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- led back to my parents' in the end, despite rain, wind, commuter traffic around the Midland cities, and carriageway replacement work at Towcester. I've left my mobile at the flat by mistake so calls won't reach me until Monday night.
In the early hours of this morning I finished one of my Christmas presents! This was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, a legendary 1970s text marketed nowadays as a crossover between the spirituality and the philosophy lines in the marketing people's brains. My religious studies teacher, Richard Hobson, had spoken of it in those long-ago A-Level classes; but I can't remember whether he approved of it or not. I know that he didn't think very much of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull on the grounds that it promoted self-realisation without any awareness of the detrimental impact promoting ones own happiness exclusively can have on other people.
I tried to read the book in the 1990s. I picked up a battered copy in, I think, the Oxfam Bookshop on St Giles; that being said, it might have been elsewhere as the book was in a poorer condition than most of the stock that Oxfam like to stock. I remember the cover well, but nothing of the contents. I gave up a few chapters in, being unable to see where the author was taking his characters or his readers.
This time I persevered, despite the unattractiveness of the methodical and somewhat smug narration of the early chapters. Crossing half the US by motorcycle and sleeping rough hasn't been my thing either, so the narrative device of the road trip took a bit of getting used to. I did warm to the first issue the narrator has, which is communicating his ideas to other people; he's confiding things to the reader which he doesn't want to tell his companions in so many words. Furthermore, he is afraid of his past self.
I really need to read the book again, in a less fragmented fashion; but it really only started working for me in the final section. I'm tempted, perhaps vaingloriously, to see myself as a 'heretic' in Pirsig's terms, who at some past stage in his life has opted for an easier existence. Books can be suddenly and unexpectedly seductive; and I'm not entirely convinced by the narrator's notion of 'Quality' which is central to his personal voyage of rediscovery.
For now, though, I'll mention a dream I had a couple of nights ago. I was driving from Woodstock to Darras Hall, but found it a difficult drive. I realised, as the car slowed on a familiar hill near my parents' home, that I had no petrol. No wonder the journey had been so difficult, if I'd travelled a journey which uses up two-thirds of a tank on only a quarter! As luck would have it, a petrol station suddenly appeared in a spot where, outside my dream, there is only a rudimentary layby. I drove in, but had problems filling the car. A petrol attendant then pointed out firstly that I had actually been driving a motorcycle all this time, and not a car; so I had. He also pointed out that it didn't run on unleaded petrol but on 'liquid gas' (note the absence of 'petroleum' - I did at the time) and that the real problem was that the motorcycle needed a change of oil, as there was precious little in the machine, and what there was fizzed and crackled alarmingly at the foot of the tank.
Today I've picked up one of the many unfinished books sitting on my shelves here in Ponteland. From the piece of paper used as a bookmark, I think that I last picked it up twenty-three years ago, which is probably a record even for me. More later this weekend, perhaps... but I've grown wary of making these 'to be continued' promises.
I tried to read the book in the 1990s. I picked up a battered copy in, I think, the Oxfam Bookshop on St Giles; that being said, it might have been elsewhere as the book was in a poorer condition than most of the stock that Oxfam like to stock. I remember the cover well, but nothing of the contents. I gave up a few chapters in, being unable to see where the author was taking his characters or his readers.
This time I persevered, despite the unattractiveness of the methodical and somewhat smug narration of the early chapters. Crossing half the US by motorcycle and sleeping rough hasn't been my thing either, so the narrative device of the road trip took a bit of getting used to. I did warm to the first issue the narrator has, which is communicating his ideas to other people; he's confiding things to the reader which he doesn't want to tell his companions in so many words. Furthermore, he is afraid of his past self.
I really need to read the book again, in a less fragmented fashion; but it really only started working for me in the final section. I'm tempted, perhaps vaingloriously, to see myself as a 'heretic' in Pirsig's terms, who at some past stage in his life has opted for an easier existence. Books can be suddenly and unexpectedly seductive; and I'm not entirely convinced by the narrator's notion of 'Quality' which is central to his personal voyage of rediscovery.
For now, though, I'll mention a dream I had a couple of nights ago. I was driving from Woodstock to Darras Hall, but found it a difficult drive. I realised, as the car slowed on a familiar hill near my parents' home, that I had no petrol. No wonder the journey had been so difficult, if I'd travelled a journey which uses up two-thirds of a tank on only a quarter! As luck would have it, a petrol station suddenly appeared in a spot where, outside my dream, there is only a rudimentary layby. I drove in, but had problems filling the car. A petrol attendant then pointed out firstly that I had actually been driving a motorcycle all this time, and not a car; so I had. He also pointed out that it didn't run on unleaded petrol but on 'liquid gas' (note the absence of 'petroleum' - I did at the time) and that the real problem was that the motorcycle needed a change of oil, as there was precious little in the machine, and what there was fizzed and crackled alarmingly at the foot of the tank.
Today I've picked up one of the many unfinished books sitting on my shelves here in Ponteland. From the piece of paper used as a bookmark, I think that I last picked it up twenty-three years ago, which is probably a record even for me. More later this weekend, perhaps... but I've grown wary of making these 'to be continued' promises.
.