Bruno

Discussion (3) ¬

1. 
   db

   February 26, 2016 at 9:39 pm | #

   Harder to resolve? It’s still hard to understand. It’s a failing in me though. I have no patience for this sort of thing in real life and clearly just glossed over the set up for all these “problems” that are happening now.
   Bruno’s fever dreams were more real to me. Gotta say though; I like it that her hair is growing back from that unfortunate haircut. Lookin good girl.
2. 
   Pete Rogan

   February 26, 2016 at 10:44 pm | #

   I understand Dije’s position rather well, it having great resemblance to several other such impasses I’ve found myself in.

   Dije is caught between two sides of a false dichotomy. On the one, he does have a reputation for not telling untruths, which he has made the cornerstone not just of his intellectualism, but of his sense of honor. He remains clean only as long as he is truthful.

   He has made a promise to honor a decision by another to live a different kind of life, one he himself has no stake in supporting but one he by the bonds of friendship and of his honor cannot violate. He finds these two positions diametrically opposed, because his intellectual honesty wants to explore this new realm he neither comprehends fully nor agrees with emotionally, at the same time keeping his promise to not reveal what has happened – even to himself. He thus is caught in a trap of his own making, because he cannot see that his honesty is not in conflict with his promise. Unable to apply his considerable strength to the resolution of this problem, which he has firmly decided will ALWAYS be a problem, he cannot avoid goading himself into being caught between the two sides of his false dichotomy. He demands honesty not of himself but of someone he loved enough to make for their sake an ultimate sacrifice, and he cannot force compliance on them. So he punishes himself for daring to put his promise at risk, never comprehending how he is the sole author of his internal strife.

   And so Dije falls victim to his own hubris, King of his trap but unable to either extricate himself from it or find a way to keep from stumbling into it. He circles the subject like a drain, which will eventually claim him, but he cannot do otherwise. Which is ridiculous, given his considerable intellectual gifts and his mordant sense of humor. All these have failed him because he refuses to examine how his own feelings have done him in. To admit that would be to admit a fatal weakness, which he cannot do, though he cannot ignore it. And so he remains not just weak, but helpless before his own weakness, as if he were dying of an ingrown toenail towards which he feels an attachment he simply cannot break.

   Unable to say to himself, as Walt Whitman did, “They say I contradict myself. Very well! I contradict myself!”, Dije flounders between his failed promise and his compromised honor, able to satisfy neither, incapable of finding a resolution. As a mouse runs itself to death on the smooth porcelain inside a flawless bowl, Dije runs himself to death between two sides of the same thing. Only death or forgetfulness can save him — and now that his inner circle is aware of the contradiction, though not its cause, forgetfulness is no longer his to claim. I’d feel sorry for him if I did not understand how, like me, he’s being an idiot. Dummkopf!
3. 
   Lil Sis

   February 28, 2016 at 5:37 pm | #

   Thank you Pete,
   I was having a hard time wrapping my head around his dilemma. I’m not a fan of Dije. I couldn’t find common ground to understand this. Now I get it. I still don’t like him, but I can at least grasp the drama in which he’s entrapped himself.