Here is what I would have explained to the taxi driver (see below), if only my Arabic was in full swing. It comes from early in the book, but it it one of those moments when a writer just manages to jump out of their own bodies and completely nail an idea:
".....Here is the machine, isolated in time and in space from everything else in the universe. It has no relationship from you, you have no relationship to it...........the mechanics in their attitude toward the machine were really taking no different attitude toward the machine than the manual's toward the machine, or from the attitude I had when I brought it in there. We were all spectators. And it occurred to me that there is no manual that deals with the real business of motor-cycle maintenance, the most important aspect at all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
On this trip I think we should notice it, explore it a little, to see if in that strange seperation of what man is from what man does we may have some clues as to what the hell has gone wrong in this twentieth century……"
".....Here is the machine, isolated in time and in space from everything else in the universe. It has no relationship from you, you have no relationship to it...........the mechanics in their attitude toward the machine were really taking no different attitude toward the machine than the manual's toward the machine, or from the attitude I had when I brought it in there. We were all spectators. And it occurred to me that there is no manual that deals with the real business of motor-cycle maintenance, the most important aspect at all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
On this trip I think we should notice it, explore it a little, to see if in that strange seperation of what man is from what man does we may have some clues as to what the hell has gone wrong in this twentieth century……"
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