Chicago 15th July. Travelling back from an arduous but immensely enjoyable ten days or so re-creating the first half of the “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” #ZMM50thRide with 20 other fine people, referred to tongue-in-cheek by the DeWeese family as “Pirsig Pilgrims”. It really was about the people for me. As Mark Richardson reminded us at the opening event before the ride started in Minneapolis.
“The cycle you are working on is yourself,
the journey you are on is your own.”
With 50 years hindsight, obsession with precise details of Pirsig’s original route and journey (and motorcycles and zen practice) isn’t necessarily healthy, they – those details – don’t really matter in the here and now beyond their metaphorical trajectory: the kinds of roads; the nature of the landscape; the ambience of the diners, the morality of the attention paid. A full report with pictures from the first half is being compiled, and there will no doubt be a few other reflective posts on the Robert Pirsig Association pages.
A propos nothing in particular, this image appeared on my Facebook timeline last night, and it prompted me to write this short post today.
Yesterday I had found myself sitting next to a stranger – as you do on aeroplanes – flying from Billings to Chicago who, like myself, was reading and writing / note-taking, both of us using versions of Kindle and Notepad. It became apparent she was somewhat agitated, distracted, so I asked if she was OK. Now teary beyond simply agitated, clearly she wasn’t. She had an onward connection to Albany NY (*) with the same American Eagle airline that afternoon, on her way to a funeral the following morning and we were already 80 minutes behind schedule. The funeral was for a US armed services close colleague of 15 years. She needed some re-assurance she wasn’t going to miss it. The flight attendant did the trick, once I persuaded her she had a legitimate reason to hit the call button.
But then, her armed forces career wasn’t the half of it. A biologist specialising in entomology, fitness instructor fits with the military career I guess, on her way to another science teaching job in Greece. Inspired by the book she was reading, writing her own, lamenting our addiction with the polarising technology-intermediation of our natural human relations. She was quite taken by the idea that this had been the whole purpose of my trip and my own writing ambitions.
When it came to books, humans and technology, we had a lot to talk about. Didn’t actually catch what her inspirational book had been. Kindle was the exception for both of us. Great experience for both of us too, I think.
Wishing you the peace you were hoping for today, Carrie.
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Previously on Psybertron:
Reading physical books in a human social context.
(*) Didn’t get to mention that Albany NY was en-route for Pirsig’s second book Lila. The connections never end.
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