Bruno

Some books I devour in one sitting.  Some I devour in smaller chunks.  The latter approach is the one I have to take with 'The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore' by Benjamin Hale.  I bought it for myself as a treat based on the review written by NPR and the excerpt of the first few pages.  Since I started it last night I've had to start treating it like coffee.  My body can only take one cup of coffee at a time.  Even though I want more I know that I will overload and it will impair my mental capacity.  With this book I can only take one chunk at a time.  Any more and my brain doesn't properly process the happenings, the thought processes of Bruno and I really want to meaningfully absorb as much of this as possible.

Last night I came across these sentences:

"If you ever have children, tell them they must always be drunk.  Drunk on love, drunk on poetry, drunk on wine, it doesn't matter.  This world is too goddamn painful to waste a second of your existence sober." (p93).

There is a point in life when you realize that the world around you does not necessarily line up with the one you've built up in your head.  Essentially you have a clash with 'the real world'.  Some people hit upon this early through unfavorable circumstances.  I've led a sheltered life and have been truly fortunate.  My coping mechanism is to not let myself be "sober" mentally.  I stay in that constructed world in my head.  When I make myself sober-up, when I make myself be ever present in the moment it can be painful.  There are obviously times when I'm not in my own head - I teach, I study, I communicate (albeit poorly) - and during these times I have to be present.  I think I stay in my own little constructed world because of this:

"...we, and I mean humans, are meaning makers.  We do not discover the meanings of mysterious things, we invent them.  We make meanings because meaninglessness terrifies us above all things.  More than snakes, even.  More than falling, or the dark.  We trick ourselves into seeing meanings in things, when in fact all we are doing is grafting our meanings onto the universe to comfort ourselves.  We gild the chaos of the universe with our symbols.  To admit that something is meaningless is just like falling backward into darkness." (p184)

When I'm in 'the real world' I find a void of meaning.  In my own mind just being is meaning enough, but put into the context of the world, the galaxy, the universe - what is my purpose?  I've shed my previous ideas of purpose (spreading the word of God, trying to be a good Christian so that I could get to Heaven, more importantly avoid hell, etc), the constructs I used to gild over the chaos of the universe.  My guideline now is just to be - but outside that?  I'm lost.

This is why I like thoughtful novels (among other types).  This book may not give me any answers, but its bringing up ideas to contemplate.