I decided I should read The Fountainhead. Maybe it was a desire to overcompensate for an inferior literature education, but it could have been the title. Those words: The Fountainhead, held a mystery to be be delved and considered beyond the initial glimpse of article plus compound noun. Obviously, I didn’t have a clue as to the book’s content.

It took weeks to trudge through (that’s what happens when you read at 15 minute intervals), and I won’t trouble you with a synopsis, because in the words of an airplane seatmate from L.A., most people read this when they were “students in like the eight grade”. So you know already, or even if you don’t, it isn’t really important.

The Fountainhead was largely conceived as a vehicle to promote Rand’s philosophy, objectivism and to project the ideal man. So, I wasn’t the target audience…The initial encounters between Dominique Francon and Howard Roark strike me as anything but ideal (and more than a little disturbing), but I will leave those details for the critics and students of comparative literature to sort through.

After I finished the novel, I came away with two impressions.

The first being Ellsworth Toohey was colossal dick, brilliant but a dick is still a dick. Toohey’s subtle manipulation of characters like a deft puppet master, infuriated me off, like a well written character should. He was so wonderfully despicably written that Bagging Tooheys became another euphemism for expunging waste from the litter box.

As for my second impression, maybe objectivism has a limited application. I object to one size fits all philosophy based on principle. I have yet to encounter an ideology, or an ism for the matter, that adequately takes into account the complexity of individuals when proclaiming what behavior is most beneficial to the collective. I don’t agree with Larry Flynt about many things, but I do agree with his quote, “Majority rule only works if you’re also considering individual rights. Because you can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.”

Objectivism’s most logical application is art. Not inclusive of so-called-art that infringes upon the rights of an individual or group. By infringing, I mean unsafe, or unlawful.

Artists are more apt to create their strongest work when they follow their own vision. They may not succeed in creating timeless work, or work that appeals to the masses, but they will produce work that better represents the essence of who they are and their path of growth. Will it make the world a better place? Probably not, but do millions of velvet Elvis paintings, or Thomas Kinky reproductions make us more enlightened?

Artist choose their own paths. I’m not condemning anyone who has made sacrifices to obtain some level of commercial success. All must eat. Freewill permits us to choose. I’m glad some still choose to follow their own stream of conscience even if it doesn’t lead to greatness, because sooner or later it could inspire someone else to transcend the barrier.

I thought the days of scraped knees and blue shins were behind me, like the childhood days of creating a homemade slip-n-slide out of a plastic drop cloth and using dishwashing detergent as a lubricant. That was the last scraped knee, or was a small gash,I recall having. Maybe childishness never really evaporates, we just grow too uptight to appreciate the joy and begin dismissing it in the name of sophistication. I still adhere to some juvenile traits, like sulking. Mature, huh?

We finished the paver path and the end result feels anticlimactic. Nine months of various stages of planning, designing, compromising and redesigning, unadulterated laziness, deliveries, procrastination, begging and pleading. Completion should be a means to an end, but it falls short. Not of expectations exactly, but something like it…I can’t claim disappoint sans expectations, because how can you be disappointed if you don’t anticipate a minimal return on planning.

I’m displeased all the effort didn’t yield some pinnacle of greatness, or golden idol of suburban idealism. Nope. None of those things. Just a fucking path from the parking pad to the front door.

The neighbors have been complimentary, even generous, with their praise, though I can’t help but wonder are the praising the path itself, or the fact that it only took six months to move three palettes of concrete bricks out of the front yard. All I see are the shortcomings, the squandered preparations, and the micromanaging I’ve endured for the past four days. The slowly executed task transformed into a high priority project because the weather was sucky for execution there was a piece of equipment with an expensive rental contract (tick, tick, tick tick). The results feel paltry compared to the effort, but the neighbors aren’t concerned with such trivial details like my sanity, so the proper response is, thank you, rather than voicing that all inclusive, but…

The path should be enough, but I allowed all sense of accomplishment to be tainted by the journey. I thought if I were patient enough, anticipated enough, and knew enough about the idiosyncrasies about the project foreman, I could rise to the occasion, and be a better partner, but in the end, I just wanted wanted to chew off my own leg to escape, all over micromanaging to the hundredth decimal point. In spite of extensive planning, you can’t adequately expect to influence the basic nature of others. If they are accustomed to solving problems in specific ways, you’re unlikely to influence a change. We are who we are, and we don’t change unless we choose to.