The mind

I found it ironic how when the narrator is trying to fix the jets in his motorcycle, he says you can never fix them all; that there's no immediate answer so he just leaves it as a hanging question. Not only does Pirsig do that to himself, but he does it to his readers. The entire reading so far has had many parts to it which are honestly dumbfounding and confusing. Many of the tangents Pirsig goes on leave me, and probably other readers as well asking themselves questions, wondering what and why something is going on. It’s interesting though, how even if I, as a reader cannot come up with an answer to what he is saying, I continue to think about it. In other words, I become captivated by what I cannot figure out and therefore try to answer such a question even though it is not possible.

I think it is fascinating how Pirsig makes one wonder about what's around him and how it was created. For example, how did books come to be? How were words created? Every invention, started off inside someone's head. Nothing was produced out of thin air; there is always a person behind every development. The motorcycle itself and all its parts were once just a dedicated person's idea that was put on paper, worked on, developed, and perfected. As Phaedrus said, it's all in the mind. 

However, I believe Pirsig contradicts himself two chapters ahead when he speaks of Einstein and hypotheses'. A couple pages before he is stating how everything comes and is run from the mind, but now he says that the formation of hypotheses is mysterious and unknown. It does not make sense to say that everything comes from somewhere, but a particular thing has no particular origin. I personally believe that the hypotheses also come from the curious mind of men. The flash he spoke about that suddenly triggers the beginning of a development of a hypothesis is uncertain, but the hypotheses itself is created in the mind. 

            I also really liked the line, "the more you look, the more you see" because it's completely true. If you glance at something at quickly or look at it without interest, you will retain a general picture, but when you pay attention to the details, you will observe things you weren't looking for and never expected.