Old friend has come home here.

My daughter gave me a big new edition of Atlas Shrugged for my birthday (OK, I asked for it). I first read this when I was 20 years young and riding the streetcar down Market Street to my job at Travelers Insurance, 555 California Street. I remember plowing through the first half of the book (that's 550 pages, a very big first half), waiting for something to happen. Then Dagny crashes her plane in the valley and it all came together and was absolutely amazing. I have since seen interviews Ayn Rand gave and you have to hand it to her, she lived her heroine's life, lifted chin and all. Her characters are either heroes or slobs, with very few shades of gray in between. I guess Eddie Willers qualifies in that latter category, and she flushes him as readily as she does that slug James Taggart and all his cronies. I adopted her philosophy when I was tender because it felt really good to believe that I was a noble being and totally self-directed. Well, it felt good until I ran off the road and spent a couple of decades thrashing around in a jungle of my own making before running into a brick wall at 200 mph. Still, I read this book every 10 years or so. I could do worse than to not depend on the kindness of others for my happiness and support and be the hero of my own live. And there is a spirit of interdependence there that rings true as well. She just missed the one key that I have found so helpful, God. I want to believe that she led a happy life, dear Ayn. Certainly it was one of deep conviction, one that was born out of deep resentment of the constrictions of communism in her native Russia. I hope to meet up with her someday and ask her about that. She can come to my salon in heaven to lecture to us, along with Tchaikowsky and Buddha and maybe even Jesus.