Me, Aaron, Melissa, and Livy. Since we are the only four Objectivists who do not live in New Zealand, we had our own conference. Well, Jenn and Martin were there too, for a bit. It was great.

Hey guys. I wanted to apologize for being so freakin bitchy in my posts today. I've had a terrible week culminating in an even worse day or two, and I got on SOLO and made about 400 sharp and over dramatic posts. I am especially sorry to Joe and Thomas who both got the worst of my bad mood and unsociable feelings. I think the things I said were right, but I said them with a cross spirit.

When my mind is darkened and stormy with regrets,
Words flash into me, lightening on a black sky,
Thunderous phrases crashing against my ears,
Power like a prophetess crackling around my outline.

You woke every night, drenched in sweat, from a restless tossing sleep.
You woke to a touch that you felt like sound, a voice on your skin,
A love song that vibrated over every nerve,
Singing invisible caresses, chanting unseen pleasure
On every tender part of you.

You woke to his smell, a mountainous, snowy smell.
In through your nose and your pores you breathed
The fresh and musky smell of the young athlete,

… we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted -- better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that …
--- Robert Browning “Fra Lippo Lippi”

Summer in Georgia is green, but I make it greener,
Verdent and vivid and wild, when viewed through the lens of a poem.

I wish I was writing about a sordid affair I was having here in Atlanta. But instead, I am going to say my piece about the Brandens, PARC, Linz, ARI, and all that jazz. Linz asked me to post something, and I will, mostly because I want to praise him a lot. He deserves it.

First, let me say, I was never taken in by Nathaniel Branden. His website and the hatefulness of his "memoirs" (Can they be called that when you make them up?) were enough to show me what an ungrateful distorter of a philosophy he must have understood at one time he is. Barbara on the other hand had me fooled. I saw from her posts on the old SOLO that she wasn't really an Objectivist. (I am one of those who thinks that that word has real referents in reality.) But aside from that, she seemed a nice old lady to me. I admired her book, and I enjoyed her comments by and large.