On that sunny afternoon we greeted each other with wide smiles. It was always special to be around Kobun and I was surprisingly happy to see him after all these years. Standing there talking, I remembered to tell Kobun that Lisa had been studying Japanese. I thought he would be delighted to hear this because he, of course, had a deep abiding love of his country and language. Kobun’s eyes opened when I told him and he turned to Lisa and said, “Since you can speak Japanese, you can be my secretary.” I was standing about five feet away when it registered that Kobun had made this proud determination, this opportunity to serve the worthy master. But for me it was as if Beelzebub had reached for my daughter’s hand. The thought of this man and his notions influencing Lisa caused my psyche to blow. The implications were clear.
Lisa would be nobody’s secretary, least of all this guy’s. And though I didn’t want to be rude to Kobun (in fact, hated to be so), there was no way I would let him anywhere near my daughter. And no way would I smile and pretend it was okay. Taking a giant step between then, I said, “I am sorry. Lisa will absolutely never be your secretary!” I was smiling as I said this, but I was intense. Neither Lisa nor Kobun acknowledged what I had said, they just ended their conversation as nicely as it had begun—as if I had said nothing, as if I wasn’t standing awkwardly between them. Lisa, at twelve, was often mad at me for embarrassing her, but this time she never said a word.
Within a month Lisa and I were again visiting Steve’s Woodside house and I saw that Kobun had set up a large multilevel altar with pictures of all of Steve’s relatives. Here he had draped beautiful cloth on some long boards, and placed candles and incense cups and bells around the framed images of family members. I didn’t look closely at the photographs because I felt it was private. At the moment, it was enough to grasp the broad stroke of an ancestor’s altar in the cavernous living room.
I remember being surprised by the number of photographs on the table because I wondered who all the people could have been. I never knew Steve to have a big family because I had never met, and rarely, if ever, heard about grandparents or aunts and uncles. Maybe these were people who had died. I wondered about Clara and Paul and Steve’s biological mother and father. I wondered about who was included and who was excluded. To me, that altar implicated the wiggy rat’s nest at the heart of all Steve’s complexes.
I knew it was intended to honor the ancestors and the living relatives but it felt embarrassingly large and cluttered and very unlike Steve. My first impression was of generosity; that Steve gave Kobun the room to be and act as Kobun. But, I also felt a bit scandalized because I felt it was gross with a sense of pandering. It was just a feeling I had about it but it was clear and strong. Was Patty Jobs on the table? And what about Lisa? Would she be honored in the panoply of hosts and decedents? Steve had a designer’s concept of DNA whereby he insisted on picking and choosing family and identity as might fit his moods. Because once he had made himself into one of the most sought-after men of the centuries, he could be precious and despotic about who was in and who was out. And when they were in and out. I’ve wondered if Kobun had adapted that altar to fit Steve’s charade or if Kobun used it to needle him. I regret that I hadn’t looked at it more closely.
* * *
There was another evening that year, in mid-October, when I again saw Kobun at the Woodside house. There were a number of us for dinner: Lisa; Kobun; Kobun’s girlfriend, Stephanie; Steve; Steve’s girlfriend, Tina; Steve’s sister, Mona; and my boyfriend, Ilan Chabay. Steve’s cooks had created a sublime ravioli made from wheat ground that day, and just-picked garden vegetables for the stuffing. It was a dinner that melted in the mouth, and the setting itself was so old-world beautiful, with at least twenty squat candles of different shapes and sizes lighting the long wooden table. This was Tina’s artistry, I was sure.
After the meal everyone lingered at the table over water and wine. A gentle fire flickered in the huge fireplace and we were all enjoying the deep fall and the chilly promise of winter in the air. It was then that Kobun threw out a number of testing insults at Steve, like the old wife. My nerves jangled with the breach. Kobun was a teacher and a guest. Why this offense? A tenuous discomfort permeated the room. Steve held his tongue. Kobun, glinting and sly, sent out several more demeaning little remarks. He wasn’t behaving like a master who saw through everything and spoke on behalf of the group; rather he was speaking like someone who had been jilted, ignored, and cast off. It looked to me like Kobun was using the persona of the Zen master to settle a personal score.
I don’t remember Kobun’s exact comments except one—something about making a computer being no different than growing a bigger potato. I had by this time heard the analogy twice, the first time in one of his lectures, and both times wondered if I was missing something. It would be like Kobun to expand out into simplicity so profound that it sounded weak and stupid. He was trying to put Steve in his place, but it wasn’t working.
Later that night I talked about it with Tina when we snuck off to share a cigarette together. She had seen it, too. We discovered that both of us had witnessed the same behaviors on several other occasions, separate from one another. Neither of us liked it. We felt it was degrading for everyone within hearing. At home that evening I spoke about it with my boyfriend, and he said, “Yes, and did you notice also that Kobun never directly answered a single question anyone put to him?” Ilan, a scientist with a Ph.D. in physics, had taken his contact lenses out and was eyeing me through Coke-bottle glasses to see if I understood how obvious it was—and how serious.
If my life has been about studying power abuse, then this night watching Kobun and Steve was truly the night of all nights of my erudition. Kobun, acting out of blinding pain, had not resolved his issues with Steve and so had addressed them in a group setting. Kobun was drinking too much during this time, and there were stories. I also noticed he was extremely disregarding of his girlfriend, Stephanie, that night and in general. She, an accomplished musician, acted ditzy, as if she couldn’t think for herself around him. This behavior was not unlike what I had fallen into right after I got pregnant with Lisa when I couldn’t think for myself. Whatever on earth Steve and Kobun had going, that night it had risen up between the two of them.
Here was the teacher with a capacity for insight way beyond all of us, and yet he had stepped out of impeccability. For what? And why wasn’t Steve more loyal to Kobun? I didn’t particularly admire either of them by this time. Later I understood that Steve was jealous of Kobun’s capacities, and that he didn’t want to share the spotlight. For his part, Kobun had taught Steve many things, one of which was to ignore people. Steve turned that teaching back on Kobun, and Kobun was not happy about it. So it all started with Kobun.
That evening, observing Kobun’s behaviors, I had the feeling of being angry with him on behalf of Steve, his host and most excellent student. But within hours I thought better of it. The chewy hidden center inside both Kobun’s and Steve’s power was never something I could stand up for, because both regularly exploited people. So when it came down to the two of them, Steve won by doing nothing and owning everything, as Kobun spun out of control with challenges that had all the impact of a spitwad blown from the lofty heights of the peanut gallery.
* * *
I was living in Paris in August 2002 when I received an e-mail from a friend telling me that Kobun had died a sudden and tragic death. In a bizarre accident, Kobun’s young daughter from his second family had fallen into a lagoon while he was giving a retreat on the property of one of his students in Switzerland. Someone rushed in to tell him she had fallen into the water and Kobun immediately ran out of the building to jump into the lagoon to save her. From what I understand, they were found four hours later downstream, the child wrapped in his robes, both dead. No one in any world would want such a thing to happen, but I do wonder if in the struggle to save his own beloved little girl’s life, Kobun came to recognize the value of a daughter?
EIGHTEEN
; THE REALITY DISTORTION FIELD
Idyllwild, California, is tucked away in the San Jacinto Mountains, just above the Palm Springs desert. A quaint resort town with a small-town feel, “Mile-high Idyllwild” has a couple of private art schools and a summer music festival. The local newspaper is called the Town Crier and the residents once elected a golden retriever to the position of mayor. I was relieved to arrive there with baby Lisa in June of 1978, and not just because the air was high-altitude fresh and the town had a creative hubbub. I was there to be with family, and family was what I needed.
My sister Kathy picked me up from the Palm Springs airport with her husband, Mark, and their baby, six-month-old Sarah. My father and his wife drove my car and theirs with all my things, which included a small English-style crib for Lisa that they had found through the want ads. It felt good to arrive at Kathy and Mark’s home, a wonderful 1930s state-built home for the forestry department service people. (Kathy was a ranger and her husband was a forest firefighter, and a writer, too.) Kathy’s house had that particular kind of clean, well-cared-for look that comes after years of good maintenance. Their neighborhood was in the middle of town, a beautiful spacious area with large grassy lawns, outdoor clotheslines, and covered porches. It was like Mayberry.
Kathy and I are half sisters and nothing alike, but our natures are complementary and we’ve enjoyed a rich, collaborative friendship throughout the years. The five months that Lisa and I lived with Kathy and her family were full. We shared our great enjoyment of cooking—and eating, of course—and every evening, after the children were fed, we’d have engaging conversations over sit-down dinners with Mark.
But I had long days by myself when everyone was at work. I was depressed, in shock, really, from the events of the past year so I just sort of floated as I cared for my little baby. There had been so many terrible incidents with Steve; the sheer number of them seemed to indicate that I deserved to be treated badly. I knew in my heart that I didn’t, but at the time I lacked the knowledge that a man who treats a woman badly is simply out of integrity with all life. Now I believe that my whole life has been about the work of understanding not just this, but how love is bigger than cruelty. Back then I felt shattered and numb by Steve’s contempt and abandonment.
I tried to hold everything together, to understand my emotional life, and get organized to make things happen, but it was all too much and the ground was falling in under me. It was like I was living a life on several levels and struggling to come to terms with each one. I was tuned in to the immediacy of daily life with Lisa’s little sweetness and her back-to-back needs, trying to understand whether I should place her for adoption. Nothing was more important than working through this. Besides this I was coping with the dynamics of living with my sister, and dealing with past issues connected to our mother. Then there were the larger issues having to do with Steve, and what he was and was not doing. Pressing in on all of this was the fact that I had precious little money.
I took care of Lisa’s needs. That came first, of course. I loved her and loved playing with her. We would cuddle and I would hold her close to me. I enjoyed her sweetness, but there was no way I could tell how my own unhappiness affected her. My days were filled with dullness, dread, and delight—the three Ds that constantly darkened me and lit me up. Kathy worked during the weekdays. When Mark wasn’t out fighting fires for the national parks (he could be away for weeks at a time), he’d either be writing at home or at the library, or working out at the gym. Sarah went to a babysitter during the week, and I’d putter about at home with Lisa, and also walk around town with her strapped to my front in a baby cozy.
In the evenings, Kathy and I made dinner together while the children sat side by side in little seats that we had placed on top of a big chest in the kitchen. These seats put the babies’ eyes just above the level of the countertop so they could take in what we were doing. Talking, laughing, and playing music while we made dinner we’d sometimes pick the children up and dance. Because they were different ages they balanced their bodies differently when we danced with them. Sarah used a swimming motion to readjust her self so that she was always perpendicular to the floor at every move. But Lisa was so tiny that I’d cradle her in my arms—holding her closely and then outstretching my arms to sweep her around the room. I held her head stable when I did this, and she would flow with the movement and look around in twinkling wonder. “Twinkling wonder” pretty much described Lisa at this time.
When Mark came home he’d join in the mix, sort of like a friendly, visiting dignitary. Mark said that he was going to be the next great American novelist and I, for one, believed it. I still have never met anyone as intelligent as that man, nor do I recall knowing anyone who read as much as he did. Mark read books by the foot, covering a vast array of subjects. He just ate them up, claiming that a true intellectual doesn’t have preconceived notions about what is important, but is interested in anything and everything on its own terms. I loved this information and like many of the things he said, it has served me well over the years because I really like the idea that everything is worthy when you know how to look at it.
Mark brought home some great science fiction books during the time I was there and they left their stamp on my imagination. I still wonder as to the plights of the characters in those futuristic scenarios. Also tucked into my memories of those days were his arriving home and playing the first Bruce Springsteen album I’d ever heard, Darkness on the Edge of Town. Was I surprised by that music.
Springsteen wrote songs that were evocative of an earlier America, yet heralded a new vision into the future at the same time. Songs like “Candy’s Room,” “Racing in the Street,” and “The Promised Land” contained within them a passion for an America coming of age and for American life. The ache and vibrancy in these songs is so alive that it turned me inside out with a kind of urgency I had never felt before. After the Vietnam War, which for many in the sixties and seventies was synonymous with the betrayal by American leadership of Americans and the world, I was struck by Springsteen’s love of country. Fresh, and beyond any false nationalistic sentimentality, his were the songs of the dream and promise of America, sung back into the blood of youth. Give that man a medal.
If weekdays in Idyllwild were about domestic life, weekends were about the great outdoors. Saturday and Sundays we’d all hike in the hills with our children strapped to us—Sarah on Mark or Kathy’s back and Lisa on my front. Kathy knew the best trails, being a ranger, and we’d walk together under the pines, smelling their resin in the light fresh air while trekking deeper into the woods. We followed the most beautiful paths next to rivers, and up onto rock outcroppings. There, under brilliant clear blue skies, we’d enjoy the views over the top of the deep dark evergreen forests to the distant horizons. Having small children is about being in small warm spaces, but this was its opposite and I’d hold Lisa’s little face cupped in my hand as I walked and she’d seem very content. I could tell that she liked it when I was happy because she would look up into my face and mirror my excitement.
* * *
Life could be bright and interesting when I lived at Kathy and Mark’s, but there were no real conversations about what I was going through. We were, each of us, under thirty, and my situation was over everyone’s head. How could they understand? My life was so out of balance that I must have seemed like a sinkhole to a lot of people and so we just stayed at the surface of it all.
I wish I’d had a therapist to help me mine the darkness, but that was beyond my resources. So I got up every morning and worked my way through the days without design, except to care, hoping something out of the ordinary would happen, something to move me into a happy flow so I could forget what I was so alone in grappling with. It was at this time that I bought a handbook of crystal identification at the local bookstore. I had so little money that it really was an extravagance, but I had to have it.
The book contained photographs and precise drawings of naturally occurring and idealized
crystal formations, along with descriptions as to where the crystals could be found on and in the earth. I just loved this book, and would pore through the pictures to look at all the crystalline shapes that were so beautiful and perfect. As a child I had always had gorgeous rock collections and so I suppose that studying these pages was an extension of that original love of the mineral world. But it was different, too, because looking at the idealized geometric shapes offered me something strong and beautiful, something more than the day-to-day difficulty that I felt. The artist in me couldn’t get enough of looking at them. But as I realize now, it was at this time when I felt buried by Steve’s negative versions of who I was, that the shapes and the way the crystals caught the light reminded me of natural bright elegance and wholeness—the poetics of inspired survival. Indeed they were a precursor to the artwork I would begin to do right as Lisa left for college.
During the days in Idyllwild I loved to watch Lisa and the little searching movements of her nose and hands and feet. She was like the movement of water at its surface: perfect wiggly contentment. People watch fires and TV and even aquariums but a baby’s face? I had no idea that her endlessly nuanced expressions would be such a constant draw for me. Sometimes I would hold her upside down by her little legs because I had discovered how she delighted in seeing her environment from different angles. Her cheeks would fall around her eyes and she would have the most sublime smile as her head turned slowly to marvel at the upside-down world. Like me, she enjoyed variety and movement.
The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs Page 23