Robert Pirsig - Lila. An Inquiry Into Morals

It just got worse and worse around here. The rich got glitzier and glitzier and the poor got scuzzier and scuzzier until you finally got to New York City. Homeless crazies hovering over ventilator grates while billionaires are escorted past them to their limousines. With each somehow accepting this as natural.

Oddly it’s this valley that’s the worst. If you cross into Vermont or Massachusetts it starts to weaken. He didn’t know how to explain that. Something historical maybe.

New England was settled by a completely different pattern of immigration. That was it. In the early days New England was all one big WASP family staying put, but this valley was everybody on the move. Dutch, English, French, German, Irish — and their relations were often hostile. So right from the start there was this aggressive, exploitative atmosphere. Maybe they had just as much class distinction and exploitativeness in New England, maybe even more, but they muted it so as not to upset the family. Here they just flaunted it openly. That’s what these Castles on the Hudson were: an open flaunting of wealth.

He supposed maybe some of Rigel’s morality this morning was Eastern too… No, that wasn’t it. It was something else. If he were a true Easterner he would have just kept quiet about it and increased his distance. Why did he want to get involved? He didn’t have to. He was angry… The celebrity thing maybe.

Once you become a celebrity it satisfies some people to try to tear you down, and there’s not much you can do about it. Phædrus hadn’t seen any of that all summer: where someone suddenly jumps on you for no reason at all just because they think you’re a celebrity. Maybe that’s what it was. In the past when it occurred it was usually at parties when someone had a few drinks in them. Never at breakfast.

Usually you get a warning when they’re all over you with praise. Then you know they’ve got some false image of you they’re talking to. Rigel was that way in Oswego, but it had been so far back Phædrus had forgotten about it.

That celebrity business is another whole phenomenon that’s related to Indian—European conflict of values. It’s a peculiarly American phenomenon, to catapult people suddenly into celebrity, lavish praise and wealth upon them, and then, at the moment they at last become convinced of their worth, try to destroy them. At their feet and then at their throat. He thought the reason was that in America you’re supposed to be socially superior like a European and socially equal like an Indian at the same time. It doesn’t matter that these goals are contradictory.

So what you get is this tension, this business executives' tension, where you’re the most relaxed, smiling, easy-going guy in the world — who is also absolutely killing himself to beat the competition and get ahead. Everybody wants their children to be valedictorians, but nobody is supposed to be better than anybody else. A kid who comes out somewhere near the bottom of his class is guilt ridden, self-destructive, and he thinks, It’s not fair! Everybody’s equal! And then the celebrity, John Lennon, steps out to sign an autograph for him. That’s the end of the celebrity, John Lennon.

Spooky. Until you’re the celebrity you don’t see how spooky it is. They love you for being what they want to be but they hate you for being what they’re not. There’s always this two-faced relationship with celebrity and you never know which face will appear next. That’s how it was with Rigel. First he was smiling because he thought he was talking to some big shot and that satisfied his European patterns, but now he’s furious because he thinks the big shot is acting superior or something like that.

The old Indians knew how to handle it. They just got rid of anything anybody wanted. They didn’t own property, they dressed in rags, some of them. They kept it down, laid low, and let the aristocrats and egalitarians and sycophants and assassins all look on them as worthless. That way they got a lot accomplished without all the celebrity grief.

This boat was good for that. When you’re moving along like this on these old abandoned waterways you can relate to people on a one-to-one basis, without all the celebrity business standing in between. Rigel was just a fluke.

Some noises came from the cabin. Phædrus wondered if something had broken loose. Then he remembered his passenger. She was probably getting dressed or something.

There’s no food on this boat, Lila’s voice said.

There’s some down there somewhere, he answered.

No, there isn’t.

Her face appeared in the hatchway. She looked belligerent. He’d better not tell her he’d already had breakfast.

She looked different. Worse. Her hair wasn’t combed. Her eyes were reddened and lined underneath. She looked a lot older than she did last night.

You didn’t search around enough, he said. Look in the icebox.

Where is that?

That huge wooden lid with the ring in it by the post there. Her face disappeared again and soon he heard some more noises of her rummaging.

There’s something near the bottom, it looks like, she said. There are three boxes of junk food and one jar of peanut butter. The jar is almost empty… That is all. No eggs, no bacon, no nothing…

Well, we’re under way now, he said. We have to use this current while it’s with us or we lose a whole day. Tonight we’ll have a big meal.

Tonight?!

Yeah, he said.

He heard her mutter, Peanut butter and junk food… Don’t you have anything at all?… Oh, wait a minute, she said. Here’s a half a bar of chocolate.

Then he heard her say Ugh!

What’s the matter? he asked.

There’s something wrong with it. It tastes stale… How about some coffee? Do you have any coffee? Her voice sounded pleading.

Yes, he said. Come on up and steer and I’ll go down to make some.

As she rose from the hatchway he saw that she wore a white T-shirt, skin-tight, with the word, L-O-V-E, printed in large red block letters.

She saw him stare and said, Summer clothes again. Pretty good weather.

He said, I’ll bet you never expected yesterday it would be like this.

I never know what’s going to happen next, she answered. I thought I was going to have breakfast next.

She moved to sit across from him. The four letters of L-O-V-E shifted around in provocative directions.

Do you know how to steer one of these boats? he asked.

Of course, she said.

Then keep to the right of that red nun-buoy up there. He pointed to make sure she saw it. Then he stood up, stepped out of the cockpit into the hatchway, and went below.

He started to search through some storage bins for food, but after looking for a while he saw that she was right, there wasn’t any food on this boat. He hadn’t known his supplies were so low. He found a box of cheese crackers that looked about a third full.

How about some cheese crackers and coffee? he said.

No answer.

He tried again. With peanut butter… sort of a "Continental breakfast." After a while her voice said, All right.

He unlocked the gimbals from the stove so that it levelled itself against the boat’s heel; then from a shelf he brought out a propane torch to pre-heat the stove’s kerosene burner.

This burner was a real problem. It had delicate brass needle valves attached to doorknob-sized handles which meant that one normal turn wrecked the whole mechanism.

How soon until we get somewhere? Lila asked.