Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

From the town to the mountains across the valley floor must be less than ten miles, and we cross that distance now on dirt roads through rich green high alfalfa ready for cutting, so thick it looks difficult to walk through. The fields sweep outward and slightly upward to the base of the mountains where a much darker green of the pines rises suddenly up. That will be where the DeWeeses live. Where the light green and the dark green meet. The wind is full of the lightgreen new-mown-hay smells and livestock smells. At one point we pass through a cold bank of air where the smell changes to pine, but then are back in the warmth again. Sunlight and meadows and the close-looming mountain.

Just as we get to the pines, the gravel in the road becomes very deep. We slow down to first gear and ten miles an hour and I keep both feet off the pegs to kick the cycle upright again if it should mush into the gravel and start to go down. We round a corner and suddenly enter the pines and a very steep V canyon in the mountain, and there right beside the road is a large grey house with an enormous abstract iron sculpture attached to one side and beneath it sitting in a chair tipped back against the house surrounded by company is the living image of DeWeese himself with a can of beer in his hand, which waves to us. Right out of the old photographs.

I’m so busy keeping the machine up I can’t take my hands off the grips and I wave a leg back instead. The living image of DeWeese himself grins as we pull up.

“You found it”, he says. Relaxed smile. Happy eyes.

“It’s been a long time”, I say. I feel happy too, though strange at suddenly seeing the image move and talk.

We dismount and take off our riding gear and I see that the open porch deck he and his guests are on is unfinished and unweathered. DeWeese looks down from where it is only a few feet above the road on our side, but the V of the canyon slants so steeply that on the far side the ground descends fifteen feet below the deck. The stream itself appears another fifty feet down and away from the house, among trees and deep grass where a horse, partially hidden by the trees, grazes without looking up. Now we have to look high to see the sky. Surrounding us is the dark-green forest we watched as we approached.

“This is just beautiful!” Sylvia says.

The living image of DeWeese smiles down at her. “Thank you”, he says, “I’m glad you like it.” His tone is all here and now, completely relaxed. I realize that although this is the authentic image of DeWeese himself, it’s also a brand-new person who’s been renewing himself continually and I’m going to have to get to know him all over again.

We step up onto the deck. Between the floorboards it has spaces, like a grate. I can see the ground through them. With a “Well, I’m not quite sure how to do this” tone and smile, DeWeese makes introductions all around, but they’re in one ear and out the other. I can never remember names. His guests are an art instructor from the school who has horn-rimmed glasses, and his wife, who smiles self-consciously. They must be new.

We talk for a while, DeWeese mainly explaining to them who I am, and then, from where the deck disappears around the corner of the house, suddenly comes Gennie DeWeese with a tray of beer cans. She is a painter too and, I’m suddenly aware, a quick comprehender and already there’s a shared smile over the artistic economy of grabbing a can of beer instead of her hand, while she says, “Some neighbors just came over with a mess of trout for dinner. I’m so pleased.” I try to think of something appropriate to say, but just nod.

We sit down, I in the sunlight, where it’s difficult to distinguish details of the other side of the deck in the shade.

DeWeese looks at me, seems about to comment on my appearance, which is undoubtedly much different from what he remembers, but something deflects this and he turns to John instead and asks about the trip.

John explains that it’s been just great, something he and Sylvia have needed for years.

Sylvia seconds this. “Just to be out in the open in all this space”, she says.

“Lots of space in Montana”, DeWeese says, a little wistfully. He and John and the art instructor become involved in get-acquainted talk about differences between Montana and Minnesota.

The horse grazes peacefully below us, and just beyond it the water sparkles in the creek. The talk has shifted to DeWeese’s land here in the canyon, how long DeWeese has lived here and what art instruction at the college is like. John has a real gift for casual conversation like this that I’ve never had, so I just listen.

After a while the heat from the sun is so great I take off my sweater and open my shirt. Also to stop squinting I bring out some sunglasses and put them on. That’s better, but it blanks out the shade so completely I can hardly see faces at all and leaves me feeling sort of visually detached from everything but the sun and the sunlit slopes of the canyon. I think to myself about unpacking but decide not to mention it. They know we’re staying but just intuitively allow first things to happen first. First we relax, then we unpack. What’s the hurry? The beer and sun begin to toast my head like a marshmallow. Very nice.

I don’t know how much later I hear some comments about “the movie star here” come from John and I realize he is talking about me and my sunglasses. I look over the tops of them into the shade and make out that DeWeese and John and the art instructor are smiling at me. They must want me in the conversation, something about problems on the trip.

“They want to know what happens if something goes bad mechanically”, John says.

I relate the whole story of the time Chris and I were in the rainstorm and the engine quit, which is a good story, but somewhat pointless, I realize as I’m telling it, as an answer to his question. The final line about being out of gas brings the expected groan.

“And I even told him to look”, Chris says. Both DeWeese and Gennie comment on Chris’s size. He becomes self-conscious and glows a little. They ask about his mother and his brother and we both answer these questions as best we can.

The heat of the sun finally becomes too much for me and I shift my chair into the shade. The marshmallow feeling leaves in the sudden chill and after a few minutes I have to button up. Gennie notices and says, “As soon as the sun goes over the ridge up there it gets really cold.”

The distance between the sun and the ridge is narrow. I’d judge that although it’s only the middle of the afternoon, less than half an hour of direct sun remains. John asks about the mountains in the winter and he and DeWeese and the art instructor talk about this and about snowshoeing in the mountains. I could just sit here forever.

Sylvia and Gennie and the art instructor’s wife talk about the house and soon Gennie invites them inside.

My thoughts drift to the statement about Chris growing so fast and suddenly the feeling of the tomb comes on. I’ve heard only indirectly of the time Chris lived here, and yet to them it seems that he’s hardly been gone. We live in entirely different time structures.

The conversation shifts onto what is current in art and music and theater and I’m surprised at how well John keeps up his end of the conversation. I’m not basically interested in what’s new in these areas and he probably knows it and for that reason never talks about it to me. Just the reverse of the motorcycle maintenance situation. I wonder if I look as glassy-eyed now as he does when I talk about rods and pistons.

But what he and DeWeese really have in common is Chris and me, and a funny stickiness is developing here, ever since the movie-star comment. John’s good-natured sarcasm toward his old drinking and cycling companion is chilling DeWeese slightly, causing resultant respectful tones toward me from DeWeese. These seem to increase John’s sarcasm in a self-stoking way and they both sense this and so they kind of veer away from me onto some subject of agreement and then come back again but this stickiness develops and they veer away again onto another agreeable subject.