"How 'bout those markets?!"

That was the question emailed to me by a friend yesterday when the Dow crashed 778 points in one day following a nay vote on the $700 billion bailout package. (Needless to say, the answer was "ungood.")

Though matters of national fiscal catastrophe might seem far afield for this space, in many ways they are also deeply connected to the origins and means of what I do and what I try to do -- this nonsense of making a living with words. My debts have certainly held me back on occasion from chasing a dream, or in some cases the mere ideas of dreams. Yet my debts have also focused my energies and rightly reminded me of my surrounding circumstances. This isn't always a bad deal. I have sometimes found that the most rewarding and satisfying experience occasionally hides right before us, masquerading as unappealing: the simple solitary homemade meal vs. another night eating out with friends. (Or as a famous philosopher once put it, "A man's got to know his limitations.")

Thankfully, Margaret Atwood -- as profiled in this Times piece a few days ago -- puts the subject in appropriate perspective. Debt commands our culture. Very likely, debt, personal and national, will define not only my generation but the ones before and after it. But perhaps the most provocative truth, which Atwood points out, is that debt has both material and immaterial aspects, completely aside from money:

“It was never just about money: it was about owing. Money is the form in which we have embodied this but it takes a huge number of other forms. What we're really talking about is imbalances of obligation, which is what debt is.”

As for the material aspects of debt, we can start with our own bodies:

In writing Payback Atwood became fascinated with a phrase spoken of the dead: “He has paid his debt to nature.” “It means you've borrowed something - the physical part of yourself made up of natural elements - and you're paying it back by dissolving into nature. What else are we borrowing from nature and how do we repay it?” The book's final chapter proposes an answer in strong terms.

I look forward to reading more of Atwood's appraisal of this fascinating (and uncannily timely) subject as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.