He slowed down for the most banal things

 From Bewilderment by Richard Powers

For his tenth birthday, the boy who once could not be roused in the morning without wailing like a howler monkey brought me breakfast in bed: fruit compote, toast, and peacan cheese, all artfully arranged on a platter accompanied by a painted bouquet of mums.

Get up, dude. I'm training today. And I have so much homework to do before we go. Thanks to you!

He wanted to walk to Currier's lab.  The lab was four miles from our house, a two-hour walk in each direction. I wasn't crazy about spending half a day on the adventure, but that was all the birthday present he wanted.

Maples blazed orange against the sky's deep blue.  Robbie took his smallest sketchbook.  He held it in the crook of his arm, scribbling into it as we walked.  He slowed down for the most banal things. An ant mound. A gray squirrel. An oak leaf on the sidewalk with veins as red as licorice.  He and his mother had left me far behind, Earthbound. 

This is at the moment of Robin's highpoint, his greatest integration with his (dead) mother whose brainwaves were recorded during her "ecstasy" ruminations.  

 This moment shows exactly what ecstasy means -- an openness to the beauty of the world.  Robin's trainings (the equivalent to the treatments in Flowers for Algernon) had heightened him.  There are sections in the book that suggest that the heightening is away from screens and news and social media and into an awareness of nature.  

The sentence "left me behind, Earthbound" is fascinating... it suggests that this ability to apprehend and appreciate is... a different place.  Two people can be in the same physical location, and in a different place.

* * *

Jennie and I talked about the book yesterday at Cafe Salsa.  She says that there are a couple unbelievable things -- how the dad is so focused on the social media exposure at the end and how the dad is so convinced that the wife had an affair with Currier.  Both parts seem unnecessary to the book.

* * *

Read this passage from Emerson biography:

For years now Emerson had looked upon the days as gods, each one bringing gifts according to our ability to receive.

With the context of Emerson's trust in Nature (capital N), it seems that Powers is in that same line of American thought.