Actually the weather has nothing to do with this book. I just wanted to emphasize my need for speed when it comes to fall getting here. One mildly cloudy day every four weeks is not enough. I am poised and ready to do a rain dance. Or… cold front dance. Whatever it takes.
Anyway. Yoga.
In yoga, or in the class I attend when I can, you hold a pose for a couple minutes or so, then you either return to regular standing or sevasana for a few seconds. And when my body is contorted in these difficult, precariously balanced positions (for me, anyway) and my muscles are wanting to shake and my heart is racing and I am actually doing yoga, those two seconds between switching sides or standing up or, at glorious best, sevasana, cannot possibly last long enough. The blood rushes back into its proper places and I lovingly drink in those two seconds. And by lovingly, I mean if time were a material thing, I’d put a white-knuckled death grip on those seconds and when they’re up, I’d claw the thin air where they were and fall to my knees in a physical manifestation of despair.
Actually it’s not usually that dramatic. Usually, there’s a second or two between positions, and your muscles are like “No, thanks,” but you’re in the state of mind that makes you carry on regardless, and your muscles are then like, “Oh, great. Thanks for the consideration. Have fun trying to walk normally for a few days.”
All of this to say: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was kind of like yoga.
There’s a motorcycle trip narrative thrown in between pages and pages of philosophy and discussion of the author’s arrival at his own brand of metaphysics. And the reading of the thinky stuff was kind of heavy. I mean, I’m reading it during lunch in the middle of the workday, when I’m used to reading mindless/entertaining literature, and all of the sudden I’m progressing at a crawl because I have to work to maintain the necessary mental state to follow the author, and even then I have to keep stopping to mentally sort out his discussion of reality and reason.
But then he’d get back to the story part, and I’d eat that stuff up and read attentively and revel in the description of what they ate for dinner and what the mountains looked like and how, exactly, to change the oil on a motorcycle. But then he moves on and gets back to perception of reality, or something, full force, and mentally I'm all, “Wait! Not yet! What color were their sleeping bags? WHAT COLOR?!”
But as in yoga, stalling would hurt the flow of things and though the break was barely existent, it was legitimate, and you keep wading through the remainder of the book (or yoga class) because the benefits are worth it. I think.
I realize by saying all of this, I am compromising both my intellectual and physical capability statuses. I am likely the only student at yoga who clings to the two-second breaks and relies on a mental state to carry herself through the positions, as they are probably second nature to everyone else (like certain people named My Mom, for example, who can relax watching TV in these poses). Likewise, I’m sure I'm sounding really intellectually challenged because this book was probably child’s play to anyone else who’s read it, nothing more than mere schoolyard prattle. And I know a lot of people who’ve read it, and in way less time than it took me. So. Oh well (In my defense, I did stop frequently to think or take notes. I’m also not revealing how long it took me to read).
In my own (potentially challenged) opinion, though, it was comparable to yoga. And I like yoga. And it’s not like it was the most challenging or profound thing I’ve ever read, by any stretch. But it incited more rabbit trails of thought and demanded more mental sorting than anything else I’ve read lately. And the author’s metaphysics of Quality is interesting, to say the least, and I found myself respecting or liking a lot of what he had to say. I kind of want to read the accompanying book, Lila, which outlines the philosophy itself rather than the arrival at said philosophy. I also kind of want to go back to reading jollily entertaining literature that doesn’t take (CENSORED) weeks to finish.
So. In conclusion: not as cool as yoga, but kind of comparable and still worthy.
Is that how you write a book review? I don’t even know. And sorry for saying the word “poised” earlier.
"The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag [between vision and perception], is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual reality is what Phaedrus felt he had properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects." (Zen, Robert Pirsig)
