“But why?” Sylvia asks.
“I don’t know why — it’s just that — I don’t know — they’re not kin.” — Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin — sounds like hillbilly talk — not of a kind — same root — kindness, too — they can’t have real kindness toward him, they’re not his kin. That’s exactly the feeling.
Old word, so ancient it’s almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be “kind.” And everybody’s supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn’t help. Now it’s just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin.
It goes over and over again through my thoughts — mein Kind… my child. There it is in another language. Mein Kinder — “Wer reitet so spat durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind.”
Strange feeling from that.
“What are you thinking about?” Sylvia asks.
“An old poem, by Goethe. It must be two hundred years old. I had to learn it a long time ago. I don’t know why I should remember it now, except — ” The strange feeling comes back.
“How does it go?” Sylvia asks.
I try to recall. “A man is riding along a beach at night, through the wind. It’s a father, with his son, whom he holds fast in his arm. He asks his son why he looks so pale, and the son replies, ‘Father, don’t you see the ghost?’ The father tried to reassure the boy it’s only a bank of fog along the beach that he sees and only the rustling of the leaves in the wind that he hears but the son keeps saying it is the ghost and the father rides harder and harder through the night.”
“How does it end?”
“In failure — death of the child. The ghost wins.”
The wind blows light up from the coals and I see Sylvia look at me startled.
“But that’s another land and another time”, I say. “Here life is the end and ghosts have no meaning. I believe that. I believe in all this too”, I say, looking out at the darkened prairie, “although I’m not sure of what it all means yet — I’m not sure of much of anything these days. Maybe that’s why I talk so much.”
The coals die lower and lower. We smoke our last cigarettes. Chris is off somewhere in the darkness but I’m not going to shag after him. John is carefully silent and Sylvia is silent and suddenly we are all separate, all alone in our private universes, and there is no communication among us. We douse the fire and go back to the sleeping bags in the pines.
I discover that this one tiny refuge of scrub pines where I have put the sleeping bags is also the refuge from the wind of millions of mosquitos up from the reservoir. The mosquito repellent doesn’t stop them at all. I crawl deep into the sleeping bag and make one little hole for breathing. I am almost asleep when Chris finally shows up.
“There’s a great big sandpile over there”, he says, crunching around on the pine needles.
“Yes”, I say. “Get to sleep.”
“You should see it. Will you come and see it tomorrow?”
“We won’t have time.”
“Can I play over there tomorrow morning?”
“Yes.”
He makes interminable noises getting undressed and into the sleeping bag. He is in it. Then he rolls around. Then he is silent, and then rolls some more. Then he says, “Dad?”
“What?”
“What was it like when you were a kid?”
“Go to sleep, Chris!” There are limits to what you can listen to.
Later I hear a sharp inhaling of phlegm that tells me he has been crying, and though I’m exhausted, I don’t sleep. A few words of consolation might have helped there. He was trying to be friendly. But the words weren’t forthcoming for some reason. Consoling words are more for strangers, for hospitals, not kin. Little emotional Band-Aids like that aren’t what he needs or what’s sought. I don’t know what he needs, or what’s sought.
A gibbous moon comes up from the horizon beyond the pines, and by its slow, patient arc across the sky I measure hour after hour of semisleep. Too much fatigue. The moon and strange dreams and sounds of mosquitos and odd fragments of memory become jumbled and mixed in an unreal lost landscape in which the moon is shining and yet there is a bank of fog and I am riding a horse and Chris is with me and the horse jumps over a small stream that runs through the sand toward the ocean somewhere beyond. And then that is broken. And then it reappears.
And in the fog there appears an intimation of a figure. It disappears when I look at it directly, but then reappears in the corner of my vision when I turn my glance. I am about to say something, to call to it, to recognize it, but then do not, knowing that to recognize it by any gesture or action is to give it a reality which it must not have. But it is a figure I recognize even though I do not let on. It is Phædrus.
Evil spirit. Insane. From a world without life or death.
The figure fades and I hold panic down — tight — not rushing it — just letting it sink in — not believing it, not disbelieving it — but the hair crawls slowly on the back of my skull — he is calling Chris, is that it? — Yes? —
6
My watch says nine o’clock. And it’s already too hot to sleep. Outside the sleeping bag, the sun is already high into the sky. The air around is clear and dry.
I get up puffy-eyed and arthritic from the ground.
My mouth is already dry and cracked and my face and hands are covered with mosquito bites. Some sunburn from yesterday morning is hurting.
Beyond the pines are burned grass and clumps of earth and sand so bright they are hard to look at. The heat, silence, and barren hills and blank sky give a feeling of great, intense space.
Not a bit of moisture in the sky. Today’s going to be a scorcher.
I walk out of the pines onto a stretch of barren sand between some grass and watch for a long time, meditatively.
I’ve decided today’s Chautauqua will begin to explore Phædrus’ world. It was intended earlier simply to restate some of his ideas that relate to technology and human values and make no reference to him personally, but the pattern of thought and memory that occurred last night has indicated this is not the way to go. To omit him now would be to run from something that should not be run from.
In the first grey of the morning what Chris said about his Indian friend’s grandmother came back to me, clearing something up. She said ghosts appear when someone has not been buried right. That’s true. He never was buried right, and that’s exactly the source of the trouble.
Later I turn and see John is up and looking at me uncomprehendingly. He is still not really awake, and now walks aimlessly in circles to clear his head. Soon Sylvia is up too and her left eye is all puffed up. I ask her what happened. She says it is from mosquito bites. I begin to collect gear to repack the cycle. John does the same.
When this is done we get a fire started while Sylvia opens up packages of bacon and eggs and bread for breakfast.
When the food is ready, I go over and wake Chris. He doesn’t want to get up. I tell him again. He says no. I grab the bottom of the sleeping bag, give it a mighty tablecloth jerk, and he is out of it, blinking in the pine needles. It takes him a while to figure out what has happened, while I roll up the sleeping bag.
He comes to breakfast looking insulted, eats one bite, says he isn’t hungry, his stomach hurts. I point to the lake down below us, so strange in the middle of the semidesert, but he doesn’t show any interest. He repeats his complaint. I just let it go by and John and Sylvia disregard it too. I’m glad they were told what the situation is with him. It might have created real friction otherwise.
We finish breakfast silently, and I’m oddly tranquil. The decision about Phædrus may have something to do with it. But we are also perhaps a hundred feet above the reservoir, looking across it into a kind of Western spaciousness. Barren hills, no one anywhere, not a sound; and there is something about places like this that ra
ises your spirits a little and makes you think that things will probably get better.
While loading the remaining gear on the luggage rack I see with surprise that the rear tire is worn way down. All that speed and heavy load and heat on the road yesterday must have caused it. The chain is also sagging and I get out the tools to adjust it and then groan.
“What’s the matter”, John says.
“Thread’s stripped in the chain adjustment.”
I remove the adjusting bolt and examine the threads. “It’s my own fault for trying to adjust it once without loosening the axle nut. The bolt is good.” I show it to him. “It looks like the internal threading in the frame that’s stripped.”
John stares at the wheel for a long time. “Think you can make it into town?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. You can run it forever. It just makes the chain difficult to adjust.”
He watches carefully as I take up the rear axle nut until it’s barely snug, tap it sideways with a hammer until the chain slack is right, then tighten up the axle nut with all my might to keep the axle from slipping forward later on, and replace the cotter pin. Unlike the axle nuts on a car, this one doesn’t affect bearing tightness.
“How did you know how to do that?” he asks.
“You just have to figure it out.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start”, he says.
I think to myself, That’s the problem, all right, where to start. To reach him you have to back up and back up, and the further back you go, the further back you see you have to go, until what looked like a small problem of communication turns into a major philosophic enquiry. That, I suppose, is why the Chautauqua.
I repack the tool kit and close the side cover plates and think to myself, He’s worth reaching though.
On the road again the dry air cools off the slight sweat from that chain job and I’m feeling good for a while. As soon as the sweat dries off though, it’s hot. Must be in the eighties already.
There’s no traffic on this road, and we’re moving right along. It’s a traveling day.
Now I want to begin to fulfill a certain obligation by stating that there was one person, no longer here, who had something to say, and who said it, but whom no one believed or really understood. Forgotten. For reasons that will become apparent I’d prefer that he remain forgotten, but there’s no choice other than to reopen his case.
I don’t know his whole story. No one ever will, except Phædrus himself, and he can no longer speak. But from his writings and from what others have said and from fragments of my own recall it should be possible to piece together some kind of approximation of what he was talking about. Since the basic ideas for this Chautauqua were taken from him there will be no real deviation, only an enlargement that may make the Chautauqua more understandable than if it were presented in a purely abstract way. The purpose of the enlargement is not to argue for him, certainly not to praise him. The purpose is to bury him… forever.
Back in Minnesota when we were traveling through some marshland I did some talking about the “shapes” of technology, the “death force” that the Sutherlands seem to be running from. I want to move now in the opposite direction from the Sutherlands, toward that force and into its center. In doing so we will be entering Phædrus’ world, the only world he ever knew, in which all understanding is in terms of underlying form.
The world of underlying form is an unusual object of discussion because it is actually a mode of discussion itself. You discuss things in terms of their immediate appearance or you discuss them in terms of their underlying form, and when you try to discuss these modes of discussion you get involved in what could be called a platform problem. You have no platform from which to discuss them other than the modes themselves.
Previously I was discussing his world of underlying form, or at least the aspect of it called technology, from an external view. Now I think it’s right to talk about that world of underlying form from its own point of view. I want to talk about the underlying form of the world of underlying form itself.
To do this, first of all, a dichotomy is necessary, but before I can use it honestly I have to back up and say what it is and means, and that is a long story in itself. Part of this back-up problem. But right now I just want to use a dichotomy and explain it later. I want to divide human understanding into two kinds… classical understanding and romantic understanding. In terms of ultimate truth a dichotomy of this sort has little meaning but it is quite legitimate when one is operating within the classic mode used to discover or create a world of underlying form. The terms classic and romantic, as Phædrus used them, mean the following:
A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance. If you were to show an engine or a mechanical drawing or electronic schematic to a romantic it is unlikely he would see much of interest in it. It has no appeal because the reality he sees is its surface. Dull, complex lists of names, lines and numbers. Nothing interesting. But if you were to show the same blueprint or schematic or give the same description to a classical person he might look at it and then become fascinated by it because he sees that within the lines and shapes and symbols is a tremendous richness of underlying form.
The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. “Art” when it is opposed to “Science” is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. In the northern European cultures the romantic mode is usually associated with femininity, but this is certainly not a necessary association.
The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws… which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior. In the European cultures it is primarily a masculine mode and the fields of science, law and medicine are unattractive to women largely for this reason. Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic. The dirt, the grease, the mastery of underlying form required all give it such a negative romantic appeal that women never go near it.
Although surface ugliness is often found in the classic mode of understanding it is not inherent in it. There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtlety. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known. It is not an esthetically free and natural style. It is esthetically restrained. Everything is under control. Its value is measured in terms of the skill with which this control is maintained.
To a romantic this classic mode often appears dull, awkward and ugly, like mechanical maintenance itself. Everything is in terms of pieces and parts and components and relationships. Nothing is figured out until it’s run through the computer a dozen times. Everything’s got to be measured and proved. Oppressive. Heavy. Endlessly grey. The death force.
Within the classic mode, however, the romantic has some appearances of his own. Frivolous, irrational, erratic, untrustworthy, interested primarily in pleasure-seeking. Shallow. Of no substance. Often a parasite who cannot or will not carry his own weight. A real drag on society. By now these battle lines should sound a little familiar.
This is the source of the trouble. Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about. But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it, and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes. There is no point at which these visions of reality are unified.
And so in recent times we have seen a huge split develop between a classic culture and a romantic counterculture… two worlds growingly alienated and hateful toward each other with everyone wondering if it will always be this way, a house divided against itself. No one wants it really… despite what his antagonists in
the other dimension might think.
It is within this context that what Phædrus thought and said is significant. But no one was listening at that time and they only thought him eccentric at first, then undesirable, then slightly mad, and then genuinely insane. There seems little doubt that he was insane, but much of his writing at the time indicates that what was driving him insane was this hostile opinion of him. Unusual behavior tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behavior and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached. In Phædrus’ case there was a court-ordered police arrest and permanent removal from society.
I see we are at the left turn onto US 12 and John has pulled up for gas. I pull up beside him.
The thermometer by the door of the station reads 92 degrees. “Going to be another rough one today”, I say.
When the tanks are filled we head across the street into a restaurant for coffee. Chris, of course, is hungry.
I tell him I’ve been waiting for that. I tell him he eats with the rest of us or not all. Not angrily. Just matter-of-factly. He’s reproachful but sees how it’s going to be.
I catch a fleeting look of relief from Sylvia. Evidently she thought this was going to be a continuous problem.
When we have finished the coffee and are outside again the heat is so ferocious we move off on the cycles as fast as possible. Again there is that momentary coolness, but it disappears. The sun makes the burned grass and sand so bright I have to squint to cut down glare. This US 12 is old, bad highway. The broken concrete is tar-patched and bumpy. Road signs indicate detours ahead. On either side of the road are occasional worn sheds and shacks and roadside stands that have accumulated through the years. The traffic is heavy now. I’m just as happy to be thinking about the rational, analytical, classical world of Phædrus.
His kind of rationality has been used since antiquity to remove oneself from the tedium and depression of one’s immediate surroundings. What makes it hard to see is that where once it was used to get away from it all, the escape has been so successful that now it is the “it all” that the romantics are trying to escape. What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness. Familiarity can blind you too.