My brain has toppled into a sinkhole of dumb.

Though I don't have cable TV, I stream. I often stream good stuff, but I also let my brain sprawl all over mindless stuff like America's Next Top Model. I actually have an explanation, I think. I allow my brain a chance to lounge. I check out, and when a show segment is complete, I celebrate the life I have and thank all that is holy to me that I am who I am. I confess it's a questionable little getaway but I love it. Redemptive escapism, if you will.

I recently finished reading Lea Carpenter's excellent Eleven Days. At the top of my pile of next-reads are: Their Eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Niels Lyhne by Jans Peter Jacobsen. My really, really next read is I am Scout by Charles Shields. It's a biography of Harper Lee that my KCMO grandson has been assigned for summer reading. I better get hoppin'.

But currently, I'm reading Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. I lift the following from the back cover: Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive... a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

I thought those reviewer's words even before I read them. Beautiful Ruins is a story of illusions and delusions and dreams, none of which ever vacate the lives of the story's characters. It's about seeing what they want to see even when the dreams are seemingly preposterous but really aren't. It's all about perception and clarity of perception and the route taken. Ironically, the futility is always apparent to the reader - all the false starts and improbable dreams the characters lug around for a lifetime - clutching tight to hopeless hope.

I haven't finished the book, so may think differently at the end. This afternoon I amended my evaluation with the realization that one of the character's longings could've been fulfilled, but he never had the confidence to lunge.

All the characters are creative types and though I risk pigeonholing, I think that typically we creative types are suffering dreamers. Oh, I'm sure many research scientists have experienced despair and tossed a test tube or two, but it seems that romance lingers like a cloudless blue sky over artists of all breeds. And when it inexplicably rains, we drown a little bit each time.

Well, enough rambling philosophy on intellectual pursuits and dreamers. I need to get back to level 76 of Candy Crush Saga.