Column: It was a class you simply didn't want to miss

“We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. 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.”

—From “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig (1974)

As an English major in the mid-'70s, I suppose it was inevitable that “Zen” and I would collide at some point on my road from unschooled undergrad to the proud possessor of a diploma.

Upon its initial modest publication, which went virtually unnoticed, it soon became a literary phenomenon, topping the bestseller lists and assuming its lofty perch as a nonoptional cultural artifact.

But like so much of that decade’s fads — mood rings, disco, bell-bottoms, “Charlie’s Angels,” the Nixon presidency, et cetera — it faded, leaving nothing in its wake but a lively, if tiny, coterie of disciples.

One thing you don’t need from me is a personal recommendation that you read Pirsig’s masterwork. For starters, it’s a difficult mountain to climb, and it’s not the kind of book you can absorb in fits and starts, closing the cover and leaving it on the bedside table. “Zen” requires dedication to finishing the task.

It ought to come with a warning sticker, worded like, “NOT FOR BEACH READING!” or “STEPHEN KING FANS KEEP OUT!”

I’m not trying to sound superior or adopt an arrogant stance, merely attempting to steer you away from a spicy Thai dish I know will disrupt your digestive tract in ways you just won’t like.

“Zen” is like Patti Smith’s discography or the Outer Banks of North Carolina: Either you get it right away, or you’ll be annoyed.

I can’t remember which professor put it on the syllabus — J.P. Daugherty, John Matthias, Delores Freese, William Krier, James Walton, et al. ­— since Notre Dame featured a Hall of Fame roster of talented and influential English department members. “Zen” might even have been taught in a sociology, theology or philosophy course, its impact reaching that far across the academic spectrum.

What I do recall is I read it in the fall, right around this time of year, and I was a junior with his eyes focused squarely on making the dean’s list for a fourth straight semester, something I knew would please my college professor parents immensely.

But there were — how shall I put this genteelly? — complications.

When I left home the month before, my summer girlfriend had accompanied me to South Bend, riding along in the Country Squire with my sister and a friend of mine, who agreed to drive back to Ohio, a simple plan I had devised, trying to extend a little love story.

She was two years younger, just about to start her freshman year at Ohio State, and had done nothing — and I mean not a darn thing — to send me seeking shelter in another woman’s arms.

But that’s precisely what happened, and if there’s a Purgatory, I will have properly earned whatever fiery afterlife penance I owe.

Suffice it to say that like so many young men before me and all those who’ve followed my bad collegiate example ever since, life and love often collide with sometimes regrettable consequences.

Notre Dame’s campus in the fall is largely beyond my abilities as a writer to adequately capture. It’s like finding the words to describe a whale breaching or the Northern Lights seen from a boat on the sea, perhaps Key West at sunset or a Reggie Jackson home run.

Speaking of baseball — and remembering the lessons of “Zen” — that’s what the nexus turned out to be, the way everything I’d planned went so sideways that I was unable to resist gravity’s pull.

We met during a dorm party, one I only attended because those guys had a keg and I wanted to fill my cup before the start of the next inning of a World Series game between Boston and Cincinnati.

I’ll spare you the details of that collision of hearts and souls; suffice it to say that during those few fall months, the campus came to represent something I’d never anticipated. Oh, I knew the whole thing was crazy, without hope of a happy ending, but armed with my Jackson Browne innocence and a tattered copy of “The Great Gatsby,” I was an eager participant in that doomed dance.

To quote Hunter Thompson, I bought the ticket and I took the ride.

College, as my mother so often said, wasn’t a job factory, and she encouraged us all to live the experience to its fullest, exploring, experimenting, stretching boundaries and collecting memories.

But gentle cascades of burgundy and burnt orange leaves borne on apple cider breezes beneath cloudless azure skies don’t last long, and soon enough, northern Indiana was covered in a foot of snow, a chilly, icy lesson in love and loss that would persist until Easter.

If ever someone needed resurrection, I was that 21-year-old.

Allow me to close with a final favorite quote from Robert M. Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”:

“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.”

Class dismissed.

Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page, where sometimes, life makes a little bit of sense.