Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

  “Let’s tell stories then”, Chris says. He thinks for a while. “Do you know any good ghost stories? All the kids in our cabin used to tell ghost stories at night.”

  “You tell us some”, John says.

  And he does. They are kind of fun to hear. Some of them I haven’t heard since I was his age. I tell him so, and Chris wants to hear some of mine, but I can’t remember any.

  After a while he says, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “No”, I say

  “Why not?”

  “Because they are un-sci-en-ti-fic.”

  The way I say this makes John smile. “They contain no matter”, I continue, “and have no energy and therefore, according to the laws of science, do not exist except in people’s minds.”

  The whiskey, the fatigue and the wind in the trees start mixing in my mind. “Of course”, I add, “the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people’s minds. It’s best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you’re safe. That doesn’t leave you very much to believe in, but that’s scientific too.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about”, Chris says.

  “I’m being kind of facetious.”

  Chris gets frustrated when I talk like this, but I don’t think it hurts him.

  “One of the kids at YMCA camp says he believes in ghosts.”

  “He was just spoofing you.”

  “No, he wasn’t. He said that when people haven’t been buried right, their ghosts come back to haunt people. He really believes in that.”

  “He was just spoofing you”, I repeat.

  “What’s his name?” Sylvia says.

  “Tom White Bear.”

  John and I exchange looks, suddenly recognizing the same thing.

  “Ohhh, Indian!” he says.

  I laugh. “I guess I’m going to have to take that back a little”, I say. “I was thinking of European ghosts.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  John roars with laughter. “He’s got you”, he says.

  I think a little and say, “Well, Indians sometimes have a different way of looking at things, which I’m not saying is completely wrong. Science isn’t part of the Indian tradition.”

  “Tom White Bear said his mother and dad told him not to believe all that stuff. But he said his grandmother whispered it was true anyway, so he believes it.”

  He looks at me pleadingly. He really does want to know things sometimes. Being facetious is not being a very good father. “Sure”, I say, reversing myself, “I believe in ghosts too.”

  Now John and Sylvia look at me peculiarly. I see I’m not going to get out of this one easily and brace myself for a long explanation.

  “It’s completely natural”, I say, “to think of Europeans who believed in ghosts or Indians who believed in ghosts as ignorant. The scientific point of view has wiped out every other view to a point where they all seem primitive, so that if a person today talks about ghosts or spirits he is considered ignorant or maybe nutty. It’s just all but completely impossible to imagine a world where ghosts can actually exist.”

  John nods affirmatively and I continue.

  “My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn’t that superior. IQs aren’t that much different. Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was completely different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to a modern man. In that sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, the laws of physics and of logic — the number system — the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.”

  “They seem real to me”, John says.

  “I don’t get it”, says Chris.

  So I go on. “For example, it seems completely natural to presume that gravitation and the law of gravitation existed before Isaac Newton. It would sound nutty to think that until the seventeenth century there was no gravity.”

  “Of course.”

  “So when did this law start? Has it always existed?”

  John is frowning, wondering what I am getting at.

  “What I’m driving at”, I say, “is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed.”

  “Sure.”

  “Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone’s mind because there wasn’t anyone, not in space because there was no space either, not anywhere… this law of gravity still existed?”

  Now John seems not so sure.

  “If that law of gravity existed”, I say, “I honestly don’t know what a thing has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me that law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence that that law of gravity didn’t have. Or a single scientific attribute of existence it did have. And yet it is still ‘common sense’ to believe that it existed.”

  John says, “I guess I’d have to think about it.”

  “Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense.”

  “And what that means”, I say before he can interrupt, “and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people’s heads! It’s a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people’s ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own.”

  “Why does everybody believe in the law of gravity then?”

  “Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as ‘education.’”

  “You mean the teacher is hypnotizing the kids into believing the law of gravity?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “You’ve heard of the importance of eye contact in the classroom? Every educationist emphasizes it. No educationist explains it.”

  John shakes his head and pours me another drink. He puts his hand over his mouth and in a mock aside says to Sylvia, “You know, most of the time he seems like such a normal guy.”

  I counter, “That’s the first normal thing I’ve said in weeks. The rest of the time I’m feigning twentieth-century lunacy just like you are. So as not to draw attention to myself.”

  “But I’ll repeat it for you”, I say. “We believe the disembodied words of Sir Isaac Newton were sitting in the middle of nowhere billions of years before he was born and that magically he discovered these words. They were always there, even when they applied to nothing. Gradually the world came into being and then they applied to it. In fact, those words themselves were what formed the world. That, John, is ridiculous.”

  “The problem, the contradiction the scientists are stuck with, is that of mind. Mind has no matter or energy but they can’t escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. Numbers exist only in the mind. I don’t get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. It’s that only that gets me. Science is only in your mind too, it’s just that that doesn’t make it bad. Or ghosts either.”

  They are just looking at me so I continue: “Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It’s all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It’s run by ghosts. We see what we see because th
ese ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.”

  John looks too much in thought to speak. But Sylvia is excited. “Where do you get all these ideas?” she asks.

  I am about to answer them but then do not. I have a feeling of having already pushed it to the limit, maybe beyond, and it is time to drop it.

  After a while John says, “It’ll be good to see the mountains again.”

  “Yes, it will”, I agree. “one last drink to that!”

  We finish it and are off to our rooms.

  I see that Chris brushes his teeth, and let him get by with a promise that he’ll shower in the morning. I pull seniority and take the bed by the window. After the lights are out he says, “Now, tell me a ghost story.”

  “I just did, out there.”

  “I mean a real ghost story.”

  “That was the realest ghost story you’ll ever hear.”

  “You know what I mean. The other kind.”

  I try to think of some conventional ones. “I used to know so many of them when I was a kid, Chris, but they’re all forgotten”, I say. “It’s time to go to sleep. We’ve all got to get up early tomorrow.”

  Except for the wind through the screens of the motel window it is quiet. The thought of all that wind sweeping toward us across the open fields of the prairie is a tranquil one and I feel lulled by it.

  The wind rises and then falls, then rises and sighs, and falls again — from so many miles away.

  “Did you ever know a ghost?” Chris asks.

  I am half asleep. “Chris”, I say, “I knew a fellow once who spent all his whole life doing nothing but hunting for a ghost, and it was just a waste of time. So go to sleep.”

  I realize my mistake too late.

  “Did he find him?”

  “Yes, he found him, Chris.”

  I keep wishing Chris would just listen to the wind and not ask questions.

  “What did he do then?”

  “He thrashed him good.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he became a ghost himself.” Somehow I had the thought this was going to put Chris to sleep, but it’s not and it’s just waking me up.

  “What is his name?”

  “No one you know.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, what is it anyway?”

  “His name, Chris, since it doesn’t matter, is Phædrus. It’s not a name you know.”

  “Did you see him on the motorcycle in the storm?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Sylvia said she thought you saw a ghost.”

  “That’s just an expression.”

  “Dad?”

  “This had better be the last question, Chris, or I’m going to become angry.”

  “I was just going to say you sure don’t talk like anyone else.”

  “Yes, Chris, I know that”, I say. “It’s a problem. Now go to sleep.”

  “Good night, Dad.”

  “Good night.”

  A half hour later he is breathing sleepfully, and the wind is still strong as ever and I am wide-awake. There, out the window in the dark… this cold wind crossing the road into the trees, the leaves shimmering flecks of moonlight… there is no question about it, Phædrus saw all of this. What he was doing here I have no idea. Why he came this way I will probably never know. But he has been here, steered us onto this strange road, has been with us all along. There is no escape.

  I wish I could say that I don’t know why he is here, but I’m afraid I must now confess that I do. The ideas, the things I was saying about science and ghosts, and even that idea this afternoon about caring and technology… they are not my own. I haven’t really had a new idea in years. They are stolen from him. And he has been watching. And that is why he is here.

  With that confession, I hope he will now allow me some sleep.

  Poor Chris. “Do you know any ghost stories?” he asked. I could have told him one but even the thought of that is frightening.

  I really must go to sleep.

  4

  Every Chautauqua should have a list somewhere of valuable things to remember that can be kept in some safe place for times of future need and inspiration. Details. And now, while the others are still snoring away wasting this beautiful morning sunlight — well — to sort of fill time —

  What I have here is my list of valuable things to take on your next motorcycle trip across the Dakotas.

  I’ve been awake since dawn. Chris is still sound asleep in the other bed. I started to roll over for more sleep but heard a rooster crowing and then became aware we are on vacation and there is no point in sleeping. I can hear John right through the motel partition sawing wood in there — unless it’s Sylvia — no, that’s too loud. Damned chain saw, it sounds like.

  I got so tired of forgetting things on trips like this, I made this up and store it in a file at home to check off when I am ready to go.

  Most of the items are commonplace and need no comment. Some of them are peculiar to motorcycling and need some comment. Some of them are just plain peculiar and need a lot of comment. The list is divided into four parts: Clothing, Personal Stuff, Cooking and Camping Gear, and Motorcycle Stuff.

  The first part, Clothing, is simple:

  Two changes of underwear. Long underwear. One change of shirt and pants for each of us. I use Army-surplus fatigues. They’re cheap, tough and don’t show dirt. I had an item called “dress clothes” at first but John penciled “Tux” after this item. I was just thinking of something you might want to wear outside a filling station. One sweater and jacket each. Gloves. Unlined leather gloves are best because they prevent sunburn, absorb sweat and keep your hands cool. When you’re going for an hour or two little things like this aren’t important, but when you’re going all day long day after day they become plenty important. Cycle boots. Rain gear. Helmet and sunshade. Bubble. This gives me claustrophobia, so I use it only in the rain, which otherwise at high speed stings your face like needles. Goggles. I don’t like windshields because they also close you in. These are some British laminated plate-glass goggles that work fine. The wind gets behind sunglasses. Plastic goggles get scratched up and distort vision.

  The next list is Personal Stuff:

  Combs. Billfold. Pocketknife. Memoranda booklet. Pen. Cigarettes and matches. Flashlight. Soap and plastic soap container. Toothbrushes and toothpaste. Scissors. APCs for headaches. Insect repellent. Deodorant (after a hot day on a cycle, your best friends don’t need to tell you). Sunburn lotion. (On a cycle you don’t notice sunburn until you stop, and then it’s too late. Put it on early.) Band-Aids. Toilet paper. Washcloth (this can go into a plastic box to keep other stuff from getting damp). Towel.

  Books. I don’t know of any other cyclist who takes books with him. They take a lot of space, but I have three of them here anyway, with some loose sheets of paper in them for writing. These are:

  The shop manual for this cycle. A general troubleshooting guide containing all the technical information I can never keep in my head. This is Chilton’s Motorcycle Troubleshooting Guide written by Ocee Rich and sold by Sears, Roebuck. A copy of Thoreau’s Walden — which Chris has never heard and which can be read a hundred times without exhaustion. I try always to pick a book far over his head and read it as a basis for questions and answers, rather than without interruption. I read a sentence or two, wait for him to come up with his usual barrage of questions, answer them, then read another sentence or two. Classics read well this way. They must be written this way. Sometimes we have spent a whole evening reading and talking and discovered we have only covered two or three pages. It’s a form of reading done a centu
ry ago — when Chautauquas were popular. Unless you’ve tried it you can’t imagine how pleasant it is to do it this way.

  I see Chris is sleeping over there completely relaxed, none of his normal tension. I guess I won’t wake him up yet.

  Camping Equipment includes:

  Two sleeping bags. Two ponchos and one ground cloth. These convert into a tent and also protect the luggage from rain while you are traveling. Rope. U. S. Geodetic Survey maps of an area where we hope to do some hiking. Machete. Compass. Canteen. I couldn’t find this anywhere when we left. I think the kids must have lost it somewhere. Two Army-surplus mess kits with knife, fork and spoon. A collapsible Sterno stove with one medium-sized can of Sterno. This is an experimental purchase. I haven’t used it yet. When it rains or when you’re above the timberline firewood is a problem. Some aluminum screw-top tins. For lard, salt, butter, flour, sugar. A mountaineering supply house sold us these years ago. Brillo, for cleaning. Two aluminum-frame backpacks.

  Motorcycle Stuff. A standard tool kit comes with the cycle and is stored under the seat. This is supplemented with the following:

  A large, adjustable open-end wrench. A machinist’s hammer. A cold chisel. A taper punch. A pair of tire irons. A tire-patching kit. A bicycle pump. A can of molybdenum disulfide spray for the chain. (This has tremendous penetrating ability into the inside of each roller where it really counts, and the lubricating superiority of molybdenum disulfide is well known. Once it has dried off, however, it ought to be supplemented with good old SAE-30 engine oil.) Impact driver. A point file. Feeler gauge. Test lamp.

  Spare parts include:

  Plugs. Throttle, clutch and brake cables. Points, fuses, headlight and taillight bulbs, chain-coupling link with keeper, cotter pins, baling wire. Spare chain (this is just an old one that was about shot when I replaced it, enough to get to a cycle shop if the present one goes).

  And that’s about it. No shoelaces.

  It would probably be normal about this time to wonder what sort of U-Haul trailer all this is in. But it’s not as bulky, really, as it sounds.