In Night on the Invisible Sun, Alec Bryan speaks of the inner most depths of the human struggle through the eyes of a moth, a creature we should all view a little differently. From the onset of the story, we are given to the voice of understanding the human condition in all of its greatest facets with the sincere and utter acceptance of a monk watching his own temple burn to the ground. Upon accepting this burning as part of just another day, we’re left with the ability to still breathe with a holy reverence for all of life.
Night on the Invisible Sun begins with a creature in a cocoon, and the decision it must make to come out into the world or stay in the comfort of its present existence. As we all learn, one choice leads to another, and the moth realizes that home is not as easily returned to once it has taken flight into the world. As he journeys he meets many people who have different aspects of life which they embellish, cherish, or despise with passion. Moth learns that not everything is as it seems and that the only constant must be hurt, and the desire to relieve it.
Met with more choices, Moth tries to decipher the purpose of all things and we are brought to the pinnacle of what man most struggles with: suffering and how to grapple with it without bias.
‘I suffer because I am good and will not give in.’ Or we say to ourselves, ‘I suffer because I am not good enough and I deserve to suffer because I have chosen erroneously and must perform penance.’
With such a voice Bryan carries us on as we see the struggle in a bitter man given nothing in the world but grief, the heartbreak of a woman who ceaselessly strains for a lover lost, and others as we go with the creature to see if there is an answer to all that has been unfolded in the darkness of the world. The discovery of purpose and satisfaction for the soul is fraught with the indifferences of the people we all pass on the street daily, or the smiling stranger who holds the door for us. Bryan notes this and uses the strange everyday to allude to something greater in the light, or is it the darkness of this short and sweet life? With his utterances of wisdom and precise wording he gives us a story that is crisp and refreshing, noting the tiniest details of our lives, and allows us to journey with an often- overlooked creature to see the often- overlooked details that make our presence felt further than we realize.
