My first morning in Taos, I sat on the back patio of Cafe Tazza, a coffee shop. My plan was to continue reading Studs Terkel's Working, but I was distracted by the conversation next to me. A tan lady with short gray hair, blue plaid shirt, and jeans, had come from the back entrance and spotted a friend, and began to talk to her. She looked rather normal, not homeless or crazy at all. I took the best notes I could:

"Did you have a good July 4th? Good. I just read the Dharma Bums and I felt like Jack Kerouac, so I went into the woods on July 4th and took off all my clothes to let the mosquitoes eat me. I've been reading about myself in Nostradamus, there's a prophecy about how I'm going to conquer the West. I'm still thinking about that, I need to think out loud, you know? Thanks for listening. I thought I'd go to an American-Indian ceremony, but they're all commercial these days. I just want to experience some authenticity, something real. I was at a Japanese Tea Ceremony recently, they're authentic. I think I belong in the Orient, they are focused authenticity, like me. I just want to live on a rice paddy in Japan, especially a brown rice paddy. That's the most harmonizing grain, it's my favorite. I don't want to be famous, I don't want this prophecy, I just want to live anonymously on a rice paddy. Kennedy said 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for her.' He was right, but I've got to think of myself. You know, the prophecy was saying I'm the Christ, and I thought, you know, I do remember the spikes in my hands when I was on the cross. But you know what, I'd rather be the anti-christ, we all would. That's just more fun. I'm sorry for going on about this, I just need to think out loud, I just don't know what to do. I didn't ask for this responsibility, I just want to live on a rice paddy. That's all. Andy Warhol said 'It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger.' I have to be the Christ. You know, speaking of Warhol, I saw Search for Signs of Intelligent Life on Broadway. The play is soup, the audience is art. I have the last line memorized, but I can never say it without crying. [Starts to walk away, comes back. Pauses for tears.] 'I like to think of them out there in the dark, ...... watching us. Sometimes we'll ..... do something and they'll laugh. Sometimes we'll do something ..... and they'll cry. And ....... maybe one day we'll do something so magnificent, everyone in the universe will get goose bumps.' ........ I saw that with a friend who later died from AIDS. Do you understand, though, that we're going to be ok. We're all going to make it back, we're going to ride the course and be ok, understand that."

After apologizing for going on and on to her friend, she goes inside and plays the piano for half an hour, then wanders out. She was in the shop the next day, sitting by the barista, reading a magazine.

I'm at the Sanctuario de Chimayo restaurant by myself, so I listen to other conversations. I hear rumors that the cast of the latest Santa Fe Opera production is having dinner on one of the outdoor terraces. Behind me are nuclear physicists on their way to Los Alamos. They are discussing God, and asking each other what they think life all means. They don't get very deep into their conversation, barely past their qualifiers, when the Opera cast sings happy birthday. The restaurant stops, and everyone listens to the powerful rendition, and applauds at the end. The physicists start a new conversation: some people are hard to work with. I focus on a conversation to my side, the husband is discussing investments, what I fled, and the wife is complaining that the food is bland. Frustrated, the husband exclaims "of course it's bland! You had them remove all the sauce, cheese, and chilies!"

On the flight to Denver.

I stopped a Buddhist Monk before he sat in the middle seat to tell him mine was the window seat, with the intent that I wouldn't have to make him stand back up to let me sit. Annoyed, he said, "It does not matter. If that is where you wish to sit, then you may sit there." After we sat, his traveling companion gave him her iPod to listen to. "I've got hours and hours of lectures by his Holiness," she said. "THIS IS AN IPOD?" he shouted back over the lecture playing on his headphones. As the safety demonstration was proceeding, he took out his cell phone and made a call. After a brief second, he handed the phone to his companion and told her to say hi to Cindy and Charlie. She told them she was sorry, but she had to go as the flight attendants had just told us to turn off all electronic devices. As she was saying this, an attendant came over to her and told her to please turn off her phone. "Oh, you're always getting me in trouble," she told her Monk afterward, as she handed me a stick of gum.