Nathaniel Branden - a quiet numbness

6:03 AM 4/8/11

I slept badly, and I've woken up hungry, and there's no food in the fridge. I'm not ready to go out and get food yet. This is disgusting, but I drank sugar water just to have something. I scooped spoonfuls of sugar into one of my bottles of water.

They wanted me to write to Nathaniel Branden this morning, so I did. Inappropriate behavior is allowed now. All those stuffy Objectivists, scared of being irrational, are now invited to go pester Nathaniel Branden and do things like, public displays of affection, and writing silly things on his wall like 'Does the pope have a wooden butt?' (After reading that, I decided I couldn't go wrong.) (It was in the context of someone asking the question, 'How do I find the theater where they're showing Atlas Shrugged?')

When an author writes a book and you read it, it's like that book was written just for you. You feel a personal bond with the author as though they are speaking directly to you, for you, as though you're the only one who ever read them, the only one who ever will, as though they thought of you when they wrote it and knew you would read it.

And how strange to discover that authors have their own families and loved ones, and that you are merely a reader among many readers. You mean that wasn't written just for me? I'm not the only one who ever loved you?

Nathaniel Branden might still be alive, as somebody seems to be pushing the 'accept friend request' button on his facebook page. It occurred to me that the page might be fake, that someone else is pretending to be Nathaniel Branden, and I guess that's possible. They have some photos of him, though. Someone commented on his photo, 'You still rock.'

When they woke me up they gave me the mission as the peacebringer to accept his death. So I told him that I felt a quiet numbness. My letter is one letter among hundreds. I can't see his inbox, but I know they are there.