Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The coals die lower and lower. We smoke our last cigarettes. Chris is off somewhere in the darkness but I’m not going to shag after him. John is carefully silent and Sylvia is silent and suddenly we are all separate, all alone in our private universes, and there is no communication among us. We douse the fire and go back to the sleeping bags in the pines.

I discover that this one tiny refuge of scrub pines where I have put the sleeping bags is also the refuge from the wind of millions of mosquitos up from the reservoir. The mosquito repellent doesn’t stop them at all. I crawl deep into the sleeping bag and make one little hole for breathing. I am almost asleep when Chris finally shows up.

“There’s a great big sandpile over there”, he says, crunching around on the pine needles.

“Yes”, I say. “Get to sleep.”

“You should see it. Will you come and see it tomorrow?”

“We won’t have time.”

“Can I play over there tomorrow morning?”

“Yes.”

He makes interminable noises getting undressed and into the sleeping bag. He is in it. Then he rolls around. Then he is silent, and then rolls some more. Then he says, “Dad?”

“What?”

“What was it like when you were a kid?”

“Go to sleep, Chris!” There are limits to what you can listen to.

Later I hear a sharp inhaling of phlegm that tells me he has been crying, and though I’m exhausted, I don’t sleep. A few words of consolation might have helped there. He was trying to be friendly. But the words weren’t forthcoming for some reason. Consoling words are more for strangers, for hospitals, not kin. Little emotional Band-Aids like that aren’t what he needs or what’s sought. I don’t know what he needs, or what’s sought.

A gibbous moon comes up from the horizon beyond the pines, and by its slow, patient arc across the sky I measure hour after hour of semisleep. Too much fatigue. The moon and strange dreams and sounds of mosquitos and odd fragments of memory become jumbled and mixed in an unreal lost landscape in which the moon is shining and yet there is a bank of fog and I am riding a horse and Chris is with me and the horse jumps over a small stream that runs through the sand toward the ocean somewhere beyond. And then that is broken. And then it reappears.

And in the fog there appears an intimation of a figure. It disappears when I look at it directly, but then reappears in the corner of my vision when I turn my glance. I am about to say something, to call to it, to recognize it, but then do not, knowing that to recognize it by any gesture or action is to give it a reality which it must not have. But it is a figure I recognize even though I do not let on. It is Phædrus.

Evil spirit. Insane. From a world without life or death.

The figure fades and I hold panic down — tight — not rushing it — just letting it sink in — not believing it, not disbelieving it — but the hair crawls slowly on the back of my skull — he is calling Chris, is that it? — Yes? —

My watch says nine o’clock. And it’s already too hot to sleep. Outside the sleeping bag, the sun is already high into the sky. The air around is clear and dry.

I get up puffy-eyed and arthritic from the ground.

My mouth is already dry and cracked and my face and hands are covered with mosquito bites. Some sunburn from yesterday morning is hurting.

Beyond the pines are burned grass and clumps of earth and sand so bright they are hard to look at. The heat, silence, and barren hills and blank sky give a feeling of great, intense space.

Not a bit of moisture in the sky. Today’s going to be a scorcher.

I walk out of the pines onto a stretch of barren sand between some grass and watch for a long time, meditatively.

I’ve decided today’s Chautauqua will begin to explore Phædrus’ world. It was intended earlier simply to restate some of his ideas that relate to technology and human values and make no reference to him personally, but the pattern of thought and memory that occurred last night has indicated this is not the way to go. To omit him now would be to run from something that should not be run from.

In the first grey of the morning what Chris said about his Indian friend’s grandmother came back to me, clearing something up. She said ghosts appear when someone has not been buried right. That’s true. He never was buried right, and that’s exactly the source of the trouble.

Later I turn and see John is up and looking at me uncomprehendingly. He is still not really awake, and now walks aimlessly in circles to clear his head. Soon Sylvia is up too and her left eye is all puffed up. I ask her what happened. She says it is from mosquito bites. I begin to collect gear to repack the cycle. John does the same.

When this is done we get a fire started while Sylvia opens up packages of bacon and eggs and bread for breakfast.

When the food is ready, I go over and wake Chris. He doesn’t want to get up. I tell him again. He says no. I grab the bottom of the sleeping bag, give it a mighty tablecloth jerk, and he is out of it, blinking in the pine needles. It takes him a while to figure out what has happened, while I roll up the sleeping bag.

He comes to breakfast looking insulted, eats one bite, says he isn’t hungry, his stomach hurts. I point to the lake down below us, so strange in the middle of the semidesert, but he doesn’t show any interest. He repeats his complaint. I just let it go by and John and Sylvia disregard it too. I’m glad they were told what the situation is with him. It might have created real friction otherwise.

We finish breakfast silently, and I’m oddly tranquil. The decision about Phædrus may have something to do with it. But we are also perhaps a hundred feet above the reservoir, looking across it into a kind of Western spaciousness. Barren hills, no one anywhere, not a sound; and there is something about places like this that raises your spirits a little and makes you think that things will probably get better.

While loading the remaining gear on the luggage rack I see with surprise that the rear tire is worn way down. All that speed and heavy load and heat on the road yesterday must have caused it. The chain is also sagging and I get out the tools to adjust it and then groan.

“What’s the matter”, John says.

“Thread’s stripped in the chain adjustment.”

I remove the adjusting bolt and examine the threads. “It’s my own fault for trying to adjust it once without loosening the axle nut. The bolt is good.” I show it to him. “It looks like the internal threading in the frame that’s stripped.”

John stares at the wheel for a long time. “Think you can make it into town?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. You can run it forever. It just makes the chain difficult to adjust.”

He watches carefully as I take up the rear axle nut until it’s barely snug, tap it sideways with a hammer until the chain slack is right, then tighten up the axle nut with all my might to keep the axle from slipping forward later on, and replace the cotter pin. Unlike the axle nuts on a car, this one doesn’t affect bearing tightness.

“How did you know how to do that?” he asks.

“You just have to figure it out.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start”, he says.

I think to myself, That’s the problem, all right, where to start. To reach him you have to back up and back up, and the further back you go, the further back you see you have to go, until what looked like a small problem of communication turns into a major philosophic enquiry. That, I suppose, is why the Chautauqua.

I repack the tool kit and close the side cover plates and think to myself, He’s worth reaching though.

On the road again the dry air cools off the slight sweat from that chain job and I’m feeling good for a while. As soon as the sweat dries off though, it’s hot. Must be in the eighties already.