’s how we stay civilized.”

Jeeny: “Civilized? Or anesthetized?”

Host: Jack’s cigarette burned out; he crushed it absently into the ashtray, the red ember dying like a tiny sun. His eyes turned toward the window, where the city pulsed like a restless brain.

Jack: “You think the problem’s the talking. I think it’s the quality of it. People don’t think deeply anymore — they echo. They don’t converse — they collide. Ammons wasn’t against language; he was against noise.”

Jeeny: “Then why do we keep making it?”

Jack: “Because silence is terrifying.”

Host: A beat of stillness passed — sharp, thick, alive. Jeeny walked closer to the table, her hand brushing the open book. She looked at Jack with eyes that seemed to hold both empathy and accusation.

Jeeny: “When was the last time you felt something, Jack — really felt it — without describing it, labeling it, analyzing it?”

Jack: “When I was twenty-five.”

Jeeny: “What happened?”

Jack: “I stopped writing poetry.”

Host: The admission fell heavy, like rain after drought. The sound of the word “poetry” seemed almost alien in the cold geometry of glass and concrete around them.

Jeeny: “Why’d you stop?”

Jack: “Because I started working. Because rent doesn’t get paid with feelings. Because words started sounding like lies when I had to sell them.”

Jeeny: “That’s the tragedy Ammons meant. When thought becomes commentary instead of creation.”

Jack: “And what about you, Jeeny? When was the last time you had a direct experience?”

Jeeny: “Yesterday.”

Jack: “Doing what?”

Jeeny: “Crying. For no reason. Not into a journal. Not into my phone. Just crying. Letting it exist without needing to explain it.”

Host: Jack looked at her, quiet now — the kind of quiet that wasn’t disagreement but contemplation. The city’s light shimmered across her face, and for a moment, she looked like something beyond argument — a mirror of the truth he couldn’t quite deny.

Jack: “You think I’m afraid to feel?”

Jeeny: “I think you’re afraid to stop talking long enough to realize you already are.”

Host: Outside, a billboard flashed through a rotation of advertisements — phones, perfume, vacation homes — faces smiling with algorithmic perfection. Each image dissolved into the next, each promise emptier than the one before.

Jack: “You know, there’s a study that says most people would rather get an electric shock than sit alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes.”

Jeeny: “Of course. Silence is dangerous. It shows you who you really are beneath the noise.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s what Ammons feared — not that we talk too much, but that we talk to drown out the truth.”

Jeeny: “And the truth being?”

Jack: “That we don’t know what we believe anymore.”

Jeeny: “Maybe belief was never meant to be declared. Maybe it was meant to be lived.”

Host: Jeeny moved to the edge of the window, leaning out slightly. The air touched her face, cool and unfiltered. Her eyes closed. She took a deep breath — not symbolic, just human.

Jeeny: “You feel that?”

Jack: “What?”

Jeeny: “The wind. The cold. That’s experience, Jack. No words. No theory. Just sensation. That’s what Ammons was begging us to return to.”

Host: Jack hesitated, then followed her to the window. The night wind tousled his hair, sharp and real. For the first time that evening, the dialogue stopped. There were no arguments left to make.

Jeeny: “Everything’s become commentary. Even our hearts. But the world doesn’t need your opinion, Jack. It needs your presence.”

Jack: “And if I’ve forgotten how to give it?”

Jeeny: “Then start small. Feel the air. Taste the salt. Hear the hum. You don’t need to write it down — just live it.”

Host: They stood side by side, the city’s pulse beneath them, the sky above — endless, indifferent, pure. For a long time, neither spoke.

The only language was breath.

Jack: “Maybe Ammons was right. We’ve turned life into literature. And somewhere along the way, we forgot to live it.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe it’s time we shut the book.”

Host: A single page fluttered from the desk and drifted toward the floor, landing face-up — a poem half-read, half-forgotten.

Jack bent to pick it up but stopped midway. Instead, he left it there — letting it stay unfinished.

Jeeny smiled.

The lamplight flickered once, then steadied.

Host: Outside, the first faint light of dawn bled into the horizon — pale, uncertain, but undeniably real.

For the first time in a long while, Jack and Jeeny didn’t say a word.

They simply stood there, letting the world, in all its unspoken truth, finally touch them.