[MD] Some fun with Life, Love & Freedom

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:
A couple of years ago I took this soliloquy by Lila (see below), and 
replaced the word 'Lila' with the words Life, then Love and lastly Freedom.  
It was an interesting and meaningful experiment.

dmb says:
Really? Life, love and freedom? I was read it as a sort of confession that 
reveals Lila's psychological crisis. You know that section where Pirsig 
talks about how social level values are held together by the Giant and how 
the giant controls the mirrors? This is in the same section where the 
central role of celebrity is discussed. As I see it, Lila is reacting to all 
the negative mirrors she has encountered. We know that she was scandalized 
by adultry, lost her child and husband and then became a prostitute. Imagine 
what it would be like to live for years with people looking at you with 
disgust and contempt. You know, as if the world were a high school where 
everyone was popular except you. She probably got beat up, spit upon and 
arrested. This means she started out with something like a normal family and 
then suffered a long slide down the social scale. In this conversation we 
can see that she is trying to convince herself that the fault lies in all 
the mirrors and not in her. And I think she's not exactly wrong, on a Zen 
level, but I think we can also see that she's about to lose her identity in 
a dangerous way. We can see that this past actually haunts her and causes 
her a great deal of pain, in the way she can't let go of the doll. We can 
see the connections between DQ and insanity. And sadly, in the end she goes 
off with Rigel so that, at best, she'll just re-adjust to the conventional 
social standards. The chance she might have had to go through some madness 
and come out better than normal on the other side was lost when she went off 
with him.

Maybe that's reading just a little too much between the lines, but I see 
Lila as an unreliable witness here. Her hostility at the Captain reveals a 
lot more about the abuse she's suffered in her life than it does about the 
nature of his questions, I think. I think she's right to be angry about 
judgemental people and creeped out by the projection of self-loathing she 
got from her Johns, but I think she's being excessively defensive to the 
Captain. I imagine he stopped asking questions, at least in part, because 
half-drunk, half-crazy, half-prostitutes can be very dangerous when they're 
angry. I'd shut the hell up too, you know?

So how'd you read it?

>'What?'
>'I'm not going to answer any more of your questions.'
>'Why not?'
>'You're the detective. That's what you are. You think you're going to
>learn something. I don't know what, but you're not going to learn
>anything . . . You'll never find out who I am because I'm not anything.'
>'What do you mean?'
>'I'm not anybody. All these questions you're asking are just a waste
>of time. I know you're trying to find out what kind of a person I am
>but you're never going to find out anything because there's nothing to 
>know.'
>Her voice was getting slushy. She could tell it was getting slushy.
>'I mean, I used to play I was this kind of person and that kind of
>person but I got so tired of playing all those games. It's such work
>and it doesn't do any good. There's just all these pictures of who I
>am and they don't hold together. They're all different people I'm
>supposed to be but none of them are me. I'm not anybody. I'm not
>here. Like you now. I can see you've got a lot of bad impressions
>about me in your mind. And you think that what's in your mind is here
>talking to you but nobody's here. You know what I mean? Nobody's
>home. That's Lila. Nobody's home.
>'You know what?' Lila said.
>'What?'
>'What you want to do is make me into something I'm not.'
>'Just the opposite.'
>'You think just the opposite. But you're really trying to do
>something to me that I don't like.'
>'What's that?'
>'You're trying to . . . you're trying to destroy me.'
>'No.'
>'Yes.'
>'Well, you've completely misunderstood what I'm asking these
>questions for,' the Captain said.
>'No, I haven't. I've completely understood it just exactly right,'
>Lila said. 'All men do that. You're no big exception. Jerry did it.
>Every man does it. But you know something? It won't work.'
>'I'm not trying to destroy you,' he said.
>'That's what you think. You're just playing around the edges, aren't
>you! You can't go to the center of me. You don't know where the
>center of me is!'
>That set him back.
>'You're not a woman. You don't know. When men make love they're
>really trying to destroy you. A woman's got to be real quiet inside
>because if she shows a man anything they'll try to kill it.
>'But they all get fooled because there's nothing to destroy but
>what's in their own mind. And so they destroy that and then they hate
>what's left and they call what's left, "Lila," and they hate Lila.
>But Lila isn't anybody. That's true. You don't believe it, but it's true.
>'Women are very deep,' Lila said. 'But men never see it. They're too
>selfish. They always want women to understand them. And that's all
>they ever care about. That's why they always have to try to destroy them.'
>'I'm just asking questions,' the Captain said.
>'Fuck your questions! I'm whatever your questions turn me into. You
>don't see that. It's your questions that make me who I am. If you
>think I 'm an angel then that's what I am. If you think I'm a whore
>then that's what I am. I'm whatever you think. And if you change your
>mind about me then I change too. So whatever Richard tells you, it's
>true. There's no way he can lie about me.'
>Lila took the bottle and took a swig down straight. 'The hell with
>glasses,' she said. 'Everybody wants to turn Lila into somebody else.
>And most women put up with that, because they want the kids and the
>money and the good-looking clothes. But it won't work with me. I'm
>just Lila and I always will be. And if men don't like me the way I
>am, then men can just get out. I don't need them. I don't need
>anyone. I'll die first. That's just the way I am.'
>After a while Lila looked around and saw that all the boats were
>lying straight in line just like the Captain said they would be.
>That's pretty good. He'd figured that out. She told him about it. He
>didn't say anything. He hadn't said anything for a long time.

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