“Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger."
--David Foster Wallace (2005)

If Lehmann's doesn't find a buyer today, the markets are going to be a bloodbath. BBC is talking about this being a once-in-a-decade economic crisis, and I believe it. I should be ordering more gold and silver but I don't have the money. What a time to not have money!

My Aunt Kerri died Thursday night. She had a pulminary embellism, brought about by some recent surgery. She was 38. Kerri loved old musicals from the 50's. She loved Kansas City, bargain shopping, and huge tankards of soda (coke, not pepsi). She was a wonderful, complicated sort of woman who was the first to complain, but the first to help out in a crisis. She donated all her time to helping my grandparents and homeschooling her two little children. She was like my sister Julia--loving, generous, with a quick fire temper. She had just completed our family geneology when she died. I'm really going to miss her. I was upset to go through my digital pictures and realize I only had one photo of her. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I thought I'd have time to take more.

From this week's Savage Love:

The GOP has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into abstinence "education" programs during the Bush years. I believe this enormous investment of public funds begs the obvious question: is our children abstaining?

Amazing.

Let me just put this out there: I am re-reading The Fountainhead right now. I've got a lot of baggage with that book. I find myself going to elaborate lengths to disguise what I'm reading. On the train, I hide it behind my purse. I put it in my bag face down, so people are less likely to glimpse the title. At the same time, I'm completely loving it. My favorite scene is when Roark leaps from his desk and re-draws his design for the Heller house while his boss and colleagues stand there dumbstruck and furious. I just love it.

I think an exchange I had this morning sums up a lot of things about Ayn Rand and the devotion she inspires (even among those of us old enough to know better).

I sat down on the Metra next to a lawyerly man in a suit with documents spread across his knees. Holding the book face down on my lap, I opened it just slightly to remove my train ticket, which had been serving as a bookmark. He did an immediate double take. "Oh! You're reading ... "

I looked at him, alarmed and wide-eyed, and put my finger over my lips. "Shhhh" I hissed conspiratorially.

"You don't want me to tell the whole train that you're reading Ayn Rand?" he said in a whisper.

"I've been trying to keep it a secret."

"You could put a brown paper cover on it."

"I've thought about that."

"Or maybe you could put an Obama sticker on it -- people might wonder about the contradiction."

"Not a bad idea."

"Wow. I'm surprised it's still around. I read her books when I was young."

"I first read this when I was a teenager."

"This is your _second_ time?"

"Yeah."

"I think reading it as an adult you'd see a lot more nuances and depth."

"In some ways -- reading it now, I think it's a little overwrought, but I still love it."

"I'm glad it's still around. I'm surprised. That's nice to see that some things don't change. I'm glad."

"Yeah. It's fun."

"OK, I'll let you get back to reading."

We grinned at each other. I went back to my book.

I ordered this. In my defense, I got it on ebay at a substantial discount.

It is not in the nature of man -- or any living entity -- to start out by giving up, by spitting in one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and life's potential.

- Ayn Rand, 1968

Do I take credit and blame for who I was when I was a teenager? I don't know. On one hand, I had no idea what anything was like. On the other hand, I had very definite ideas about how things ought to be. I expected great things from myself. I expected to work towards and achieve the greatest possible success in whatever I set out to do.

It's been a gradual process for me -- that wearing down. My expectations for myself have gradually diminished.

I have spent the past year (to be precise, one year, two weeks, one day, and counting) in a job that -- to put it bluntly -- is beneath me. Taking this job was the biggest mistake I've made in my adult life. I tried for a long while to detach myself from what I did at work each day. To let it roll off my back. To tell myself, as I always did when I was a waitress, "this is not your life." But it's been too much. This year has gotten under my skin, and I am demoralized.

Now here I am, degree in hand, respectable credentials, applying with increasing anxiety for jobs I do not want.

I worked so hard to get my law degree. I earned excellent grades; I participated wholeheartedly in law review, moot court, trial advocacy -- everything. I paid for it myself. I never once stopped working full time. I proceeded in the good faith belief that it would all add up; that it would all pay off; that someone would recognize that my path -- although unconventional and not prestigious -- spoke well of my character and abilities.

Now, I am filled with apprehension and self-doubt. There are so many things in my chosen profession that I now think I cannot do -- no one will have me, no one will give me a chance.

Never before in my life would it have occurred to me to believe that I would be anything less than the very best at whatever I put my mind to. Now, every application that I fax, email or FedEx that goes unanswered is another chink in my armor. It's a voice that says, "I can't I can't I can't. you were foolish. you were naive. you made it too hard. you should have done it their way. you will have to take another terrible job after this one. you have no options." That voice is getting louder. It's drowning out the voice that always said -- "to hell with their way. you know who you are and what you're capable of."

I don't know whether I can get back to that place. I don't know whether I should try.