Young man reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead this morning on the train. You know the one about the architect, or architecture. I mention Atlas Shrugged.

Ask him if he does something creative and he says I write short stories. I just can’t seem to discipline myself to write. I suggest he take 10 minutes every morning. He says he’s making coffee and looking for work clothes, I suggest he figure out the clothes the night before, and write with his first copy. He said he doesn’t have the discipline to do that.

He works with severely handicapped children at a local middle school. More specifically a 13 year old with a muscular disease and pica, the condition where a person eats everything, paper, rocks, dirt, food, pens. I ask him if this is what he wants to do long term, he’s been there for a year. He said no, he thinks he’ll get his teaching credential, people get burned out doing this. His mother works with this population also.

We talk about the unique ways the human mind works, I talk about people who only like blue items, he talks about people who only like big bird. I ask them which is a color. Computer or green. They like computers so they will answer computer if given that choice for any question. They don’t care if it doesn’t make sense. It does to them. They like computers.