Hello everyone On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 9:06 PM, Mary <[email protected]> wrote: > > What was it like for you the first time? I bought the first book thinking I > was reading just another novel, but by the end it had turned into a "Holy > Shit" experience I didn't expect. Caught me totally off guard. Knocked me > off my complacent, muttering at the insanity on the evening news rocker. I > didn't understand half of what I read, but the half I did was enough. I was > doomed or hooked or something, and here I am now talking to you. :)
Mowers and Madness I read ZMM when it was first published in 1974. The world was different yet much the same. It seems smaller now. Back then, I didn't dream of talking to good people all over the world about the book. I remember I was working at a small engine repair shop at the edge of some town who's name escapes me just now. The shop was called Greenwalt's but the fellow who owned it was named Luttick... pronounced with a long U as in Louie. LU-tick. The old man would get mad if a person didn't pronounce the name right. I'm much the same about my name. The family lived in an old Victorian down the hill behind the shop. The old man was named Eldon. He drank. He'd show up at the shop about 10am each morning. He knew his small engines and showed me just about everything I know today. By noon though, he'd be so drunk he'd have to go home and sleep it off. Arnie, his son, ran the place; he's the fellow who hired me. I'd been driving down the highway and saw a HELP WANTED sign in the window. So I stopped. Arnie worked the counter. I did the repairs in the back room as best as my ability allowed, relying on help from Eldon any time I got stuck. Behind the shop, vast stacks of junk were heaped in hopes of finding some future use: old chain saws, lawn mowers, snow mobiles, dirt bikes, even old cars and trucks. There was no obvious order but Eldon always seemed to know just where to look when we needed a spare part. A slow-rotting picnic table once painted green and leaning to one side sat under an enormous oak in which someone had long ago hung a tire swing from a branch some fifty feet high. The rope looked to be half rotten and the tire seemed to stay full of brackish water. Between jobs and on my breaks, I sat at the picnic table and read. I'd seen ZMM on the bookshelf at the grocery. One day I had a few extra dollars so I threw the book on the conveyor with my groceries. I brought it work. One day I forgot it and left it laying on the picnic table. The next morning I discovered the book soaking wet and swelled up like a balloon as it rained during the night. By carefully peeling each page back, I was able to continue reading though the ink often bled through from the back side and blurred the words. I heard a laugh behind me and turned to see Arnie watching me. Arnie was a few years older than me and I knew him to be a Vietnam veteran though he never mentioned it. I only knew on account of an old yellowed article mounted in a picture frame and hung on the wall behind the counter with a grainy photo of Arnie standing among a group of soldiers. He looked younger and somehow fresher. The article told how Arnie had been awarded the medal of honor for actions above and beyond the call of duty in the land of Vietnam. Since I couldn't see Arnie doing it, I imagined that Eldon had mounted the article in the frame and hung it on the wall but I learned later it was actually Arnie's sister, Lynn. She didn't come around the shop much as she was away at college but from time to time she'd stop and visit with Arnie. She never said a word to me and indeed I was quite sure she had no idea I even existed. "What'cha reading there?" Arnie asked, still chortling at my efforts to read a water-logged book. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," I told him. I held up the detached cover for him to see. "What's it about?" "Well, I haven't finished reading it yet but it's about a motorcycle trip a father and son make across the country with a couple friends. The father is battling mental illness. He's be institutionalized and given shock treatments. Now, he's struggling to regain his identity. He's not the person he used to be, and his son knows it." "How about motorcycle maintenance? Does it give any pointers on that?" "No," I said, "Not really." "Why is it named Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?" "Well, there's a tension between the author and the friend who's traveling with him. The author does all his own motorcycle maintenance while the other fellow doesn't. He relies on the integrity of his bike, trusting that it won't break down or need servicing. The author travels with a toolkit and is fully prepared to make all his own repairs. "There's also a tension between the author and his friends in that they knew "him" before his institutionalization and subsequent shock treatments meant to obliterate the old personality so a new one could flourish. The author is never quite sure what his old friends remember or what they think of the "new" him. "On top of all that, the author states that the world isn't made up of subjects and objects as is commonly supposed, but rather it is made up of Quality. He ties this in with zen teachings, though really there's not much about zen in the book either. At least not so far." I recall Arnie being a bit taken aback at all this. He seemed particularly interested in the author's institutionalization, though. "Did he check himself in?" Arnie asked. "No. He was forcibly committed, from what I've read so far." "Why?' "Well, things had been building for a while, I guess, and finally, he wrote how he was sitting alone for three days. He didn't get up and go to the bathroom but just sat in his own piss. And he let cigarettes burn down to his fingers, causing blisters all over his hands. So his family worried that he was a danger to himself and possibly others and had him committed." "The family must have been wealthy," Arnie said. "Otherwise he would have ended up in jail." One day Arnie poked his head into the back room where I worked and asked me to come up front. Lynn was standing outside and as usual did not acknowledge me at all. Arnie asked if I'd watch the counter for a while as he was going out back with his sister to show her how to shoot a gun. Apparently there'd been some rapes on campus where Lynn attended college and she was concerned with her safety. Arnie left for an hour or so and then returned. That day, when I left for home, I noticed Lynn's car was still in the parking lot. I thought it odd and considered for a moment going back in and telling Arnie but then I rationalized to myself that he knew she was still there, so I left. The next morning, the door to the shop was locked and Arnie was nowhere to be seen. I waited. Lynn's car still sat there. Arnie's truck sat there too. I had a bad feeling; the longer I sat there, the worse the feeling grew. I got out and walked around the back of the shop. I noticed a police car sitting out in the field... no, two police cars, and men milling about. One of them looked to be Arnie. I walked out there to see what was up. Arnie's eyes were red, his shoulders hunched as if he carried a hundred pound sack over them. Lynn was dead, he told me when I approached. What?!? I said. She shot herself through the heart, he said, his voice breaking. I was dumbfounded. There was nothing to say. A policeman walked up to me and asked me my business. I told him I worked there. He took my name and phone number then walked away. I didn't know what else to do so I went back to the shop and sat in my car. I saw Eldon coming up the path from the house. He was obviously very drunk and could barely walk. He kind of waved at me and stumbled into the shop. I followed, though with intense feelings of trepidation. "Her mother killed herself too," Eldon said. I looked around. There was no one else there so he must be talking to me, I thought. "What?" I stammered. I knew what he said. I just didn't understand. "When the kids were little, their mother dropped them off at school one morning, and then drove her car into a pond and drowned herself." "Oh no," I said. Things were starting to come together... Arnie's interest in madness, Eldon's drinking, Lynn's seeming shyness. "Here," Eldon said, holding out some money. "Arnie told me to pay you up. We won't be needing any help for a while though. I'm sorry." "I'm sorry too, sir," I told him. "I enjoyed working here, thank you." He waved me off again, so I walked out of the shop, got in the car, and drove away. Sometime later I recalled that I had left my book there but I never went back. I thought maybe Arnie might get something out of it. BTW, > who _are_ you anyway? <grin> I am all these things, sadness, madness, laughter and sorrow. All these feelings populate my mind and guide me on the way. I look back where I've been but it all seems a dream. Who am I, indeed. Thanks for reading, Dan Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
