I met Bob Dylan once in a friend's antique store in Santa Monica where I was working. I was wearing white levis, a turquoise blue silk india kurta shirt and a pair of black velvet zoris and working with my back to the counter. He came in and he was wearing white levis, a dark blue india kurta shirt and sandals. I turned around to see who was behind me, and there he was was, the shortest man in the world dressed exactly like me. It was shocking how friggin' short he is. Seriously that man must need a booster seat to drive. I mean, at 5'11", my head actually had to bend downward to take him in in weird perspective. Then there was the shock of seeing a man dressed exactly like me. Then of course, it took me a few minutes to absorb that it was Bob Dylan. My face registered each of these little shocks in sequence, and he started grinning wider and wider each time until I registered final recognition, and then he just laughed. WEll, snickered actually. I was just being charitable to call it a laughe

We talked a bit and he told me I was a rose in an arid world and asked me 'what are you doing here? You should be in some philosophy department at Berkeley.' The way he said 'philosophy' was exactly how you would think Bob Dylan would say it: he sort of spit it out. But it was weird, I mean why philosophy?

Anyway, I went home and thought about it, and decided to go back to graduate school. But not in philosophy.