I love my new iPhone, however it does confuse me sometimes when I've copied a quote that somebody said and I don't remember where I got it. So to whoever said:
"Reading over some of his annotations in LILA'S CHILD as well as his notes to Ant it seems that he is still tweaking the MOQ, adding nuances to it that heretofore might have escaped his attention. It seems best to allow ourselves that same latitude... not to be too certain about any aspect of philosophy or of life." I just want to respond and say thanks, and I agree completely. Of all the levels, the 4th is the most dynamic, the most in flux and the most evolving. It might take many millenia for an insect or an amoeba to evolve, but an idea about evolution can be born on an ocean voyage and grow to full significance within a decade. And I'd like to point out that the above quote points to something very significant indeed - that the MoQ isn't SQ, its DQ. Inherently and self-avowedly. Coming down from Elkhorn Pass, my RV plugging along, even though it's batteries are shot and its alternator dying, as I could plainly see by my slowing windshield wipers trying to keep up with the increasing snow, I hadn't much room in my heart for metaphysical concerns. Too many practical matters weighed down upon me. Like, if I had enough gas to make it to Walmart in Bozeman. I did know that there was a Walmart in Bozeman, and I knew which exit to take because I had a cell phone connection to my wife back in California, who had an internet connection which gave me the information I needed. Thank God for modern times. But I was pretty sure I would run out of gas long before I got there, unless I stopped and filled up. And if I stopped for gas, I'd have to shut off the engine and if I shut off the engine, I knew I couldn't get it started again. Well, at least you're supposed to shut off the engine, but the tanks were so far from the engine in the RV that maybe it wouldn't be a problem. Illegal, but maybe the rules aren't as strictly enforced in Montana as they are in California. As it turned out, that is true and so I put my last $70 into my gas guzzling beast - nicknamed "Cuzzin Ed" from the Chevy Chase movie, Nat Lampoon Xmas Vacation - and drove on to the welcoming arms of Walmart. Home of the free parking, free RV camping and cheap batteries and easy money center. My ma wired me the funds when I got there, and I spent a dark and cold night in the parking lot while the snow fell, but warmed by the thought of Western Union funds in the morning. And wen they came, and the new batteries were installed, and I had light, water and central heating again, all the amenities of home, life looked brighter, and the snow melted and the streets of Bozeman beckoned me and my bike. Everywhere was haunted by the thoughts of the MoQ. I imagined to myself, with a wry grin, as I walked up and down the aisles of Walmart, just think, Pirsig once stood at this same checkstand... I am enraptured. Ok, despite the sarcastic tone, there was something there that I couldn't explain. An excitement at being in the same environment which caused all this debate and excitement. Ideas arise out of a place, come from an environment of place, as well as environment of ideas. And its not really a celebrity-messiah trip, because Pirsig described it the same! And you can't have a messiah getting shivers over his own self, or you've just another system of self-aggrandizement in disguise. When the Narrator of ZAMM goes back and walks in those halls of learning, HE gets the same shivery excitement I experienced in the few days following as I explored more of the town and finally entered the campus at MSU. In the book he describes the rising excitement, and I say its more than discovering himself, it's recovering an event. We can sense the rising excitement and the really amazing thing, is he runs into somebody else who confirms this shivery moment. He presumes a former student, but her gasp of recognition, certainly signifies something beyond mere, "hey, how ya been doin?" Something happened here. Something big. Something REAL big. And there's a shivery excitement in the air of the place, that lingers still. An intellectual pattern was born. It didn't so much come FROM a man, Robert M. Pirsig, teacher of frosh rhetoric, it came through him and with him. For the realization that ideas are not generated by a self, but a self is generated by an idea, is huge in this world. Ideas are born, evolve, and sometimes die, just like biological beings. But a key difference between ideas - 4th level patterns, is that biological beings die and ideas can live forever. And sometimes, we can't see when they will die, but we can see where they were born. I imagine Izzy Newton might have had some of the same feeling, passing that old apple tree, or why would we even know that story? Gravity happens in a place. We worship places. So when you're at ground zero, where an idea was born, it lends a shivery excitement to the very air you breathe. I'd expect to find some resonance in the city itself. If the idea of Quality was born here, don't you think it'd retain some sort of aura? Don't you think there'd be that recognition in some subconscious level on the part of the people who live there today? A remnant of an aftershock of some kind? I was expecting so, and so maybe that's why I felt like I found what I expected. But people everywhere seemed very nice, very friendly. Of course, this was my first extended stop since fuckyoucalifornians so maybe that played into my perception a bit. I'd rarely crossed the great divide in my 50-odd years on the planet and any difference gets magnified to a first-time traveler. Also it helped that I was riding a bike. People wave to you when you're on a bike. Especially if you don't look all serious about it and wear a helmet and shin guards and paraphenalia, but just ride around slowly, taking in the ambiance and style of a place. It had a good ambiance and style. It reminded me of a cross between Nevada City and Santa Cruz. It had a certain touristy appeal to the down town, with its mix of winter skiing and summer backpacking people coming in, like Nevada City, and it added the glamour of being a college town, with trendy and youth-oriented dominating the sandwich parlors and pizza joints and bars of downtown. Plus a healthy dose of working class redneck, The workers of the world, the loggers and miners and hunters and fishers, that make up a lot of Montana. So a bit of Grass Valley thrown in as well. Later on in my journeys, I'd mention Bozeman, and how much I liked it and universally met with agreement. I met more than a few people in North Dakota, who'd come for the jobs, from Bozeman and they all agreed it's a great place. What struck me most about the town though, was the quality of its brickwork. I don't think I've ever seen such amazing big brick buildings. Three, five, six stories high. Decorative flourishes within pleasing proportions that delight the eye. Maybe those masonic traditions have something important to convey, with their pythagorean ecstasies. All I know, was I was blown away. And it occured to me, if I was going to describe it all, the only way would be to start with the bricks. They are amazing bricks. There is quality in those bricks. Where did they all come from? Transformed out of the clay of the ground, by the hands, heart and mind of man, into schools and churches and banks and libraries. So uniform and clean and strong. The land is ripe with them. Clay lays in layers with coal, sometimes the coal catches fire and burns underground for years and years, forming underground bricks, of no square shape. No classically defined boundaries of golden ratio, just a mish mash of broken potery, dug up and used to pave the roads of oil well driller in the MonDak region. Potential bricks. You need good bricks, to build good. So in a town of good bricks, it makes sense to point to them. A lot comes clear when you stand on the ground and see, where this idea, this MoQ was born. It made me curious about thinking of the when. When did Sarah ask that question? What better place to find out than the internet. What better internet to use than the ones in the University library? Just think, RMP himself may have once sat down at this very terminal and googled Quality. I looked up Ian's timeline. Thanks Ian. I also checked my mail briefly, and found Bo in my in box and told him where I was writing from, figured he'd get a kick out of it. He did, Pirsig taught there in '58 and '59, according to Ian's timeline. Two years. Hmmm.. I thought it was longer than that. Long enough to get in all sorts of trouble, though. I'd have to guess but I'd say it was more likely, that it was the second year a fellow teacher would feel comfortable enough to ask if you were teaching quality this year. Probably near the beginning of the year, because who cares near the end when its too late anyway. But not right at the beginning, the second month after the beginning-of-the-year madness has subsided - October or November perhaps. A time when things were plodding along enough that you could take some time and sit at window and stare at the scenery and think about good questions. October, 1959. That has a nice ring to my ears. For me, that was the birth of Quality. 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