This year is getting off to a rough start. The tsunami news is bad, the war news is bad, and right this minute I'm sitting in a coffee house next to a woman who is deep into some sort of altered state. I don't know what to do, except go on with what I'm doing, and I have to say, I'm a little scared of her. I'm scared for her, too -- there doesn't seem to be any safe place for too many people like her.

She's talking to God, and alternating between direct discourse and a monologue about how God makes it impossible to be a good messiah. I was sitting here checking my email when she started, and I truly don't know what to do; every time someone from the shop has approached her, she's been angry with them. So maybe it is best I appear to pay no attention.

LA seems to be full of street people with nowhere to go, lately. They are more apparent in the wintertime when it is cold and rainy because they are out when everyone else is keeping warm someplace. I have no idea what to do for them, and I hate that feeling. I particularly hate it when someone is suffering, as this woman clearly is, and there's not a darn thing I can do for her except possibly scare her much worse than she's scaring me.

"What kind of prayer would be worth praying?" she said, and I must say it is an excellent question.