Kismet Arts Tangent

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
By Robert Pirsig

I thought I was going to care more about reviewing this book thoughtfully and maybe that’s still the case, but I realize that I want to do this in my way of rambling, which goes against the ideals of quality, but also perhaps in allowing this to be an initial way that one writes just to scrape off stuff that might never be revealed otherwise, it’s an approach.

Maybe, it’s the downfall of linearity that I can’t review the book at the midway point, even though that’s when I think authors shine. They are liberated to covering their most treasured messages without having to stick the landing. I think for the most part because there are three parts to the structure of the book, there might be a way to make peace with it more than once, so there’s not a lot of pressure on any part having to be carrying it the whole way.

I suppose I compare this book to the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once because I loved it and I recoiled from its relevance to my life. Maybe like the way that you can despise someone because there are qualities that you both share and it’s an eerie mirror into yourself to spend time with that person.

I’m still missing the simple pleasure of the middle where Robert Pirsig flips the order and states that the revelation is that Quality is what enables us to have a subject and predicate of our world. The idea of how the facts we perceive stem from a kind of undefinable “just what we like” kind of lens.

Later, the author reveals more about how the unhinging of the mythos is the precipice of insanity. It hit me in a way that I’m working on processing out. The theme of insanity is close to home and I have yet to really find grace with it.

Last night, my dear Justin and I saw an experimental documentary written by a woman about her brother and the effect of his suicide at a local indie cinema. Nisha Platzer was touring her film and it was her late brother’s 40th birthday. He died when he was 15. He wrote in his journal about how he’d want part of his ashes inserted in a cheeseburger and thrown over the Golden Gate Bridge. He was from Vancouver, Canada, but always romanticized San Francisco. Nisha shared that in the Q+A that it was that great serendipity that before the showing, she did this ritual.

I guess, I want to compare a beautiful experimental documentary to the experience of pursuing the answer to a question to the end of the line, to the part where it seems like nothing else is important and one is achieving the best work of their lives, the crystallization of thought– to the Q+A portion that sometimes comes after works of art that in an ideal world maybe shouldn’t, though it isn’t a total waste, it just feels awkward.

The takeaway for me from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is that I want everyone to read it and appreciate the idea of care and quality. The idea that you can be hasty and ruin a screw and therefore forfeit any opportunity at further repair. The idea that you can take your time and do a delicate weld with a light touch and charge little money for it and be genuinely puzzled when someone admires what you did and says something.

I think that there’s another part of redefining selves that I’m intrigued and still interested in mulling over. The idea that the author deems Phaedrus, a nickname he gives to the person he once was as he was developing his ideas on Quality, a metaphysical philosophical journey that may be the lubrication to a flight from one reality to another.

The last bit that I thought was curious was the nature of “gumption.” I like the word, hearty. I think about that feeling of honoring some kind of dharma that fuels us from the inside. Related to motivation (agency, competency, and connection), the juice that propels actions. Actions guided by a vision and tempered by care. The way of acting where it might be harder, but it’s type 2 fun, the idea of testing one’s limits and growing.

I watched a video essay about this book before reading it and I agree with the statement that the story elements help the heady stuff simmer. I also appreciate that it’s intertwined.

5/5 would recommend