fountainhead

A creative few nights away from home, I’m staying in a house with a view of Mt. Shasta – a house that feels nearly like home for the time I’ve spent here alone and working. I’m not alone this time, my sister-in-law is here to read and relax too. Today, an unexpected rain storm with violent sheets of water from the sky – so beautiful and invigorating, and what fragrant air still remains from the open window even at this late hour.

So golly, I’m loving The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Few books have had this affect on me – I can name a few like works by Graham Greene, Lewis, John Irving and such. It’s a behemoth of a novel with over 700 pages of tiny print. I’ve only reached over 200. Only 200 pages and I just can’t express clearly all that's it's meant.

Do you ever feel at the end of something, at the threshold of something new, yet you’re patient, expectant and feeling strong in your forward walk? It often begins with things coming round again first. The whole full circle thing. And yet, there is no going back really or coming around to the beginning because we also move onward, changed, scarred, more beautiful perhaps, weaker and stronger too.

Parts of this book are bringing into view what I’ve been catching glimpses of. And I feel an energy to walk forward even while fear must be stomped with hard steps.
From the backcover summary, “This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him.” That my fellow book lovers is a glimpse into a book of incredible layers, character studies, views into why people do what they do or don’t do even when they want to…on and on.
And now for some random quotes, and I truly mean random. My book is filled with underlined passages and notes all over those 200 pages, and I just pulled these out for no purpose at all.

QUOTE-ARAMA TIME:
"He thought of his days going by, of buildings he could have been doing, should have been doing and, perhaps, never would be doing again. He watched the pain’s unsummoned appearance with a cold, detached curiosity; he said to himself: Well, here it is again. He waited to see how long it would last. It gave him a strange, hard pleasure to watch his fight against it, and he could forget that it was his own suffering; he could smile in contempt, not realizing that he smiled at his own agony. Such moments were rare. But when they came, he felt as he did in the quarry: that he had to drill through granite, that he had to drive a wedge and blast that thing within him which persisted in calling to his pity.”

(this by Roarke, the young architect talking to a potential client)
“Don’t you know that most people take most things because that’s what’s given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?”
“You can’t force it down their throats.”
“You don’t have to. You must only be patient. Because on your side you have reason – oh, I know, it’s something no one really wants to have on his side – and against you, you have just a vague, fat, blind inertia.”

well that's all for now from the mountain. nighteo or rather guten morgan from ceecee-senorita