seeing my crazy in other people's writing

so i'm reading this book called the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by mark haddon. basically it's about this autistic boy who investigates the murder of a neighbor's dog. really, it's about this boy's quirks, how he sees the world and the people who inhabit it, and his place in it. it's simply written and i'm only 50 pages into it, but it's so human. i find myself responding to a lot of the boy's "crazy" and dysfunciton. (i think i'm going to stop here about the book in case you want to read it for yourself)

but here's a little sample of what i like about it:

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

the kid has worked his affinity for numbers into something that makes sense to him. i don't have the same number dysfunction as he does; i don't add up the letters in people's names and find their prime numbers; but i do like to make numbers make sense for me.

take 8-23 for instance. besides being a magic day (birthday) it's magic because 8 equals 2 to the 3rd power. or 8 = 2 cubed. this also has meaning because i am the second of three children.

and for whatever reason (craziness) i like to look at the clock at this time. sometimes it happens by accident (fate), sometimes i sit there and wait for it. but seeing this number on the clock makes me feel good, like nothing can go wrong. it provides an artificial sanctuary, a safety in numbers, if you will.

wedding day had similar crazy going on for it. at first i thought it'd be really cool to get married on march 21. that way it would be written like this 3-21-00. see? three, two, one, zero. but it turned out to be a monday or tuesday or something. and march can sometimes provide unfortunate weather. and i was leaning more towards a may wedding anyways. what i ended up with, mostly by accident, but made auspicious by closer examination, was may fourteen. 5-14. 5-1=4. 5-1-4=0.

right.

anyways, it's fun to read a book and see bits of yourself embedded in it. like an accidental discovery. like seeing your life written between its invisible lines. like seeing your crazy in other people's writing.