Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (38 page)

Back in the heat again and not far from Grangeville we see that the dry plateau that looked almost like prairie when we were out on it suddenly breaks away into an enormous canyon. I see our road will go down and down through what must be a hundred hairpin turns into a desert of broken land and crags. I tap Chris's knee and point and as we round a turn where we see it all I hear him holler, ``Wow!''

At the brink I shift down to third, then close the throttle. The engine drags, backfiring a little, and down we go.

By the time our cycle has reached the bottom of wherever it is we are, we have dropped thousands of feet. I look back over my shoulder and see antlike cars way back at the top. Now we must head forward across this baking desert to wherever the road leads.

This morning a solution to the problem of stuckness was discussed, the classic badness caused by traditional reason. Now it's time to move to its romantic parallel, the ugliness of the technology traditional reason has produced.

The road has twisted and rolled over desert hills into a little, narrow thread of green surrounding the town of White Bird, then proceeded on to a big fast river, the Salmon, flowing between high canyon walls. Here the heat is tremendous and the glare from the white canyon rock is blinding. We wind on and on through the bottom of the narrow canyon, nervous about fast-moving traffic and oppressed by the fiery heat.

The ugliness the Sutherlands were fleeing is not inherent in technology. It only seemed that way to them because it's so hard to isolate what it is within technology that's so ugly. But technology is simply the making of things and the making of things can't by its own nature be ugly or there would be no possibility for beauty in the arts, which also include the making of things. Actually a root word of technology, techne, originally meant ``art.'' The ancient Greeks never separated art from manufacture in their minds, and so never developed separate words for them.

Neither is the ugliness inherent in the materials of modern technology ... a statement you sometimes hear. Mass-produced plastics and synthetics aren't in themselves bad. They've just acquired bad associations. A person who's lived inside stone walls of a prison most of his life is likely to see stone as an inherently ugly material, even though it's also the prime material of sculpture, and a person who's lived in a prison of ugly plastic technology that started with his childhood toys and continues through a lifetime of junky consumer products is likely to see this material as inherently ugly. But the real ugliness of modern technology isn't found in any material or shape or act or product. These are just the objects in which the low Quality appears to reside. It's our habit of assigning Quality to subjects or objects that gives this impression.

The real ugliness is not the result of any objects oftechnology. Nor is it, if one follows Phædrus' metaphysics, the result of any subjects of technology, thepeople who produce it or the people who use it. Quality, or its absence, doesn't reside in either the subject or the object. The real ugliness lies in the relationship between the people who produce the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar relationship between the people who use the technology and the things they use.

Phædrus felt that at the moment of pure Quality perception, or not even perception, at the moment of pure Quality, there is no subject and there is no object. There is only a sense of Quality that produces a later awareness of subjects and objects. At the moment of pure quality, subject and object are identical. This is the tat tvam asi truth of the Upanishads, but it's also reflected in modern street argot. ``Getting with it,'' ``digging it,'' ``grooving on it'' are all slang reflections of this identity. It is this identity that is the basis of craftsmanship in all the technical arts. And it is this identity that modern, dualistically conceived technology lacks. The creator of it feels no particular sense of identity with it. The owner of it feels no particular sense of identity with it. The user of it feels no particular sense of identity with it. Hence, by Phædrus' definition, it has no Quality.

That wall in Korea that Phædrus saw was an act of technology. It was beautiful, but not because of any masterful intellectual planning or any scientific supervision of the job, or any added expenditures to ``stylize'' it. It was beautiful because the people who worked on it had a way of looking at things that made them do it right unselfconsciously. They didn't separate themselves from the work in such a way as to do it wrong. There is the center of the whole solution.

The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology. That's impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is ... not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both. When this transcendence occurs in such events as the first airplane flight across the ocean or the first footstep on the moon, a kind of public recognition of the transcendent nature of technology occurs. But this transcendence should also occur at the individual level, on a personal basis, in one's own life, in a less dramatic way.

The walls of the canyon here are completely vertical now. In many places room for the road had to be blasted out of it. No alternate routes here. Just whichever way the river goes. It may be just my imagination, but it seems the river's already smaller than it was an hour ago.

Such personal transcendence of conflicts with technology doesn't have to involve motorcycles, of course. It can be at a level as simple as sharpening a kitchen knife or sewing a dress or mending a broken chair. The underlying problems are the same. In each case there's a beautiful way of doing it and an ugly way of doing it, and in arriving at the high-quality, beautiful way of doing it, both an ability to see what ``looks good''

Why don't you come out of the shadows? What do you really look like? You're afraid of something aren't you? What is it you're afraid of?

Beyond the figure in the shadows is the glass door. Chris is behind it, motioning me to open it. He's older now, but his face still has a pleading expression. ``What do I do now? ''he wants to know. ``What do I do next? '' He's waiting for my instructions.

It's time to act.

I study the figure in the shadows. It's not as omnipotent as it once seemed. ``Who are you? '' I ask.

No answer.

``By what right is that door closed?''

Still no answer. The figure is silent, but it is also cowering. It's afraid! Of me.

``There are worse things than hiding in the shadows. Is that it? Is that why you don't speak? ''

It seems to be quivering, retreating, as though sensing what I am about to do.

I wait, and then move closer to it. Loathsome, dark, evil thing. Closer, looking not at it but at the glass door, so as not to warn it. I pause again, brace myself and then lunge!

My hands sink into something soft where its neck should be. It writhes, and I tighten the grip, as one holds a serpent. And now holding it tighter and tighter we'll get it into the light. Here it comes! NOW WE'LL SEE ITS FACE!

``Dad! ''

``Dad! '' I hear Chris's voice through the door?

Yes! The first time! ``Dad! Dad! ''

``Dad! Dad!'' Chris tugs on my shirt. ``Dad! Wake up! Dad!''

He's crying, sobbing now. ``Stop, Dad! Wake up!''

``It's all right, Chris.''

``Dad! Wake up!''

``I'm awake.'' I can just barely make out his face in the dawn light. We're in trees somewhere outside. There's a motorcycle here. I think we're in Oregon somewhere.

``I'm all right, it was just a nightmare.''

He continues to cry and I sit quietly with him for a while. ``It's all right,'' I say, but he doesn't stop. He's badly frightened.

So am I.

What were you dreaming about?''

``I was trying to see someone's face.''

``You shouted you were going to kill me.''

``No, not you.''

``Who?''

``The person in the dream.''

``Who was it?''

``I'm not sure.''

Chris's crying stops, but he continues to shake from the cold. ``Did you see the face?''

``Yes.''

``What did it look like?''

``It was my own face, Chris, that's when I shouted. -- It was just a bad dream.'' I tell him he's shivering and should get back into the sleeping bag.

He does this. ``It's so cold,'' he says.

``Yes.'' By the dawn light I can see the vapor from our breaths. Then he crawls under the cover of the sleeping bag and I can see only my own.

I don't sleep.

The dreamer isn't me at all.

It's Phædrus.

He's waking up.

A mind divided against itself -- me -- I'm the evil figure in the shadows. I'm the loathsome one. --

I always knew he would come back. --

It's a matter now of preparing for it. --

The sky under the trees looks so grey and hopeless.

Poor Chris.

The despair grows now.

Like one of those movie dissolves in which you know you're not in the real world but it seems that way anyway.

It's a cold, snowless November day. The wind blows dirt through the cracks of the windows of an old car with soot on the windows, and Chris, six, sits beside him, with sweaters on because the heater doesn't work, and through the dirty windows of the windblown car they see that they move forward toward a grey snowless sky between walls of grey and greyish-brown buildings with brick fronts, with broken glass between the brick fronts and debris in the streets.

``Where are we?'' Chris says, and Phædrus says, ``I don't know,'' and he really doesn't, his mind is all but gone. He is lost, drifting through the grey streets.

``Where are we going?'' says Phædrus.

``To the bunk-bedders,'' says Chris.

``Where are they?'' asks Phædrus.

``I don't know,'' says Chris. ``Maybe if we just keep going we'll see them.''

And so the two drive and drive through the endless streets looking for the bunk-bedders. Phædrus wants to stop and put his head on the steering wheel and just rest. The soot and the grey have penetrated his eyes and all but blotted cognizance from his brain. One street sign is like another. One grey-brown building is like the next. On and on they drive, looking for the bunk-bedders. But the bunk-bedders, Phædrus knows, he will never find.

Chris begins to realize slowly and by degrees that something is strange, that the person guiding the car is no longer really guiding it, that the captain is dead and the car is pilotless and he doesn't know this but only feels it and says stop and Phædrus stops.

A car behind honks, but Phædrus does not move. Other cars honk, and then others, and Chris in panic says, ``GO!'' and Phædrus slowly with agony pushes his foot on the clutch and puts the car in gear. Slowly, in dream-motion, the car moves in low through the streets.

``Where do we live?'' Phædrus asks a frightened Chris.

Chris remembers an address, but doesn't know how to get there, but reasons that if he asks enough people he will find the way and so says, ``Stop the car,'' and gets out and asks directions and leads a demented Phædrus through the endless walls of brick and broken glass.

Hours later they arrive and the mother is furious that they are so late. She cannot understand why they have not found the bunk-bedders. Chris says, ``We looked everywhere,'' but looks at Phædrus with a quick glance of fright, of terror at something unknown. That, for Chris, is where it started.

It won't happen again. --

I think what I'll do is head down for San Francisco, and put Chris on a bus for home, and then sell the cycle and check in at a hospital -- or that last seems so pointless -- I don't know what I'll do.

The trip won't have been entirely wasted. At least he'll have some good memories of me as he grows up. That takes away some of the anxiety a little. That's a good thought to hold on to. I'll hold on to that.

Meanwhile, just continue on a normal trip and hope something improves. Don't throw anything away. Never, never throw anything away.

Cold out! Feels like winter! Where are we, that it should get this cold? We must be at a high altitude. I look out of the sleeping bag and this time see frost on the motorcycle. On the chrome of the gas tank it's sparkling in the early sunlight. On the black frame where the sunlight hits it it's partly turned to beads of water that will soon run down to the wheel. It's too cold to lie around.

I remember the dust under the pine needles and put my boots on carefully to avoid stirring it up. At the motorcycle I unpack everything, get out the long underwear and put it on, then clothes, then sweater, then jacket. I'm still cold.

I step through the spongy dust onto the dirt road that has brought us here and sprint down it through the pines for a hundred feet or so, then settle down to an even run and then finally stop. That feels better. Not a sound. The frost is in little patches on the road too, but melting and dark wet tan between the patches where the early sun's rays strike it. It's so white and lacy and untouched. It's on the trees too. I walk back softly down the road as if not to disturb the sunrise. Early autumn feeling.

Chris is still asleep and we won't be able to go anywhere until the air warms up. Good time to get the cycle tuned. I work loose the knob on the side cover over the air filter, and underneath the filter withdraw a worn and dirty roll of field tools. My hands are stiff with the cold and the backs of them are wrinkled. Those wrinkles aren't from the cold though. At forty that's old age coming on. I lay the roll on the seat and spread it open . . . there they are -- like seeing old friends again.

I hear Chris, glance over the seat and see that he's stirring but doesn't get up. He's evidently just rolling in his sleep. After a while the sun gets warmer and my hands aren't as stiff as they were.

I was going to talk about some of the lore of cycle repair, the hundreds of things you learn as you go along, which enrich what you're doing not only practically but esthetically. But that seems too trivial now, though I shouldn't say that.