Hi
Opening paragraph. "Lila didn't know he was here." This sums up how Phaedrus
has viewed Lila his whole life, for he has known her before.
What Phaedrus is seeing in Lila is really like an opposition inside himself;
what Carl Jung called the 'anima'. Its his own lost youth staring back at
him "softly cherubic, like a small girl." A girl that he saw a couple times
on a streetcar, later at a beach. But not really the same girl at all.
Rather, it's lila. That's who he recognizes. This Lila's eyes will not be
sparkling when she wakes.
People and places we grow up with stay the same in our eyes, have you
noticed? It's like we build an image of that person and place and that image
changes along with our own image so that those all important relationships
between people and places evolve simultaneously. We don't notice those
little day to day changes like we do when we are apart from people and
places for many, many years. Still, there is something...
There is something much deeper at work here -- something we all can identify
with. There is somewhere a sameness that transcends the tempory changes...
Lila's Quality, if you will. "He would like to know her better." So, right
off, I sense that Phaedrus is lost. For even though he believes that he
already knows Lila, he wants to know more. He can't get to know her better
though, for "there was not much time." The coming of winter... "the cold
breeze..." coincides with the sadness of inevitable changes, of the constant
cycle of birth and death. "There was not much time." This is stressed over
and over.
It was autumn when Phaedrus remembered seeing Lila, too. Thinking of that
brings that moment to reality as if it never passed. There is a Dynamic
resonance going on constantly between the time we perceive as flowing (the
river) and the "time" that is no time at all, the forgetfulness of the
ocean. Phaedrus remembers everything about that day "so long ago -- years
and years ago" as if it happened just now. But the ocean is confusing when
first encountered, like Phaedrus' first experience going through the locks.
"This sleeping Lila" turned up again and again to Phaedrus back then, and
here she is again, somehow... somehow different and yet not having changed
at all. Phaedrus has grown into his nose and being a Great Author further
bolsters his esteem. Still he doubts whether to talk to her or not. But now
he sees her as a fallen Lila, in a sense. Now Lila is approachable, and
more, Phaedrus actually believes he can get to know her better! What else
can she do but let him down?
The way Phaedrus thinks of himself is his projection of Lila. How he creates
her. As ugly and lost as Phaedrus once felt inside, now Lila feels to him.
And as beautiful and full of promise Lila once felt to him, now Phaedrus
feels inside. Phaedrus sees Lila as oppositional to his own self, or rather
"call her lila". The Great Wheel turns slowly yet it is always turning. This
center that we all seek reveals itself in oppositions but only if we are
open to the whole. Otherwise there is no space for understanding.
Speaking of space, Rigel and Capella are a pair of bar buddies who Phaedrus
meets while waiting for the canal to be cleared of hurricane debris. " 'I
think it's space that does it,' he'd said to Rigel." Now, I find it
fascinating that Rigel and Capella are two stars of seven that make up the
asterism of the 'Heavenly G'. (An asterism is a subset or superset of stars
which builds on the constellations themselves, like the Big Dipper as part
of the Great Bear.) Hmmm. Being a sailor, Pirsig must have been very
familiar with the night sky, so I doubt this was some kind of cosmic
accident. The Heavenly G for Good... what do you think?
In Lila, Rigel is a morally uptight lawyer who tells Phaedrus that once you
know a place, there is no space for understanding. For you realize not just
this place, but every place is "full of old secrets." And Rigel knows Lila.
So does Phaedrus, though not in the same way. Phaedrus knows her through
bare glimpses and half remembered places. This is a much deeper kind of
knowing, a Dynamic ever present knowing, if you will. The superficial social
knowing of Rigel pales in comparision. The knowing of her dark secrets
reveals his ignorance at ever understanding who and what Lila really is.
For the most part, Capella seems mostly a foil for Rigel's sermons. Someone
easily impressed by the lawyer's rhetoric. There is something as easy and
unassuming about Capella as there is something Victorian and rigidly moral
about Rigel so he makes easy prey. But this easy, unassuming way will never
be changed by Rigel's moralistic rantings and ravings. And both Rigel and
Capella are stars of the first magnitude...this means something.
In summing up Chapter 1, there is a sense of impending doom building on the
horizon, all around Phaedrus. But a sense of impending renewal too. "It
doesn't make any sense at all." Despite the moralistic overtones of Rigel,
Phaedrus wakes to find Lila sleeping fitfully next to him. Because her eyes
held a timeless glint in them for one brief instant. "Where have I seen you
before?" she had asked him in the bar the night before. She's noticed him
too! They are drawn together for this journey and we are invited along for
the ride.
Thanks for reading
Cory
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