Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Chris says he can’t cut his either and I pass my knife to him. While reaching for it he dumps everything onto the tarp.

No one says a word.

I’m not angry that he spilled it, I’m angry that now the tarp’s going to be greasy the rest of the trip.

“Is there any more?” he asks.

“Eat that”, I say. “It just fell on the tarp.”

“It’s too dirty”, he says.

“Well, that’s all there is.”

A wave of depression hits. I just want to go to sleep now. But he’s angry and I expect we’re going to have one of his little scenes. I wait for it and pretty soon it starts.

“I don’t like the taste of this”, he says.

“Yes, that’s rough, Chris.”

“I don’t like any of this. I don’t like this camping at all.”

“It was your idea”, Sylvia says. “You’re the one who wanted to go camping.”

She shouldn’t say that, but there’s no way she can know. You take his bait and he’ll feed you another one, and then another, and another until you finally hit him, which is what he really wants.

“I don’t care”, he says.

“Well, you ought to”, she says.

“Well, I don’t.”

An explosion point is very near. Sylvia and John look at me but I remain deadpan. I’m sorry about this but there’s nothing I can do right now. Any argument will just worsen things.

“I’m not hungry”, Chris says.

No one answers.

“My stomach hurts”, he says.

The explosion is avoided when Chris turns and walks away in the darkness.

We finish eating. I help Sylvia clean up, and then we sit around for a while. We turn the cycle lights off to conserve the batteries and because the light from them is ugly anyway. The wind has died down some and there is a little light from the fire. After a while my eyes become accustomed to it. The food and anger have taken off some of the sleepiness. Chris doesn’t return.

“Do you suppose he’s just punishing?” Sylvia asks.

“I suppose”, I say, “although it doesn’t sound quite right.” I think about it and add, “That’s a child-psychology term… a context I dislike. Let’s just say he’s being a complete bastard.”

John laughs a little.

“Anyway”, I say, “it was a good supper. I’m sorry he had to act up like this.”

“Oh, that’s all right”, John says. “I’m just sorry he won’t get anything to eat.”

“It won’t hurt him.”

“You don’t suppose he’ll get lost out there.”

“No, he’ll holler if he is.”

Now that he has gone and we have nothing to do I become more aware of the space all around us. There is not a sound anywhere. Lone prairie.

Sylvia says, “Do you suppose he really has stomach pains?”

“Yes”, I say, somewhat dogmatically. I’m sorry to see the subject continued but they deserve a better explanation than they’re getting. They probably sense that there’s more to it than they’ve heard. “I’m sure he does”, I finally say. “He’s been examined a half-dozen times for it. Once it was so bad we thought it was appendicitis — I remember we were on a vacation up north. I’d just finished getting out an engineering proposal for a five-million-dollar contract that just about did me in. That’s a whole other world. No time and no patience and six hundred pages of information to get out the door in one week and I was about ready to kill three different people and we thought we’d better head for the woods for a while.”

“I can hardly remember what part of the woods we were in. Head just spinning with engineering data, and anyway Chris was just screaming. We couldn’t touch him, until I finally saw I was going to have to pick him up fast and get him to the hospital, and where that was I’ll never remember, but they found nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No. But it happened again on other occasions too.”

“Don’t they have any idea?” Sylvia asks.

“This spring they diagnosed it as the beginning symptoms of mental illness.”

“What?” John says.

It’s too dark to see Sylvia or John now or even the outlines of the hills. I listen for sounds in the distance, but hear none. I don’t know what to answer and so say nothing.

When I look hard I can make out stars overhead but the fire in front of us makes it hard to see them. The night all around is thick and obscure. My cigarette is down to my fingers and I put it out.

“I didn’t know that”, Sylvia’s voice says. All traces of anger are gone. “We wondered why you brought him instead of your wife”, she says. “I’m glad you told us.”

John shoves some of the unburned ends of the wood into the fire.

Sylvia says, “What do you suppose the cause is?”

John’s voice rasps, as if to cut it off, but I answer, “I don’t know. Causes and effects don’t seem to fit. Causes and effects are a result of thought. I would think mental illness comes before thought.” This doesn’t make sense to them, I’m sure. It doesn’t make much sense to me and I’m too tired to try to think it out and give it up.

“What do the psychiatrists think?” John asks.

“Nothing. I stopped it.”

“Stopped it?”

“Yes.”

“Is that good?”

“I don’t know. There’s no rational reason I can think of for saying it’s not good. Just a mental block of my own. I think about it and all the good reasons for it and make plans for an appointment and even look for the phone number and then the block hits, and it’s just like a door slammed shut.”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

“No one else thinks so either. I suppose I can’t hold out forever.”

“But why?” Sylvia asks.

“I don’t know why — it’s just that — I don’t know — they’re not kin.” — Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin — sounds like hillbilly talk — not of a kind — same root — kindness, too — they can’t have real kindness toward him, they’re not his kin. That’s exactly the feeling.

Old word, so ancient it’s almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be “kind.” And everybody’s supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn’t help. Now it’s just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin.

It goes over and over again through my thoughts — mein Kind… my child. There it is in another language. Mein Kinder — “Wer reitet so spat durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind.”

Strange feeling from that.

“What are you thinking about?” Sylvia asks.

“An old poem, by Goethe. It must be two hundred years old. I had to learn it a long time ago. I don’t know why I should remember it now, except — ” The strange feeling comes back.

“How does it go?” Sylvia asks.

I try to recall. “A man is riding along a beach at night, through the wind. It’s a father, with his son, whom he holds fast in his arm. He asks his son why he looks so pale, and the son replies, ‘Father, don’t you see the ghost?’ The father tried to reassure the boy it’s only a bank of fog along the beach that he sees and only the rustling of the leaves in the wind that he hears but the son keeps saying it is the ghost and the father rides harder and harder through the night.”

“How does it end?”

“In failure — death of the child. The ghost wins.”

The wind blows light up from the coals and I see Sylvia look at me startled.

“But that’s another land and another time”, I say. “Here life is the end and ghosts have no meaning. I believe that. I believe in all this too”, I say, looking out at the darkened prairie, “although I’m not sure of what it all means yet — I’m not sure of much of anything these days. Maybe that’s why I talk so much.”