Lessons from "The Fountainhead", part one

I read the Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) recently. I must say, that I loved most of it. The end got a bit preachy, but either way the book has a lot to offer, philosophically and otherwise. So now that there is some distance between it and me - having read some other books - I will return to some of my favourite quotes/lessons. I hope you enjoy...

"He wondered whether he really liked his mother. But she was his mother and this fact was recognized by everybody as meaning automatically that he loved her, and so he took for granted that whatever he felt for her was love. He did not know whether there was any reason why he should respect her judgement. She was his mother; this was supposed to take the place of reasons." page 35

Replace "mother" with any relative you like and it still applies. Even better, if you can, replace "mother" with some relative you don't really know or particulaly like but you are expected to respect. What is this odd combination of dependence, admiration, guilt, debt, trust, obligation ...whatever, that we feel for them? Is this love? Is it that special brand of love that we can only feel for family - blood being thicker than water and all that? Or do we just assume it is because we don't want to be that crass bastard who doesn't love his mother? Is it taboo to even think that your father, your brother, your ageing homely grandmother has to -God forbid! - earn your love? When these same relatives mistreat you, is it petty and premature to just say, "Wow, that person just doesn't love me."

Can we accept this? Is this too hard to bear?

Union Square

I was walking through Union square looking absent-mindedly at the people playing chess. I caught the eye of an older kind-looking fellow who was at a table alone.

"Come here baby! Let me teach you how to play chess." He said.

I just smiled, shook my head and kept walking. Everybody in earshot started cracking up as he shouted at me across the park:

"Listen to me!!

You won't be cute forever!

You WILL turn 50!

You've got to get INTELLIGENT!!!"

Ha!

BTW... today is my birthday! yay!

Kafka

If you look back at my old entry Church Bells on the 28th of June I mention retiring one of my 'todays confessions' - found in the sidebar

It read: "I am restless. I am looking for something I cannot name. Is this unhappiness?"

Imagine my surprise when I read the forward (John Updike) of my Complete Stories of Franz Kafka:

'Karfa epitomizes one apsect of this modern mind-set : a sensation of anxiety and shame whose center cannot be located and therefore cannot be placated..."

Jesus. Literature is a beautiful thing. I guess "modernism" is something I should look into. Perhaps it can help me understand my current moods.

But I have only read The Metamorphosis" so far... and I hated it.... all except the ending. I hated every character. I hated the unshocked lightness of the tale. I am sorry that Gregor had to become physical manifestation of his family's pointless, lazy, self-absorbed existence, but I guess we are meant to feel a relief at his awful death. At least,by and through his death his sister, father and mother became real and vitalized people. Being a scapegoat sucks. He should never have returned or visited home, but more than that he should have never facilitated their previously useless existence. I'm no good at analyzing literature, but this is what the story meant to me and I suppose that is all that matters.

Maybe I can make myself read some more.

My Father

My grandma had her operation and we went to visit her in the hospital. I stood over her and looked into her face while she spoke to me of life, sickness and her children.

"Sickness is not a good thing. Neither is having children"

"Then why did you have eight?" I rebutted.

"Because I love them. You love children before you see them. Do you know why I love your dad?"

"No."

She explained to me - as she had in the past - that it was her hardest pregnancy. That a priest had visited her everyday and had given her a book on St Francis of Assissi who, in turn, gave my father his name.

"And you know what else?" She asked

"What?"

"He is a good man. When he sets himself to do something he does it. He isn't afraid of hard work. He is an honest man - no underhanded business. And if he is your friends he is your friend."

When I look at my dad I look at a very small period of his life and I look from a certain angle. It is beautiful to hear the angle of his mother. For the first time I thought I could see the man my mother fell in love with and married.