The critical bolts are all tight enough. The sun is gone, the wind is blowing cold, and a wall of differing shades of grey looms around us. We stop for gas at Hague and ask if there is any way to get across the Missouri between Bismarck and Mobridge. "I hope we've got some more of those in stock,'' he said. He grabs the back of my helmet and hollers up, "I've seen lots of those, Dad!''. These are some British laminated plate-glass goggles that work fine. "Yeah, I smell it too,'' he says and keeps on pumping. The new ones start out as good-looking strangers and, depending on how they are treated, degenerate rapidly into bad-acting grouches or even cripples, or else turn into healthy, good-natured, long-lasting friends. I told him what it was, and was as surprised as they were that I knew it. '', "There was a whole flock of red-winged blackbirds. John and Sylvia look really out of it. Instead you spend your time being aware of things and meditating on them. But some things you don't see because they're so huge. There was no identification with the job. In a very orthodox form known as `education. We are in a Western town. If you are going northeast from a large town you never go straight out of town for any long distance. The dirt, the grease, the mastery of underlying form required all give it such a negative romantic appeal that women never go near it. I think the kids must have lost it somewhere. The main skill is to keep from getting lost. That's why the conversation always breaks and freezes when the subject comes up. The sun angles toward the cloud, which now has grown downward to touch the horizon above us, in which there are trees, pines, and a cold wind comes down with pine smells from the trees. Little things appeared, like the locked door, the outside of which I could never remember seeing. I never confront them with the question. It just did a big thud with him and that was it. The figure fades and I hold panic down -- tight -- not rushing it -- just letting it sink in -- not believing it, not disbelieving it -- but the hair crawls slowly on the back of my skull -- he is calling Chris, is that it? I put in the clutch and let it coast for a second in order to hear it idling. Rope. John says slowly and deliberately, "We're not leaving here until it warms up.'' He didn't want any part of it. Just a mental block of my own. "An old poem, by Goethe. I use the machete to hack up some of the larger pieces of wood. I hope later she will see and feel a thing about these prairies I have given up talking to others about; a thing that exists here because everything else does not and can be noticed because other things are absent. So the final feeling is hostile, and I think that's ultimately what's involved with this otherwise unexplainable attitude of John and Sylvia. It was covered with grease and did not start. We weren't going anywhere by cycle on this vacation. A copy of Thoreau's Walden -- which Chris has never heard and which can be read a hundred times without exhaustion. I give up on him and slow it down to fifty-five. It was explained to me finally that "You have a new personality now.'' That's how I arrived at that distinction. '', "In failure -- death of the child. The flowers in the meadow blow in the wind and the cycle leans a little and we are suddenly cool. No such luck. The sun makes the burned grass and sand so bright I have to squint to cut down glare. And he does. His handlebars had started slipping. This is supplemented with the following: A large, adjustable open-end wrench. After a while Sylvia sits down on the wooden picnic bench and straightens out her legs, lifting one at a time slowly without looking up. Cigarettes and matches. He says something I don't hear."What?'' Maybe I should. She and John look at each other again with the same expression they showed before. There's kind of a glaring inconsistency here, that's almost too obvious to dwell on. It was some years ago that my wife and I and our friends first began to catch on to these roads. What struck me hard then was that she was not blaming the faucet, and that she was deliberately not blaming the faucet. Then he asks about the machines. Now John and Sylvia look at me peculiarly. The air around is clear and dry. When this is done we get a fire started while Sylvia opens up packages of bacon and eggs and bread for breakfast. Two weeks after the vacation was over, one evening after work, I removed the carburetor to see what was wrong but still couldn't find anything. The moon and strange dreams and sounds of mosquitos and odd fragments of memory become jumbled and mixed in an unreal lost landscape in which the moon is shining and yet there is a bank of fog and I am riding a horse and Chris is with me and the horse jumps over a small stream that runs through the sand toward the ocean somewhere beyond. Chris points to a thermometer in direct sunlight and we see it has gone all the way above the scale at 120 degrees. All the time we are aware of millions of things around usthese changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the roadaware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. From a world without life or death. "We're going to have to slow down,'' I say. The wind rises and then falls, then rises and sighs, and falls again -- from so many miles away. Some of them are peculiar to motorcycling and need some comment. But he said his grandmother whispered it was true anyway, so he believes it. They may want to go ahead fast and wait for me in some town up ahead. I think to myself, That's the problem, all right, where to start. She looks up and then looks down again. And yet strange wisps of his memory suddenly match and fit this road and desert bluffs and white-hot sand all around us and there is a bizarre concurrence and then I know he has seen all of this. After a few blocks the main street goes onto two hard, muddy tracks into a field, past a quonset hut full of farm machinery and repair tools, and then ends in a field. "Jeez, I hate to bust through that nice ceiling, but my X-ray vision tells me somebody's in trouble.'' "I'm glad you told us.''. Not a smile. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. I check the engine temperature with my hand. On an air-cooled engine like this, extreme overheating can cause a "seizure.'' That attitude is not hard to come to. It's all parts and relationships of unheard-of things that never make any sense no matter how often you hear about them. "Oh, the laws of physics and of logic -- the number system -- the principle of algebraic substitution. Familiarity can blind you too. We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. Little emotional Band-Aids like that aren't what he needs or what's sought -- .I don't know what he needs, or what's sought. What makes it hard to see is that where once it was used to get away from it all, the escape has been so successful that now it is the "it all'' that the romantics are trying to escape. I shake my head. I go outside. It's better to just get along. Also, to arrive in the Rocky Mountains by plane would be to see them in one kind of context, as pretty scenery. Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. It was a puzzling thing. Feeler gauge. is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. The wind getsbehind sunglasses. After a while she looks up and says, "What did you see? This machine has had one -- in fact, three of them. The road winds on and on -- we stop for rests and lunch, exchange small talk, and settle down to the long ride. I couldn't believe it. The fourth is that there is a knife moving here. This means we have entered the Red River Valley. When they come it's best to just hole up and let them pass over. "And what that means,'' I say before he can interrupt, "and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! Two thermometers on the shady side of the street read 42 and 46 degrees. It might have created real friction otherwise. Once you get used to that sound and learn to expect it, you automatically hear any difference. It's that only that gets me. And so in recent times we have seen a huge split develop between a classic culture and a romantic counterculturetwo worlds growingly alienated and hateful toward each other with everyone wondering if it will always be this way, a house divided against itself. Maybe they didn't see their job as having anything to do with hard thought, just wrench twiddling. John appears and checks the gear on the cycle. It's here, but I have no names for it. Don't have it here.'' So we move down the empty road. That is evidently the way he wanted it, and that's the way it was. The decision about Phdrus may have something to do with it. He was getting interested. "Do you know any ghost stories?'' Then that patched in with the motorcycle maintenance and one of those light bulbs went on over my head and I thought, Ahhhhhhhh! "It just fell on the tarp.''. he says, still rummaging. I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. What is unusual about it is seen when it ceases to be a mode of discourse and becomes an object of discourse. I drink the water and it's alkaline, like soapy water. John shakes his head. It was the combined dripping and loud kids that blew her up. I don't know why I should remember it now, except -- '' The strange feeling comes back. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. Helmet and sunshade. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn't show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. '', John shakes his head and pours me another drink. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone. A standard tool kit comes with the cycle and is stored under the seat. There is no question that they have been following their natural feelings in this and not trying to imitate anyone. Being facetious is not being a very good father. On sights and sounds, on the mood of the weather and things remembered, on the machine and the countryside you're in, thinking about things at great leisure and length without being hurried and without feeling you're losing time. He isn't so interested in what things mean as in what they are. Chickenman and the police have an understanding. Insect repellent. I don't know his whole story. Funny. What emerged in vague form at first and then in sharper outline was the explanation that I had been seeing that shim in a kind of intellectual, rational, cerebral way in which the scientific properties of the metal were all that counted. The engine is making ominous knick-knicking sounds from overheating. "Leave the flashlight here.''. I am half asleep. The thought. "Let's tell stories then,'' Chris says. Cold fronts are violent and when they are from the southwest, they are the most violent. About the Buddha that exists independently of any analytic thought much has been saidsome would say too much, and would question any attempt to add to it. Later I turn and see John is up and looking at me uncomprehendingly. What's underneath is a conflict of faith, of faith in empirical social planning versus faith in the authority of God as revealed by the teachings of the Catholic Church. I noticed he was being superpolite to Sylvia while he pumped away, meaning he was furious, and she was looking over with a kind of "Ye gods!'' Perfect for the application. But from the motel courtyard, I see past the cottonwoods that a second darkness, that of night, is about to come on. There is no other purpose. I pull up beside him. That's just on the surface. I thought this was pretty clever myself. There's no traffic on this road, and we're moving right along. I took this machine into a shop because I thought it wasn't important enough to justify getting into myself, having to learn all the complicated details and maybe having to order parts and special tools and all that time-dragging stuff when I could get someone else to do it in less timesort of John's attitude. It was a little twenty-five-cent pin in the internal oil-delivery system that had been sheared and was preventing oil from reaching the head at high speeds. It was cold all right, but not that cold. As soon as the sweat dries off though, it's hot. A photograph can show a physical image in which time is static, and a mirror can show a physical image in which time is dynamic, but I think what he saw on the mountain was another kind of image altogether which was not physical and did not exist in time at all. That is what I want to talk about in this Chautauqua. I wondered. "one last drink to that! That shouldn't be long now. You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was completely different. The explosion is avoided when Chris turns and walks away in the darkness. It just goes on and on. The ignition system consists of an alternator, a rectifier, a battery, a high-voltage coil and spark plugs. The motorcycle gets a change of oil and chain lubrication. It ought to warm up as soon as the sun gets higher in the sky. There are limits to what you can listen to. Two weeks later I paid their bill for 140 dollars, rode the cycle carefully at varying low speeds to wear it in and then after one thousand miles opened it up. After a while he says, "This is the hardest stuff in the world to photograph. You have to get older for that. When they are it's usually a small sign hiding unobtrusively in the weeds and that's all. And that is why he is here. And when thinking about Sylvia's moods and feelings, I couldn't see her complaining. So I go ahead and we take it slowly. '', He looks at me pleadingly. he asks. Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know.''. The wind blows the fire so hard it doesn't reach up to cook the steaks. Dull, complex lists of names, lines and numbers. A special shim from the private stock of Baron Alfred Krupp, who had to sell it at a great sacrifice. In a seizure, the pistons expand from too much heat, become too big for the walls of the cylinders, seize them, melt to them sometimes, and lock the engine and rear wheel and start the whole cycle into a skid. Put it on early.) I see that Chris dresses warmly and we are packed and on the road, and it is definitely cold. Must be in the eighties already. I read a sentence or two, wait for him to come up with his usual barrage of questions, answer them, then read another sentence or two. The terms classic and romantic, as Phdrus used them, mean the following: A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. He's on this dimensional difference which underlay much of the cultural changes of the sixties, I think, and is still in the process of reshaping our whole national outlook on things. The temperature is fine. The motorcycle is a perfect subject for it since the motorcycle itself was invented by classic minds. '', "Matches?'' Perhaps his aloneness was the result of his intelligence. No one then would see the ghost that Phdrus pursued, but I think now that more and more people see it, or get glimpses of it in bad moments, a ghost which calls itself rationality but whose appearance is that of incoherence and meaninglessness, which causes the most normal of everyday acts to seem slightly mad because of their irrelevance to anything else. There's no rational reason I can think of for saying it's not good. And from time to time you find your "county road'' takes you onto a two-rutter and then a single rutter and then into a pasture and stops, or else it takes you into some farmer's backyard. Secondary roads are preferred. In a strange way, this freedom was achieved. But if this were all there were to him, analytic skill, I would be more than willing to shut up about him. "I don't like any of this. "We're not very good at songs,'' John says. They are stolen from him. Save him time. So go to sleep.''. It's a gradual change like this that catches you unawares, as if you were sailing out from a choppy coastal harbor, noticed that the waves had taken on a deep swell, and turned back to see that you were out of sight of land. Sylvia's irritation at a friend who thought computer programming was "creative.'' I laugh. There! And they knew their problems were over.''. They are kind of fun to hear. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. But there is less than a half-hour of sun and no energy left. He sits down and I try to eat the steak with my Army mess knife, but it is too tough, and so I get out a hunting knife and use it instead. For lard, salt, butter, flour, sugar. He is a stockman, retired, says this is pretty much ranch country around here and he used to own a cycle years ago. It's time to stretch. For me this is all mixed with memories that he doesn't have. To do this, first of all, a dichotomy is necessary, but before I can use it honestly I have to back up and say what it is and means, and that is a long story in itself. "We wondered why you brought him instead of your wife,'' she says. He looks down silently with a frown. The ghost wins.''. It would be extremely short and rudimentary, as descriptions of this sort go. I spit on my glove tips, touch it and can see the sizzle. and wondered what kind of embarrassment this was going to lead to. He was seeing what the shim was. I sat down nearby, hoping to remain unnoticed until I got all this figured out. If John and I and Chris arrived with this feeling and Sylvia arrived seeing them as "nice'' and "pretty,'' there would be more disharmony among us than we would get from the heat and monotony of the Dakotas. --. While waiting I check the engine oil level and tires, and bolts, and chain tension. A few warning drops of rain -- at this speed they are like needles. We are traveling at its mercy now. A real drag on society. I see between trips that Sylvia is making a real effort at setting things up for cooking, but she's as tired as I am. This is all so new. After the rain stops, the sky lightens a little. That's quite a situation. It must have been fifteen minutes before he got it started. The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around. When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the ends of the collars were pinched shut. The speedometer needle swings back and forth but the tach reads a steady nine thousand -- about ninety-five miles an hour -- and we hold this speed -- moving. The mosquito repellent doesn't stop them at all. I'm being awfully square talking about all this mechanical stuff all the time. You know there's an explanation for all this somewhere and what it's doing undoubtedly serves mankind in some indirect way but that isn't what you see. A little slack there, and I get out the tool kit and tighten it up. You push it any further and suddenly you are angry, without knowing why. "Well, it's hard country,'' I say with a little irritation. The mechanics in their attitude toward the machine were really taking no different attitude from the manual's toward the machine, or from the attitude I had when I brought it in there. A change has taken place and I don't know quite what it is. Three different times a stranger stopped me and asked how I felt. In the northern European cultures the romantic mode is usually associated with femininity, but this is certainly not a necessary association. Is with it. I thought I would wait until something went wrong with his machine and then I would help him fix it and that way get him into it, but I goofed that one myself because I didn't understand this difference in the way he looked at things. The world of underlying form is an unusual object of discussion because it is actually a mode of discussion itself. I don't want to hurry it. I move back and let John handle this. To describe his physical appearance or the statistics of his life would be to dwell on misleading superficialities. But this courage didn't arise from any idealistic idea of self-sacrifice, only from the intensity of his pursuit, and there was nothing noble about it. Oh my God no! '', "Can I play over there tomorrow morning? These convert into a tent and also protect the luggage from rain while you are traveling. Tappets? '', "So when did this law start? I was going at it in terms of underlying form. I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. And to come at him directly would be to invite disaster. '', "No. None, now that I think of it. The cool drying-off period doesn't last even half a minute. Kids crying in the back seat. No other conclusion makes sense. I wonder. They've got a memory of their own. In that sense I believe in ghosts. "The problem, the contradiction the scientists are stuck with, is that of mind. He really tries hard sometimes. "I don't know what you're talking about,'' Chris says. No comment from him. There are white and gold daisies among the grass in front of an old wire fence, a meadow with some cows and far in the distance a low rising of the land with something golden on it. There's no record of his having had close friends. Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. Otherwise your own opinions block the way. It is against being a mass person that they seem to be revolting. Meadows must have rain. It seemed to be watching him, judging him. The sun is so far down we're running out of light. These roller-coaster hills speed them up on the down side and slow them up on the up side and prevent our seeing very far ahead, making passing nervewracking. Neither viewpoint is unusual, and this minor difference would never have become magnified if we didn't spend so much time riding together and sitting in country roadhouses drinking beer and talking about whatever comes to mind. But it's not as bulky, really, as it sounds. The fatigue and backache are getting to me now. They just sit and soak up the air-conditioned air without a move. They don't split it up that way. "I've got some right here,'' I said gleefully, holding up a can of beer in my hand. Now we are down to the root of things. All this technology has somehow made you a stranger in your own land. I don't see any towns ahead and we are just going to have to run for it. If all technology stopped, tomorrow, these people would know how to make out. But the world as revealed by its scientific discoveries is also reality, regardless of how it may appear, and people in John's dimension are going to have to do more than just ignore it if they want to hang on to their vision of reality. I say. Not of kin -- sounds like hillbilly talk -- not of a kind -- same root -- kindness, too -- they can't have real kindness toward him, they're not his kin -- . The hardware man doesn't know any short route across the Missouri either. He watches carefully as I take up the rear axle nut until it's barely snug, tap it sideways with a hammer until the chain slack is right, then tighten up the axle nut with all my might to keep the axle from slipping forward later on, and replace the cotter pin. The beer and air conditioning are calling, but we don't break away. The machine itself receives some of the same feelings. Since the basic ideas for this Chautauqua were taken from him there will be no real deviation, only an enlargement that may make the Chautauqua more understandable than if it were presented in a purely abstract way. He wanted to free himself from his own image. He was so swift at this his Stanford-Binet IQ, which is essentially a record of skill at analytic manipulation, was recorded at 170, a figure that occurs in only one person in fifty thousand. I am a pioneer now, looking onto a promised land. '', "Sylvia said she thought you saw a ghost. "If you ever need any rope, don't hesitate,'' he says. Destroyed by order of the court, enforced by the transmission of high-voltage alternating current through the lobes of his brain. He walks away with a kind of slow dignity in the hundred-and-two sun. I didn't understand then how foolish quick assumptions like that are. "Yahp,'' comes John's sleepy voice through the door. She wasn't ignoring that faucet at all! You need a welder's mask. Then I nod. These are: The shop manual for this cycle. You work to live and that's what they are doing. Every Chautauqua should have a list somewhere of valuable things to remember that can be kept in some safe place for times of future need and inspiration. In doing so we will be entering Phdrus' world, the only world he ever knew, in which all understanding is in terms of underlying form. What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. It was intended earlier simply to restate some of his ideas that relate to technology and human values and make no reference to him personally, but the pattern of thought and memory that occurred last night has indicated this is not the way to go. The flatness of the prairie disappears and a deep undulation of the earth begins. The first rain begins now but up ahead I see the lights of a town -- I knew it would be there. I try again. The pungent smell then was from muck stirred up by hip boots while we were getting in position for the sun to come up and the duck season to open. and I think she does. Points, fuses, headlight and taillight bulbs, chain-coupling link with keeper, cotter pins, baling wire. We turn the cycle lights off to conserve the batteries and because the light from them is ugly anyway. "It's completely natural,'' I say, "to think of Europeans who believed in ghosts or Indians who believed in ghosts as ignorant.
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