Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Pardons, For I Am Tired Of Hitting The Squashball Tonight.

I want many things.

I want to play guitar like Led Zeppelin. If I could play the Rain Song, just as it is, or the extended solo to Stairway To Heaven, I cant express how absolutely accomplished I'd feel. I want to knock sense into the people who run this country. I want to yell at them, plead, reason with them, even hit them with umbrellas, and just for once get them to do something good. So much is needed. So much is so horribly messed up. I want to be learned and knowledgeable. I want to be able to quote in Latin, converse in French, woo in Spanish, and abuse in German. I want to write Elvish. I want to read the entire works of Homer. I want physical fitness, equal to any athlete anywhere in the world. I play enough of squash, and enough of badminton, but I want to be better than anyone else. I want to run faster, play harder, win everything. I want to write a book, about what I think and what I want for the world. I want it to sell millions and millions of copies, and I want everyone to read it. I want them to proclaim each of themselves as heroes, and to win all their battles. I want someone to make a documentary of Led Zeppelin. I want them hailed as the greatest band ever created, and I want Led Zep music to play on every radio station. Alternately, I would settle for someone ruthlessly and brutally murdering Himesh Reshammiya. I want to make a movie. I want to make a Schindler's List, and a Forrest Gump, and a Braveheart. And after all this, I want it all to be simple and untangled. I want to be strong enough for that.

But simplicity is impossible, it seems. Headaches always prevail. Worries will always come, when least wanted. People will disappoint. Things will go wrong. And so, in the end, disillusioned by it all, we learn to fail ourselves.

Well, what I want needs no one else to play a major role. What will I make of it now?

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. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.- said Peter Keating, who lives in each one of us. (Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead')

1 comment:

ami said...

Those were my favourite lines in the book. This post left me happy, somehow :)