Just as we reached school today, they gave us another week off for the PMT exams to be held. So school reopens on the 10th. And I'm amazingly happy about it. Relieved, even. Which as everyone probably agrees, is so boringly obvious and normal it's redundant to talk about, even on a blog.
I was just thinking, in one of the most powerful scenes in the Fountainhead, of Roark the architect looking at the Heller House being constructed; he's indecently, gloriously happy, revelling in the fulfillment of what he does, his 'job'.
He sees a party of people, out to enjoy one day out of many days of their existence, one girl savagely strumming an ukulele and yelling; "shrieking to the sky their release from the work and the burdens of the days behind them; they had worked and carried the burdens in order to reach a goal-and this was the goal." Roark forgets them in a moment, because he's distracted, transfixed, by a cartload of gleaming cut granite passing, intended for his building.
But I can't forget them, because they're me. They're us. Gleaning a day or two out of our existences to have 'fun', earning a respite from everyday lives, our lives for heaven's sake, to enjoy ourselves. Why is it that we have to be released from our lives to be ourselves, to be 'indecently, gloriously happy'? Why is it that the rest of the time, we're stuck in a closed room writing, like automatons, waiting desperately for the bell to ring and liberate us from what we do each day, that is our life?
I wonder if this void is what death might be like. Familiar, then.
I don't know. All I know is that I was glad today to escape my life for one week more.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
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