Fault Lines: Earthquakes, Compassion, and the Shape of Love
There are mornings when nothing feels particularly profound—no visions, no revelations, just the body moving through heat, fatigue, and habit. And yet, it is often in these quiet, unremarkable moments that the deepest lessons surface. This reflection arises not from certainty, but from drifting; not from answers, but from the simple act of staying present while the mind resists and the body carries on. What follows is less a teaching and more a reminder—first to myself, and perhaps to others walking similar inner terrain.
After many years, thanks to Facebook, I reconnected with an old friend—Elyze Stewart. That simple reconnection pulled me back to a place and a time that shaped the rest of my life.
Elyze once lived at 191 Haight Street, the old Georgian apartment building on the corner of Octavia and Haight. That was where I first met my late wife, Nancy. I had been introduced to the building by my Zen buddy David Carlson, who lived there as well.
At the time, I was staying on Army Street, near the junction of Mission and Army, in a room inside a converted Sears Roebuck building. Long abandoned, it had been taken over by artists and transformed into makeshift apartments and studios. I shared the space with another artist named Rory—his last name has faded from memory—and together we hosted a show during the San Francisco Open Studios Exhibition.
It was in that building that I experienced the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989.
The quake struck on October 17, the most powerful since 1906. Sixty-three people lost their lives. Thousands were injured. Billions of dollars in damage rippled across the Bay Area. The Cypress Street Viaduct collapsed. A section of the Bay Bridge fell away. Fires broke out in the Marina. Much of it unfolded live on television, captured by the Goodyear blimp that had been filming the World Series at Candlestick Park—forever marking it as the “Earthquake Series.”
I had just returned home from my job as a produce buyer for Del Tomasso. Exhausted, I lay down on my bed when the building began to shudder with a sound like gunfire. Pipes tore loose. Nail hooks sprang from the ceiling. Concrete cracked as debris fell. I reached the doorway just as the lights went out.
A woman clung to me in the darkness, trembling. Outside, the roar of the earth sounded like a freight train tearing through the city. Then—silence.
A child cried in the next room. A phone rang. When the lights flickered back on, the woman answered it. Her friend in Tokyo was already on the line, telling her that the Bay Bridge had collapsed and the Marina was on fire.
Instead of resting, I walked toward 191 Haight Street, passing through Mission Dolores to check on friends. Strangely, that neighborhood had been spared the worst.
David Carlson was especially close to me. I had visited him often, and the day before the quake had been his birthday. I brought him a lithograph of Yamantaka, the Tibetan Buddhist protector of the Dharma.
It was in his living room, during that visit, that I first saw Nancy.
She looked tired—worn, perhaps even defeated. Yet in that moment, I heard my mother’s voice rise clearly within me:
You’ve always chased beauty on the outside.
Try to see the beauty within this time.
It wasn’t love at first sight.
It was compassion at first intention.
I resolved quietly that I would help bring out the hidden radiance within her. In time, Nancy became an angel in my life—the mother of my children, my companion until illness claimed her far too soon.
Perhaps she, too, had mixed feelings when she first saw me. I will never know. But within a year, we were married at the Green Gulch Zen Temple. She was already carrying our son, whom she gave birth to just ten days later.
It was a Garden Party at Green Gulch Farm.
As I’ve often said, the devil is in the details, so I won’t dwell on the inner mechanics of our marriage. I will simply say this: I loved her. And I believe I succeeded in drawing forth the inner beauty I saw in her that very first day.Spiritual teachings remind us not to cling to the past. Yet returning to these memories brings me healing. They are a form of catharsis—a way of releasing and integrating. I was never perfect. I made mistakes. But I was present. I was committed. I was alive.
Now, in my later years, I live without regret. Everything—love and loss, joy and pain—belonged to the path that shaped me. Writing is how I gather these fragments of my soul, turning them into compost for new growth.
If anyone ever asks why I write so much about myself, the answer is simple:
This is how I honor the life I was given.
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