When the peacocks honked, I awoke and turned on my side and went back to sleep. I dreamed, off and on, that we were embedding mosaic tiles and brooches and seashells into the wooden stairs of the Santa Fe house in which we are staying. But instead of making good on the beautiful designs of our fancies, we made holes in each stair. Our gift was too generous, our project was too ambitious, and the consequences told against our ideas. Our hostess Kitty wasn’t happy. ‘Those who act defeat their purpose,’ says Laozi. ‘The truth is paradoxical,’ he concludes.

Where Appalachia is bound tightly as if holding its mountain breath, New Mexico is vast, all lying open to view. One’s eyes drink and are parched yet sated. Among the mountains of Santa Fe lay hamlets with homes that cross adobe and farmhouse, that blend the coolness of Spanish tile with the austerity of Lutheran church beams.

As we crossed the north Texas border, we listened to Johnny Cash’s song ‘Hurt,’ a cover of Nine Inch Nails. Oh this impermanence, oh this ’empire of dirt.’ Approaching Santa Fe, we listened to Bob Dylan’s ‘Santa Fe.’ Here, unlike in Oklahoma and northern Texas, one can glory in the magnificence of impermanence and take breaths and breathe and fall down before and look up at all the ten thousand things. So we go.