> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Westley [SMTP:tony.westley@virginnet.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 12:26 PM
> To: MOQ Focus
> Subject: Re: MF Open space
>
> By the way Mr David Buchanan, I think you should be chuffed with the idea.
> Have you have considered "WHY" it was such a popular choice!
>
[David Buchanan] Well, yes, I've never been so "chuffed". And
thanks for expanding my vocabulary. Had to look it up. And the populairity
of the choice is due to the fact that everybody loves OPEN SPACE! I laughed
and grined and smiled as I re-read the first three chapters. The material is
so absolutely perfect for a fresh start. It even includes the full cup
analogy. Ha! The gods of philosophy and discourse are with us this month !!!
Frankly, I'm a little distressed by the first two posts. Jonathan is
talking about the myths behind the names and Tony is talking about
biological patterns. Sure, these are interesting enough, but I don't think
we can see these issues being raised in the first three chapters. If we keep
re-reading, we'll get to discuss static patterns when the author introduces
it. Whoa nellie, hold yer horses. For this thing to work we've really got to
stick to the text. I know its awfully tempting to jump ahead and such, but
it'll destroy the focus. Please trust me on this.
Just for example, I noticed some interesting things about the
place-names used in the opening chapters. It is perhaps a subtle difference,
but it seems an exploration of those names would be more appropriate to our
experiment. Pirsig mentions Troy and Amsterdam, which are real places in the
U.S., but they're also very important European cities. And since Pirsig
mentions these place names in the context of disussing Lila's timeless and
eternal nature, it seems to be a meaningful little detail. I wish Jonathan
would have gone in that direction instead. Nuff said...
***************************************************
The cinematic descriptions in the last post were designed to convey
the idea that we are all supposed to let the author move us into the same
space, that we should all be in the same place, on the same pages, and
focused exclusively on those scenes. And I thought the broad shot was just a
good way to open the discussion. When you stand back, doesn't it seem that
just about every little thing was about order and freedom? Doesn't it seem
that he's laying all the groundwork for the static/Dynamic split. I have to
reist the temptation to jump ahead or even talk about freedom and order in
those terms, but clearly the author is a captain because boats are all about
OPEN SPACE. And yet the captian wants the space so he can construct the MOQ.
The card catalogue and the slips of paper represent the static, an
intellectual construct, yet he was working out a mystical insight achieved
that night during the peyote ceremony, which represents the Dynamic, no?
A little less broadly, the opening scenes are set in Autumn, a time
of extraordinary beauty in that part of the world, a time of glorious
transition. We learn that he's sailing toward the ocean on lakes and rivers
that have been dramatically altered by a recent hurricane. In contrast, the
trip is a race against the coming ice and the recent storm has them stuck at
the locks. Rigel and Capella are named after stars, fixed points used for
navagation. Freedom and order, freedom and order....in every little detail.
"Tides!...It meant that all the inland man-made locks were gone. Now
only the passage of the moon over the ocean controlled the rise and fall of
the boat. All the way to Kingston (think King's town) this feeling of being
connected without barriers to the ocean gave him a huge new feeling of
space."
"Like at Oswego" Capella said, where...
"Suddenly a space was created in everyone's lives. An unexpected gap
of time had opened up."
And parties broke out all over, people talked IN DEPTH, and more
parties broke out. I like the irony. Jammed locks opened up a space. Ha!
And...
"The thing that was making them so happy was the space."
"I think what we're buying with these boats is space, nothingness,
emptiness...huge sweeps of open water...and sweeps of time with nothing to
do... That's worth a lot of money. You can't hardly find that stuff
anymore."
Naturally, Dick Rigel, that regal penis, doesn't get it.
"There isn't any space," Rigel said.
"There's no space here," Rigel repeated.
***********************************************************
I think all his various references to freedom and order are
presented in chapter one so that we can be prepared to hear what he's saying
about mystical visions in chapter three. Again, I have to resist the
temptation to get ahead of the story, but later Pirsig will tell us that the
mystical experience entails the absence of static patterns. And we'll need
to keep the teepee scene in mind when we get to the part where he tells us
about how to "be a dead man". That's what creates the open space. The
absence of static patterns is a profound cup emptying experience.
And sometimes a little space will make folks party and get close,
even intimate. It isn't the same as full blown enlightenment or whatever,
but its sweet enough.
Why am I suddenly thinking of Mr. Beasley? Hey, John. Talk to me.
Hmmm. Mysticism and intimacy. Seems some of your concerns are addressed
here, eh?
Anyway, I see this same freedom and order theme in the very
conception and construction of the MOQ itself. I mean, Pirsig tells us about
the teepee trip on the one hand and the card catalogue on the other. He blew
his mind and then gathered the thoughts in a rational, analytical way.
Freedom and order were both required in Pirsig's delivery of the MOQ, no?
The first three chapters have implications for every important thing that
follows, no? Its huge!
I'd really like us to zero in on the meaning of the peyote ceremony.
I think is important for a zillion reasons, but mostly because its seems to
be at the heart of everything and at the same time mysticism is so widely
misunderstood. In our culture it is hated and ridiculed by both religion and
science. Its the only Indian trait that America refused to adopt until the
60's, which didn't go so well precisely because of misunderstanding and
cultural bias, no?
Please take special notice of the description a vision quest or
peyote experience. You know, that italicized paragraph from an un-named
source....its on page 35 in my hardback copy, not too far into chapter
three.
It seems to describe the various perceptual modifications in the
order of their appearance. It seems that the shift in perception occurs in
stages that mirror the levels that Pirsig will describe later. Its as if the
peyote were awakening the vision seeker one step at a time. First its
visual, its about the senses. Then various emotions are enhanced and
expanded. Next,...
"The intellect is drawn to the analysis of complex realities or
transcendental questions. Consciousness expands to include all these
respones simultaneously. In later stages, following a large dose of
hallucinogen, a person may experience a feeling of union with nature
associated with a dissolution of personal identity, engendering a state of
beatitude or even ecstasy."
Anyone else see the levels between the lines here? The visuals are
biological, the emotions are social, the analysis of complex realities is
intellecual and the dissolution of the self is the full-blown mystical
experience, direct perception of DQ, no?
Before Pirsig goes on to tell us about his own vision quest, he
tells us that peyote ought to be seen for what it really is; a
de-hallucinogen. He tells us about the spiders on LSD who spin perfect webs
and then says...
"...at one time it looked like the whole book would center around
this long night's meeting of the Native American Church. The ceremony would
be a kind of spine to hold it all together. From it he would branch out and
show in tangent after tangent the analysis of complex realities and
transcendental question that first emerged in his mind there."
Notice how he mirrors the language from the un-named source, just so
you know for sure what he's telling you. The MOQ came to him in a mystical
vision!
"The other side, the 'good' analytic side, just watched, and before
long it slowly began to spin an enormous symmetrical intellectual web,
larger and more perfect than any it had ever spun before."
Notice how the language mirrors the preformance of the spiders on
LSD, just so there's no way you can miss the fact that he was tripping his
brains out the night Lila was born?
*****************************************************
Its very interesting how he describes coming home to his people, the
Indians, discovering that their values were already in him, even though he
hadn't realized it. I get the sense that his personality was somehow
integrated by the experience. He was made whole in some sense.
But it really cracks me up that he puts it like this, "Coming home
to some place that one had never been before". Its funny becasue it echos a
very corny song by a very corny guy. Rocky Mountain High by John Denver
begins with these words...
He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year
Coming home to a place he'd never been before
He left yesterday behind him
You might say he was born again
You might say he found the key to every door
But so what if its corny? Why does the white man have to have
everything just right all the time anyway? Ha! Either Pirsig has a subtle,
dry and cryptic sense of humor or I'm trippin'!
Thanks for your time, DMB
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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