It was a faint trail at first, though having upset a few natives. Seasons of use trompled leaves of grass. And now the snow plow scrapes this highway in a winter waste land, leaving even the air above gasping. Seeming strange, since there have been no apologies, no murmurs of admission.

There are plans to widen the road. Snow is falling again. In fact, more than ever. But not to worry. It's a good job, never ends.

All the world's a stage . . .

Oh, so? Near Los Gatos, California, at Lupin Lodge, the Emperor will get his new clothes. And no one will tell him the part he's to play. If clothes make the man, who will be fooled?

For a long time I mused without quite understanding why. I'd thought a thought quite out of the blue: “All the world's a stage, and only I am in the audience.”

Now it's clear. The world sets the stage, provides a stage manager, dressing rooms, actors to do the parts. Temporarily. Such a hustle. Then to be left with, in the end, Lupin Lodge.

And how do I differ? One example will do. Let's find our Bard at the Arctic Circle, where the Emperor would freeze. The Globe is sustained only in a make-believe world.

Absurd, beware! Beneath the handlebar of my bike flew a different reality. To anyone else it would all seem the same, if slightly askew. It is all the same, actually.

To drop the disguise, let's lose the bike. Never really liked it anyway. It was big, heavy, and the rider was not Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda, or Carl Jung on acid. Now, destinations usually mean somewhere else. Assume they're ordinary. Shining knight on a metal monster might have been a guess, but consider I never even grew a handlebar mustache. Just this guy nobody really knows. Or whither.

So the gloves are off and it's the freedom of the road, toad. Destination nowhere in particular. Imagine as from a distance the arrival at Parliament, or a building in the village square with a clock tower. It is perhaps a bank, or a temple, a cow shed. All one in the same, like that picture in its tilted frame.

Though no one's paying very close attention.

Here we might find the purpose of a waterfall.

Contours of the land leave depressions that channel water, which goes as low as it can. Arriving at a precipice, it falls. And quite predictably. It's fall is reminiscent of a predicate. The two words sound much the same, almost as a slow drip of repetition serves to mesmerize consciousness. Or stand near a tree in the gentle rain, and be soothed with it.

Plants are conscious, but a waterfall? Runoff in a forest rises in streams that merge, their levels rising. Depending on the severity of the storm, a sylvan waterfall might roar. Water is the basis of life which often roars, insisting on reproduction, to fulfill its purpose.

A waterfall might overflow in a basin, where it will acquiesce. If enough water comes it might spill over into another waterfall, and so on, none of them insisting.

Humans might insist that since water predicates life, a waterfall must have a purpose. But wouldn't that be to confuse semantics with reality?

In our backyard, a leaf fell. Of course one among many in this season of lengthening shadows. For no particular reason it became just itself. I would liken that to becoming really myself. No thought, idea or belief will alter the leaf. But I can imagine its slow change, becoming compost. Or perhaps, as my father liked to do, a big pile of leaves could be raked together to make a bonfire. Then the sense of vision transmogrifies to include the sense of smell, an acrid delight this time of year. But for now, this seems inadvisable, considering the weather and our severe drought, fires and fire danger increasing everywhere. What I think is not so important.

A close regard for the leaf shows it is unique. I wonder at what stage of dissolution it will lose this distinction. And what has my thought to do with the certainty of its dissolution? I could affect the course of its journey. Beyond thought is the leaf itself. There is no denying that.