A lone maple leaf detaches from its life source, fluttering down into the pond to join its fallen friends already soft and brown with decay, the first casualties of an inexorable winter rapidly approaching. A fish hides in the leaf’s shade and nibbles off a snack. A bigger fish lurks deeper, hungry. The leaf fed its tree with energy from the sun, now it feeds the fish with its dying body, and soon, it will be mud. We will all soon be mud.
The white fountain spray arcs down, a flurry of ideas, each water droplet creating ripples on the pond’s surface before fading into obscurity. A pair of ducks bobs up and down with each wave of ideas, oblivious.
Our brilliant star shines upon it all, granting color and beauty, making visible the subconscious thoughts of the fountain that don’t make ripples but drift upward to join the rest of the vaporous mist, one day to form ideas which will feed the leaves and the trees.
A man tells me a story, but I already know how it ends: a plea for money. I listen because he was once a child who played with the other children. A child with dreams of being an astronaut or a fireman, a child who would always smile and laugh. Now he’s a shell of a man with a stained shirt asking strangers for pocket change. He realizes and admits to me his condition is no one’s fault but his own which is rare among beggars, among anyone.
Thanking me for the money, he introduces himself and shakes my hand. Joe Duncan. The name his parents lovingly chose for him. One seemingly insignificant decision can lead to a lifetime of misery. That’s the world we live in. A beautiful world rife with choice and freedom. I wonder if Joe will make it, if I’ll ever see him again. Probably not on both accounts.
The same early autumn breeze that disconnected the maple leaf now flows lazily over the pond of ideas then rises to say hi and invigorate me. I close my eyes and let my attention wander away from the sights and sounds of my world. It travels into the future, over the mountains, down the beach, then focuses inward. I no longer feel the breeze or hear the fountain or see the leaves, but just feel what it’s like to be me, something no one else will ever feel, something I cannot describe in words, and my subconscious thoughts rise up and join with those of the fountain and the ducks and Joe Duncan and every other human who has ever lived.