Zen Buddhists talk about “just sitting”, a meditative practice in which the idea of a duality of self and object does not dominate one’s consciousness. What I’m talking about here in motorcycle maintenance is “just fixing”, in which the idea of a duality of self and object doesn’t dominate one’s consciousness. When one isn’t dominated by feelings of separateness from what he’s working on, then one can be said to “care” about what he’s doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one’s doing. When one has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of caring, Quality itself.
So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. That was what it was about that wall in Korea. It was a material reflection of a spiritual reality.
I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.
A town called Riggins comes up and we see a lot of motels, and afterward the road branches away from the canyon and follows a smaller stream. It seems to head upward into forest.
It does, and soon the road becomes shaded by tall, cool pines. Resort signs appear. We wind higher and higher into unexpectedly pleasant, cool, green meadows surrounded by pine forests. At a town called New Meadows we fill up again and buy two cans of oil, still surprised at the change.
But as we leave New Meadows I note the long slant of the sun and a late afternoon depression begins to set in. At another time of day these mountain meadows would refresh me more, but we’ve gone too long. We pass Tamarack and the road drops down again from green meadows into dry sandy country.
I guess that’s all I want to say for the Chautauqua today. It’s been a long session and perhaps the most important one. Tomorrow I want to talk about things that seem to turn one toward Quality and turn one away from Quality, some of the traps and problems that come up.
Strange feelings from the orange sunlight on this sandy dry country so far from home. I wonder if Chris feels it too. Just a sort of unexplained sadness that comes each afternoon when the new day is gone forever and there’s nothing ahead but increasing darkness.
The orange turns to dull bronze light and continues to show what it has shown all day long, but now it seems to show it without enthusiasm. Across those dry hills, within those little houses in the distance are people who’ve been there all day long, going about the business of the day, who now find nothing unusual or different in this strange darkening landscape, as we do. If we were to come upon them early in the day they might be curious about us and what we’re here for. But now in the evening they’d just resent our presence. The work day is over. It’s time for supper and family and relaxation and turning inward at home. We ride unnoticed down this empty highway through this strange country I’ve never seen before, and now a heavy feeling of isolation and loneliness becomes dominant and my spirits wane with the sun.
We stop at an abandoned school yard and under a huge cottonwood tree I change the oil in the cycle. Chris is irritable and wonders why we stop for so long, not knowing perhaps that it’s just the time of day that makes him irritable; but I give him the map to study while I change the oil, and when the oil is changed we look at the map together and decide to have supper at the next good restaurant we find and camp at the first good camping place. That cheers him up.
At a town called Cambridge we have supper and when we are finished, it’s dark out. We follow the headlight beam down a secondary road toward Oregon to a little sign saying “BROWNLEE CAMPGROUND”, which appears to be in a draw of the mountains. In the dark it’s hard to tell what sort of country we’re in. We follow a dirt road under trees and past underbrush to some camper’s pull-ins. No one else seems to be here. When I shut the motor off and we unpack I can hear a small stream nearby. Except for that and the chirping of some little bird there’s no sound.
“I like it here”, Chris says.
“It’s very quiet”, I say.
“Where will we be going tomorrow?”
“Into Oregon.” I give him the flashlight and have him shine it where I’m unpacking.
“Have I been there before?”
“Maybe, I’m not sure.”
I spread out the sleeping bags, and put his on top of the picnic table. The novelty of this appeals to him. This night there’ll be no trouble sleeping. Soon I hear deep breathing that tells me he’s already asleep.
I wish I knew what to say to him. Or what to ask. He seems so close at times, and yet the closeness has nothing to do with what is asked or said. Then at other times he seems very far away and sort of watching me from some vantage point I don’t see. And then sometimes he’s just childish and there’s no relation at all.
Sometimes, when thinking about this, I thought that the idea that one person’s mind is accessible to another’s is just a conversational illusion, just a figure of speech, an assumption that makes some kind of exchange between basically alien creatures seem plausible, and that really the relationship of one person to another is ultimately unknowable. The effort of fathoming what is in another’s mind creates a distortion of what is seen. I’m trying, I suppose, for some situation in which whatever it is emerges undistorted. The way he asks all those questions, I don’t know.
26
A sensation of cold wakes me up. I see out of the top of the sleeping bag that the sky is dark grey. I pull my head down and close my eyes again.
Later I see the grey of the sky is lighter, and it’s still cold. I can see the vapor of my breath. An alarmed thought that the grey is from rain clouds overhead wakes me up, but after looking carefully I see that this is just grey dawn. It seems too cold and early to start riding yet, so I don’t get out of the bag. But sleep is gone.
Through the spokes of the motorcycle wheel I see Chris’s sleeping bag on the picnic table, twisted all around him. He isn’t stirring.
The cycle looms silently over me, ready to start, as if it has waited all night like some silent guardian.
Silver-grey and chrome and black… and dusty. Dirt from Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas and Minnesota. From the ground up it looks very impressive. No frills. Everything with a purpose.
I don’t think I’ll ever sell it. No reason to, really. They’re not like cars, with a body that rusts out in a few years. Keep them tuned and overhauled and they’ll last as long as you do. Probably longer. Quality. It’s carried us so far without trouble.
The sunlight just touches the top of the bluff high above the draw we’re in. A wisp of fog has appeared above the creek. That means it’ll warm up.
I get out of the sleeping bag, put shoes on, pack everything I can without waking Chris, and then go over to the picnic table and give him a shake to wake him up.
He doesn’t respond. I look around and see that there are no jobs left to do but wake him up, and hesitate, but feeling manic and jumpy from the brisk morning air holler, “WAKE!” and he sits up sudde
nly, eyes wide open.
I do my best to follow this with the opening Quatrain of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It looks like some desert cliff in Persia above us. But Chris doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about. He looks up at the top of the bluff and then just sits there squinting at me. You have to be in a certain mood to accept bad recitations of poetry. Particularly that one.
Soon we’re on the road again, which twists and turns. We stem down into an enormous canyon with high white bluffs on either side. The wind freezes. The road comes into some sunlight which seems to warm me right through the jacket and sweater, but soon we ride into the shade of the canyon wall again where again the wind freezes. This dry desert air doesn’t hold heat. My lips, with the wind blowing into them, feel dry and cracked.
Farther on we cross a dam and leave the canyon into some high semidesert country. This is Oregon now. The road winds through a landscape that reminds me of northern Rajasthan, in India, where it’s not quite desert, much pinon, junipers and grass, but not agricultural either, except where a draw or valley provides a little extra water.
Those crazy Rubaiyat Quatrains keep rumbling through my head.
– something, something along some Strip of
Herbage strown,
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultan scarce is known,
And pity Sultan Mahmud on his Throne. —
That conjures up a glimpse of the ruins of an ancient
Mogul palace near the desert where out of the corner of his eye he saw a wild rosebush.
– And this first summer Month that brings the Rose — How did that go? I don’t know. I don’t even like the poem. I’ve noticed since this trip has started and particularly since Bozeman that these fragments seem less and less a part of his memory and more and more a part of mine. I’m not sure what that means — I think — I just don’t know.
I think there’s a name for this kind of semidesert, but I can’t think of what it is. No one can be seen anywhere on the road but us.
Chris hollers that he has diarrhea again. We ride until I see a stream below and pull off the road and stop. His face is full of embarrassment again but I tell him we’re in no hurry and get out a change of underwear and roll of toilet paper and bar of soap and tell him to wash his hands thoroughly and carefully after he’s done.
I sit on an Omar Khayyam rock contemplating the semidesert and feel not bad.
– And this first Summer month that brings the Rose — oh — now it comes back. —
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say ,
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose ,
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.
– And so on and so forth —
Let’s get off Omar and onto the Chautauqua. Omar’s solution is just to sit around and guzzle the wine and feel so bad that time is passing and the Chautauqua looks good to me by comparison. Particularly today’s Chautauqua, which is about gumption.
I see Chris coming back up the hill now. His expression looks happy.
I like the word “gumption” because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. It’s an old Scottish word, once used a lot by pioneers, but which, like “kin”, seems to have all but dropped out of use. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.
The Greeks called it enthousiasmos, the root of “enthusiasm”, which means literally “filled with theos”, or God, or Quality. See how that fits?
A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.
Chris arrives and says, “I’m feeling better now.”
“Good”, I say. We pack up the soap and toilet paper and put the towel and wet underwear where they won’t get other things damp and then we get on and are moving again.
The gumption-filling process occurs when one is quiet long enough to see and hear and feel the real universe, not just one’s own stale opinions about it. But it’s nothing exotic. That’s why I like the word.
You see it often in people who return from long, quiet fishing trips. Often they’re a little defensive about having put so much time to “no account” because there’s no intellectual justification for what they’ve been doing. But the returned fisherman usually has a peculiar abundance of gumption, usually for the very same things he was sick to death of a few weeks before. He hasn’t been wasting time. It’s only our limited cultural viewpoint that makes it seem so.
If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.
Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going. If you haven’t got it there’s no way the motorcycle can possibly be fixed. But if you have got it and know how to keep it there’s absolutely no way in this whole world that motorcycle can keep from getting fixed. It’s bound to happen. Therefore the thing that must be monitored at all times and preserved before anything else is the gumption.
This paramount importance of gumption solves a problem of format of this Chautauqua. The problem has been how to get off the generalities. If the Chautauqua gets into the actual details of fixing one individual machine the chances are overwhelming that it won’t be your make and model and the information will be not only useless but dangerous, since information that fixes one model can sometimes wreck another. For detailed information of an objective sort, a separate shop manual for the specific make and model of machine must be used. In addition, a general shop manual such as Audel’s Automotive Guide fills in the gaps.
But there’s another kind of detail that no shop manual goes into but that is common to all machines and can be given here. This is the detail of the Quality relationship, the gumption relationship, between the machine and the mechanic, which is just as intricate as the machine itself. Throughout the process of fixing the machine things always come up, low-quality things, from a dusted knuckle to an accidentally ruined “irreplaceable” assembly. These drain off gumption, destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to forget the whole business. I call these things “gumption traps.”
There are hundreds of different kinds of gumption traps, maybe thousands, maybe millions. I have no way of knowing how many I don’t know. I know it seems as though I’ve stumbled into every kind of gumption trap imaginable. What keeps me from thinking I’ve hit them all is that with every job I discover more. Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That’s what makes it interesting.
The map before me says the town of Baker is soon ahead. I see we’re in better agricultural land now. More rain here.
What I have in mind now is a catalog of “Gumption Traps I Have Known.” I want to start a whole new academic field, gumptionology, in which these traps are sorted, classified, structured into hierarchies and interrelated for the edification of future generations and the benefit of all mankind.
Gumptionology 101… An examination of affective, cognitive and psychomotor blocks in the perception of Quality relationships… 3 cr,Vll,MWF. I’d like to see that in a college catalog somewhere.
In traditional maintenance gumption is considered something you’re born with or have acquired as a result of good upbringing. It’s a fixed commodity. From the lack of information about how one acquires this gumption one might assume that a person without any gumption is a hopeless case.
In nondualistic maintenance gumption isn’t a fixed commodity. It’s variable, a reservoir of good spirits that can be added to or subtracted from. Since it’s a result of the perception o
f Quality, a gumption trap, consequently, can be defined as anything that causes one to lose sight of Quality, and thus lose one’s enthusiasm for what one is doing. As one might guess from a definition as broad as this, the field is enormous and only a beginning sketch can be attempted here.
As far as I can see there are two main types of gumption traps. The first type is those in which you’re thrown off the Quality track by conditions that arise from external circumstances, and I call these “setbacks.” The second type is traps in which you’re thrown off the Quality track by conditions that are primarily within yourself. These I don’t have any generic name for… “hang-ups” I suppose. I’ll take up the externally caused setbacks first.
The first time you do any major job it seems as though the out-of-sequence-reassembly setback is your biggest worry. This occurs usually at a time when you think you’re almost done. After days of work you finally have it all together except for: What’s this? A connecting-rod bearing liner?! How could you have left that out? Oh Jesus, everything’s got to come apart again! You can almost hear the gumption escaping. Pssssssssssssss.
There’s nothing you can do but go back and take it all apart again — after a rest period of up to a month that allows you to get used to the idea.
There are two techniques I use to prevent the out-of-sequence-reassembly setback. I use them mainly when I’m getting into a complex assembly I don’t know anything about.
It should be inserted here parenthetically that there’s a school of mechanical thought which says I shouldn’t be getting into a complex assembly I don’t know anything about. I should have training or leave the job to a specialist. That’s a self-serving school of mechanical eliteness I’d like to see wiped out. That was a “specialist” who broke the fins on this machine. I’ve edited manuals written to train specialists for IBM, and what they know when they’re done isn’t that great. You’re at a disadvantage the first time around and it may cost you a little more because of parts you accidentally damage, and it will almost undoubtedly take a lot more time, but the next time around you’re way ahead of the specialist. You, with gumption, have learned the assembly the hard way and you’ve a whole set of good feelings about it that he’s unlikely to have.