Jan 23, 2007 11:14
So I’m reading the Fountainhead, and I took my bookmark out at pages 588-599 because what was on those pages moved me to the point where I didn’t need it to remember where I was:
“And of course we knew it was for the best. I can’t imagine myself married to you.”
“You can’t imagine it, Katie?”
“That is, nor to anyone else. It wouldn’t have worked, Peter. I’m temperamentally unsuited to domesticity; it’s too selfish and narrow. Of course, I understand what you feel just now and I appreciate it. It’s only human that you should feel something like remorse, since you did what is known as jilted me.” He winced. “You see how stupid those things sound. It’s natural for you to be a little contrite- a normal reflex- but we must look at it objectively, we’re grown up, rational people, nothing is too serious, we cant really help what we do, we’re conditioned that way, we just charge off to experience and go on from there.”
“Katie! You’re not talking some fallen girl out of her problem. You’re speaking about yourself.”
“Is there any essential difference? Everybody’s problems are the same, just like everybody’s emotions.”
He saw her nibbling a thin strip of bread with a smear of green, and noticed that his order had been served. He moved his fork about in his salad bowl, and he made himself bite into a gray piece of diet cracker. Then he discovered how strange it was when one lost the knack of eating automatically and had to do it by full conscious effort; the cracker seemed inexhaustible; he could not finish the process of chewing; he moved his jaws with out reducing the amount of gritty pulp in his mouth.
" Katie... for six years... I thought of how I'd ask your forgiveness some day. And now I have the chance, but I won't ask it. It seems... it seems besides the point. I know it's horrible to say that, but that's how it seems to me. It was the worst thing I ever did in my life - but not because I hurt you. I did hurt you, Katie, and maybe more than you know yourself. But that's not my worst guilt... Katie, I really wanted to marry you. It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that's the sin that can't be forgiven - that I hadn't done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there's no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain - and wasted pain.... Katie, why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world - to do what we want. As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those things - they're not even desires - they're things people do to escape from desires - because its such a big responsibility, really to want something."
“Peter, what you’re saying is very ugly and selfish.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve always had to tell you the truth. About everything. Even if you didn’t ask. I had to.”
“Yes. You did. It was a commendable trait. You were a charming boy, Peter.”
p. 588-599 Ayn Rand - "The Fountainhead"
Anyway, real update coming on…Thursday probably. Maybe Wednesday if I can’t sleep or something.