The Empty Chair (4 page)

Kelly was a frustrated artist.

(Join the club.)

I think her idea was she'd somehow come into her artistic self during that six-month recess. Which may have been too ambitous. Kelly was deeply afraid of failure. What if in the end she had nothing to show for her efforts but a painting or two or a shelf of unfired ceramic pots or a notebook of mediocre koan responses and haikus?

Her resentment toward me was palpable. I totally understood. There she was having a dark sabbatical-sabbath of the soul, and there
I
was, the housebound blob who bore witness. She was naked and vulnerable, hard-bodied and weary from too much desperation-yoga, waiting like a trembling innocent for the cosmos to provide order and direction—who wants to do
that
in front of the Pillsbury Couchboy? I became the court stenographer (I was already the jester) charged with meticulously keeping the minutes of her myriad creative miscarriages. Ideally, Kelly's struggle was of the sort best played out on Walden Pond or in a converted Nova Scotian lighthouse. Or maybe one of those forest lookouts on Desolation Peak that Kerouac and Snyder used to favor. I stayed as far out of her way as humanly possible, even pulling a teenage disappearing act whenever she was home—we kept separate bedrooms for years—and she was home a
lot
. It only made things worse. To her, my conspicuous absence felt like a surveillance camera.

That isn't to say we weren't civil. We shared meals together—my wife believed dinner with place mats and cloth napkins was the last bastion of family life—and put up a unified front for Ryder as best we could. But subtle and not so subtle indications of household friction couldn't be avoided. At table, she was spikey. She gossiped about friends and acquaintances, the anecdotes always featuring what the boyfriends and well-off husbands did for a living. X was a workaholic—“He spent three months researching conjoint therapists!”—and Y traveled to far-flung places yet always managed to bring his significant other. “He goes to Europe every month for business and
takes her with him
.” I listened, friendly and wide-eyed, with the dumb, vicarious smile of a freeloading younger brother fallen on hard times.

My only value was playing Mr. Mom, a role I happened to relish. Finally, something I didn't have to apologize for. I just loved being Ryder's dad
.
During holidays and school vacations we spent hours playing board games of our own invention, creating miniature worlds whose domains stretched from hardwood floor to backyard grass and beyond. We rented Cukor films and provided scatological commentary. I
adored
taking him for bacon and eggs at the local greasy spoon and he was thrilled when I allowed him a sip of coffee. Of course, I couldn't resist dragging him to bookstores. The more rare a book was—the more expensive, the more exquisite—the greater his interest.

I look back now and see that time with him as an extraordinary blessing.

The result being that Kelly was free—to do, go, be whatever. I know that she used that opportunity to flush a few trysts from her system, consummate a few flirtations. But it wasn't enough to
be
,
Kelly needed to
become.
She got deeper into her practice. Went on retreats to gain esoteric knowledge from visiting
tulkus.
She was of dedicated service to the sangha, spearheading a fundraiser to repair the zendo's leaky roof. She taught incarcerated women how to meditate and got certified in Ashtanga. Began chanting and singing—kirtan. (Everyone said, “That
voice.
Where did it come from?”) I watched her body continue to grow lithe, long, sculpted. Her yoga for underprivileged women class became so popular it was written up in
The Chronicle
. Ryder squealed with delight when he saw the above-the-fold photo of his mom.

But still, she languished. She complained that everything was busywork—everything a distraction. She thought she'd had lift-off from the lip of the void but there she was again. Then, in the middle of her leave, something shifted. A friend of hers from the Zen Center visited elementary schools, teaching Buddhist fundamentals to kids from Richmond, Larkspur, Millbrae, Palo Alto, San Rafael. He was a very sweet guy—Kelly had once introduced us at a Metta Hospice lecture—very hyper, very personable. His shtick was to make Buddhism accessible, to spread the dharma and make it fun. The gig he created for himself filled a niche. When
Kelly asked if she could tag along, he was delighted.

She was captivated from Day One. She couldn't believe how these kids were
getting
it. They were jacked up, dancing around and playing music, shouting “Impermanence Rocks!” and generally strutting their crazy kid-wisdom stuff. Toward the end of each class, her “dharmabud” led them in guided meditation, which they took to like ducks to water. They even got the concept of Nothingness and the death of the ego, sitting like little fortune cookies in perfect lotus position. The guy would play “Nothing Compares 2 U,” remember that? Well, Kelly just bawled like a baby. She said the experience put her in touch again with that feeling she'd almost forgotten, the joyful spirit of beginner's mind. She got blown back to those early days of study and devotion, when the magnificent, irrefutable logic of the Four Noble Truths cracked open her head. (I always tell people in AA that once you work the
Steps
, move on to the
Truths
.) See, Buddhism's like anything man puts his hand to; one day you wake up and everything's turned to shit. The magic's been replaced by cliques of assholes with policies, slogans and gibberish, empty rituals. I think Kelly might have been feeling some of that, the emptiness of it, the is-that-all-there-is-ness of her practice (though not in a good way), and the kids reset her clock. God bless the children.
[sings]
“God bless the child who's got his own!
Who's got his own . . .”

Still, I wondered how this fellow managed to slip Buddhism into the curriculum. Wasn't that a violation of church and state? As liberal as folks tend to be around this part of the country, you'd have to be naïve not to expect resistance from
some
of the parents, right? But Kelly said that Dharmabud
was very careful not to push Buddhist doctrine, at least not directly. He wasn't converting anyone. He just wanted to share the concept of compassion, to convey the preciousness of life. He covered his bases: meditation equaled nothing more than the traditionally vaunted “quiet time.” Probably his strongest message was how Mother Earth needed respect and taking care of. (I suppose a Republican might have a problem with that.) He made the Buddha into a generic but dignified cartoon character who carried the message.

The pediatric Magical Mystery Tour—which suited
this
Namaste-at-home dad just fine!—came along at the perfect time, giving my wife some much-needed juice. As the licensed in-house observer, I sensed the groundwork for something being laid. Suddenly, Kelly got
very
busy. (Which was great, in that she was no longer crawling up my ass on an hourly basis.) When she wasn't “managing” the zendo, teaching yoga or doing her jail thing, she tagged along with Dharmabud, auditing his classes. She started missing our mandatory suppers and made up for it by “intensives” with Ryder just before bed. Whenever I stood by the door to listen, it was all bell, book and Buddhism. She even gave pop quizzes. It reminded me of those awful movies she used to watch over and over—
Little Buddha
and
Kundun
—starring the once and future Dalai Lama and his tutors.

I don't want to sound bitchy. The truth is, she was completely devoted to our son. Things were chugging along famously until I learned that Kelly was keeping something from me—my codependent, beleaguered, overachieving wife had been tutoring at the women's prison for months, and now was poised to continue the work.

At San Quentin.

The next day he was late for our session, and entered hurriedly.

Sorry—ran into the Gossiping Monk. We had an exchange of information . . . please omit from final transcript! I don't want people identifying him.

Oh, before I forget, something popped into my head when I was up the hill that is weirdly amazing. You've read Gary Snyder, the poet? He's extraordinary, far
better for my money than Jeffers. He's still alive—Snyder not Jeffers. (Jeffers had a place up here in Carmel, Hawk Tower. Built it himself. A real he-man. And I understand Ferlinghetti still owns the cabin Jack wrote about in
Big Sur.
) Snyder and Ferlinghetti are pretty much the last of the living Beats, at least the ones I consider to be of any pivotal importance. You know, historically. Ginsberg and Burroughs died just a few months of each other, back in '97; Huncke went the year before. I would have loved to have met Lucien Carr
1
, the one who killed the teacher that was stalking him. Carr and Burroughs were friends from St. Louis, I think—the tangled web of all these folks, the
genealogy
of it
blows the mind. You knew that Kerouac helped cover up the murder? There's supposedly a book about it that Burroughs and Jack wrote back in the forties, but no one'll publish it.
2
Now
that
would make a wonderful addition to the bookmobile! I would've wanted to meet Carr before Neal Cassady . . . Friggin' Ferlinghetti's outlived 'em all, he's older than these hills, but'll probably go to Snyder's memorial. Tough old buzzard. And no estimable talent whatsoever! When I think about the Beats—Lamantia, McClure, Corso, Whalen,

and some of the marginal women . . .
all
the Beat women were marginal, all of the women and
most
of the men! Except Carolyn—Cassady—who's
never
going to die, not as long as she's pawning Jack's and Neal's bones for cash money. What a piece of work! There's Joanne Kyger, Snyder's ex (I think she still lives up in Bolinas, a lot of them did, Creeley and Whalen lived up there, Lewis Warsh, a whole slew), there's di Prima and Annie Waldman . . . anyway, what popped into my head when I was up on the hill was, Snyder's pseudonym in
The Dharma Bums
is
Ryder
—“Japhy Ryder,” remember? And all this time I've been thinking Djuna Barnes and her novel when it almost
had
to be Japhy
Ryder
who gave my son his name! Well, how do you like that? Which just
shows to go you
the fallibility of the proverbial eyewitness. Makes you really start to wonder. It's all a dream, anyway, no? A broken mirror-puzzle. We just reshuffle the pieces. Who was it that said, “Reality is a possibility I cannot afford to ignore”? Leonard Cohen? Or maybe it was Lily Tomlin.

Kerouac and Snyder were close. Jack looked up to him. Snyder was older and became Jack's mentor in all things Zen. I haven't thought about any of this in a
long
time, Bruce, you're bringing it all to the surface . . . You know, Kerouac's a god of mine, that's why I go on about him. And I know my Kerouac! What's disgusting is when the fancy literary folk write their essays for the Sunday book reviews, bloviating
on how
in love
they were with Jack
when they were kids
, how
On the Road
changed their lives, yadda yadda—or should
I say Yaddo Yaddo! You'll notice how they usually grace us with their perfect opinions on the anniversary of the man's death or when
they
have a new book out, and you're reading about how much they loved him and thinking it's a tribute when suddenly they
turn
on him. These tributes to the man who changed their lives suddenly become snarky critical
refutations
of his work! O they confess to loving and emulating him back in the day when they were feckless undergrads or during their own bullshitty rucksack
moment
—but then they grew up and put away childish things and destroyed whole forests so as to grace us with their neutered, mannered, irrelevant oeuvres. Their hors
d'oeuvres
. Five paragraphs in they cut this giant down to size as a mere folly of their youth. See, with me it was the reverse! Exact opposite. Do you remember Capote saying that nasty thing about Jack's methodology (he said a lot of nasty things), “That's not writing, that's typing”? In my
own
feckless youth, I happened to agree
.
Being the precocious kid I was, I'd have taken “A Tree of Night” over
On the Road
all day long. Because
On the Road
is rather terrible, kind of an awful book in terms of sheer writing, particularly if you measure it against his others,
Visions of Cody
,
Doctor Sax
,
Windblown World
,
Lonesome Traveler
. In a hundred years,
Visions of Cody
will be the one, that's his Everest. And the poems! Better than Ikkyu. And the paintings! Blake looks like a
child
next to Jack . . . But you see, I was a little snot, a classicist, and it took me the longest time to come around. Then
Big Sur
—Jack's beautiful, beautiful novel—sort of kicked the door down and in I ran. And I knew without a doubt this man will cast a shadow larger than Whitman, this man
is
Whitman. I don't care too much for the others, sorry to say, not to cast aspersions, even on Mr. Snyder. I was never cool enough for Burroughs or Jewish enough for Ginsberg. None of the rest really matter—except the strange case of Neal Cassady, of course. He's indispensible. I had a sort of divine vision once that if it were possible to exhume his body, one would find it transformed to vellum, in true Ginsbergian holiness, because at the end he was no longer human, Jack the princess had kissed Neal the frog and restored him to the original, magisterial state of what he was meant to be: a book, a book of
life.
If I could write, I might try a little Borgesian fairy tale along those lines . . . O, the Beats, the Beats, the Beats! If you took everyone away and were left with just Kerouac, you'd be just fine. All would be right with the windblown world.