[MD] The Birth of Quality

[ridgecoyote at gmail.com]

Ian, I missed the plaque.  Dang.  I did have the best lunch in Bozeman on my way back home to California.  Carrot ginger soup - yum!  I'm going back.

John


Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 10, 2011, at 1:47 AM, Ian Glendinning <ian.glendinning at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi John,
> 
> Yes, I was always amazed that all that "radical teaching" experience, and
> the interaction with Sarah's "seed crystal" came in only his first term of
> teaching. I fact he only taught for two academic years in Bozeman (the
> whole of his teaching experience) before the Chicago events. (My own son is
> already a more experienced classroom teacher than Bob ever was - to put it
> in perspective.)
> 
> I stopped adding detail to the biog-timeline when Mark Richardson took up
> the baton. His book (and Henry Gurr's site, and the Sven Lindqvist articles
> on his political activity - all in the Bozeman records) contains more info
> on Sarah and her own work. Oddly enough I'm on a re-read of Mark's book -
> he built on all the biographical materials I handed over to him.
> 
> In terms of biographical writing, this period should be elaborated more,
> (as should the strangely anti-climactic period in Benares). A project for
> someone.
> 
> Nice to stand for a moment at the fount of the quality phenomenon. Agreed.
> (Incidentally, the college is currently quite active on some arrangements
> to acknowledge Pirsig's work, with Gennie's daughter too. Did you see the
> plaque ?)
> Ian
> 
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 6:39 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 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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