Howie's repulsion is predictable and simple enough; who among us, sitting in such comforting surroundings (milk and cookies, for chrissake) wouldn't find himself adopting an "Accentuate the Positive" view of existence? The question, then, is whether Howie would always- or at least often- give this response. He does seem, as we said in class, quite "well-adjusted" and happy despite his idiosyncrasies, but he also has frustrations and problems- he thinks about quitting his job quite often, apparently, and takes unusual amounts of umbrage at things like hot-air hand-driers. It's not hard to imagine a despondent Howie sitting on the corner of his bed, holding a scratched record or non-stapled bag, wondering if L will ever call him back, shoelaces untied, thinking about just how temporary and devoid of meaning life on earth is.
I don't think, therefore, that Howie's point-of-view or love of the mundane things in life is necessarily a cure for ennui. The passage doesn't have any great meaning to me. It's just an anecdote about how it's hard to be a downer when you're sitting in the sunshine with milk and cookies- Howie thinks a number of times every year, we know, about how happy sunshine makes you- and how viewpoints like Aurelius' seem utterly wrong then. Nothing we didn't already know, nothing about the nature of man, just a funny and clever little digression in a book of funny and clever digressions.
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We could look at Aurelius's comment as a typical "time to grow up and face reality" kind of sentiment: childhood can maybe be boiled down, essentially, to a lack of awareness of mortality or transience. And by drinking milk and cookies in the sunshine, Howie could be viewed here as *retreating* from such "grown-up" thoughts. As we discussed in class, he's kind of an overgrown man-child, with his popcorn and hotdog and milk+cookies lunch and his endless questions about how things work and how neat-o they all are. Aurelius forces him, for a moment, to acknowledge what he knows--time passes, this all fades. But Howie resists, refusing to think about such things.
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