Ruins of Folly MansionA few miles east of Port Antonio, Jamaica, a quaint little town on the beautiful northeast coast of the island, is to be found the ruins of what has come to be called "The Folly Great House". It sits on a beautiful rise just above the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea.
This was once a two story 60 room mansion that was built around 1905 by a wealthy merchant for his wife. They both lived in this ostentatious manor until the husband’s death in 1912. The declining state of what was once an impressive structure led to its abandonment a few years later. By 1938 the roof and other parts of the building had collapsed, exposing unfixable flaws in its construction.
The reasons given for the demise of this once illustrious abode have taken on mythic proportions. One often repeated reason has to do with alleged shortcuts that were taken during its construction.
The story is told that salt water from the sea just below the mansion was used in the mixing of the mortar, leading to the untimely corrosion of the steel components of the building. Some accounts dispute this assertion, going as far as to say that all construction materials were imported from abroad, including the water for mixing the concrete. It is noteworthy that Port Antonio sits on the leeward side of the Blue Mountains, and is one of the rainiest locations in Jamaica.
Whatever the reasons for the fatal flaws in the building of this mansion, today it remains an enduring spectacle… an example of human foolishness. For the philosophically inclined, it is a symbol of the corruption that ensues when noble intentions are combined with unrealistic notions. What was once the pride and joy of idealistic lovers is now an irredeemable eyesore. It is a monument fashioned out of what I will deem "the salted mortar of incompatible ideals".
In a poem titled "Uninhabitable", I wrote the following about this fabled place:
“Now here it stands… On a pastured rise...
A sad place...
Wasted by the many generations of its emptiness...
Hope discolored... Columns that weep…
Under the burden of helpless beams...
Day by day it falls apart … Materially...
And in every heart that has ever known Love
And sought to build a monument
With the steeled character of passion determined
And the salted mortar of incompatible ideals...
Here it stands...
A monument to passion...
A concreted folly…
Uninhabitable.”
The durability of any idea or ideal is a function of the various elements that go into its construction. The compatibility of these elements will invariably determine the impact and historical viability of all our efforts to create and maintain the things we build; whether they be monuments or movements. When the mortar of the very foundations we seek to bet our futures on is corrupted by the existential incompatibility of its essential elements; those movements or monuments will have no future… Except, of course, as spectacles of our shortcomings.
It matters not how convinced we may be, or how passionately we engage with ideas about ourselves or the world we seek to create; the salted mortar of incompatible ideals will prove inadequate to the establishment and maintenance of our objectives every time.
Ideals imbued with our folly are destined to crumble.
