Words> The Bridge by Iain Banks

I read way too much into myself in this book. With its multiple levels and drifts of symbolism throughout, The Bridge hurled me into the deep.

Synopsis that fails to do any justice to the impact: a man is in a coma and lives in his internal world, a seemingly endless bridge. He reflects both his past and his current situation in this state, and the coherence of his coma is further disturbed by the dreams his coma-self has - alternatively, they are just other coma-induced delusions that his mind parses as dreams. Sometimes we even get overtures from the real self, as if he'd scratch the surface of consciousness from time to time. But with the line between realities fairly dim, it doesn't pay to analyze the source or the place of all these lives, delusional or not, the man lives through. They just are, and they influence each other.

While his adventures on the bridge and in a Scottish-slang, phonetically narrated fantasy world are gripping, it is his impending return that hit me. It's as if he has a choice to return from this symbolically charged, terrifyingly confusing and fleeting internal world into his real life where he has some months ago crashed an expensive car, drunk. He would be returning to a woman he loves but whom he has for years had to share with the rest of the world, including another man in Paris he has never met. He would be returning to a job in his company, an expanding bald patch, a habit of scotch and spliffs, dying family, friends getting older, no real progress anywhere, his attitudes and values unchanged since Uni, yet progress made in other areas that are less important.

He would be returning to life. Yet, while I think I cheered him on, I was torn with the decision of a return. How terribly frustrating that successful, well lived life sounds like when compressed into a handful of pages, but he decides to return to live his life further, to the end of the bridge.

Instead of observing his subconscious process all the material form his past (and there is enough to last a lifetime and more), like he observes himself on a hospital bed from a small screen in his room on the bridge, he chooses to participate in his life. Hell if that doesn't ring true to me.

A lot of traveling is observation by default. You go and see places. Sure, you also do things and meet people, to overextend the oversimplification, but these are short-lasting engagements. It all becomes a puzzle, sooner or later, and even the most ferocious appetite for new experiences takes a break as the latest inputs are digested. And some inputs take a long time to digest.

What the hell am I trying to say? Am I getting travel-weary 5 months into my trip? Maybe I am. I do know I want to participate more.

Anyway, Banks is a bloody genious.