Sun Days on Orcas | 27 things about Yotam Zohar

||| SUN DAYS ON ORCAS by EDEE KULPER |||

Sometimes you meet someone intriguing and immediately think, Wow, I’ve got to know more about how this person thinks. That was my immediate impression upon meeting Mr. Z several months ago. It had nothing to do with what he said; it was more about his nonverbals. He was understated, subtle in his expressions, spoke little yet said a lot in the few words he chose, and appeared to be keenly observant. He had a vibe of mystery. I am thankful this column allows me to dig deeper into who people are. Perhaps you, too, will get the pleasure of running into him in the near future. Without further ado, meet Yotam Zohar…

Yotam Zohar

Prologue: Allusions in later answers; a short biography:

I was born in Jerusalem in 1984. I have five siblings, including a twin brother who lives in Ohio, a younger brother who just moved back to London from Los Angeles, and three older half-siblings, two of whom live in Israel and one who lives in London. I met my wife and we started a family in Brooklyn, NY, over a decade ago. We moved to Orcas Island in the summer of 2021, after managing to snag some vacant property on Mt. Pickett. After we arrived we bought a sailboat and moved aboard, as per our original plan to live on it until we build a house, but the boat does not yet have any working propulsion, navigation, electrical, or plumbing systems, so it is slowly enjoying some upgrades. I’ve been a visual artist for the last decade and a half, and a few years ago I became a middle school art teacher and worked at a public school in Chinatown, Manhattan. This year I landed the job of English/Language Arts teacher at Orcas Island Middle School. My wife is an architect with over 25 years of experience who, in the last eighteen months, has taught herself almost every single skill associated with being a first-class shipwright. Our son is a student at Orcas Island Elementary School. He doesn’t like to be defined, but I will tell you that at this moment he enjoys animals (real and fictional), reading, playing the trumpet, and sailing.

1- What are some things you’ve done or seen that are out of the ordinary?

I have a memory of riding on a huge passenger hovercraft in the English Channel when I was about three years old. As I’ve come to understand more about how memory works—the way images can be supplanted through suggestion and reinforced by way of retelling—this memory has become fused with my subsequent attempts to gain clarity about whether the event in question really happened from the adults I would have been with, none of whom can provide a straight answer.

I offer that anecdote as a disclaimer: my memory can be a little foggy, my onboard narrator somewhat unreliable, whether or not I’m aware of it.

2- What life paths have you taken that led to choices or thought patterns that have had major significance in your life?

When I was three my father moved us from Jerusalem to London, and then four years later my parents separated and my mother took me and my brothers and moved us back to her native Cleveland to live with her parents, and that’s where I did first grade through the end of high school before I moved on. Two things going on at once here: a couple of snobbish, poor, artist parents who couldn’t get along with each other, plus that productive jump from one of the world’s oldest and most politically contested cities, to the doorstep of post-industrial Europe, to a working class suburb in the American Rust Belt, to Brooklyn in the midst of gentrification (by way of college in the Midwest), to here. I don’t mind talking about myself, because every time I scratch the surface I find something surprising that I can connect to this journey. So here we are, warts and all.

I’m probably a classic example of the black sheep who ends up in a herd of black goats and has to just make the most of it. I realized this by paying attention to the way people pronounce my two-syllable Hebrew name. English-speakers, first of all, cannot do it. So that’s been my life since I was seven: introducing myself, watching people stumble through addressing me, and then finding myself alone at parties.

Then, once every few years I will meet an Israeli. The first three things that happen are: (1) they pronounce my name perfectly and it sounds so reassuring, like they’ve given me back my personhood, that I almost cry, (2) they immediately learn, usually with some unconcealed disappointment, that I am incapable of conversing with them in Hebrew, and (3) I get so nervous about discovering their politics—the stakes are pretty high—that I can barely even look at them until one of us decides to commit the crime of referencing the topic, which for me feels like this funny dance.

In my twenties I finally started to wonder about how different my life would have been—friends I’d have made, opportunities I could have walked into—if my father had gotten his way and named me Colin (Hebrew names were my American mother’s idea). I promise I’m not bitter; I love my life. But I do wonder.

3- What have been some of your best choices? Worst choices?

The three best choices I can think of offhand: (1) pursuing a serious relationship with this woman who took a painting class I was teaching, and who I eventually married; (2) stepping away from the New York art scene to instead teach Middle School; and (3) moving to Orcas Island.

When I think of my worst choices—the missteps I take daily—they all have to do with my behavior towards others, all of it unintentional (I really like other people and possess a cloying need for them to like me). I don’t know how they walk their paths, and I’m in complete awe of people whose paths are straight, or those who walk them well—and you can tell when someone strides along their path with ease; it’s a breathtaking thing to behold. Then I look down: my path doesn’t seem to have an extremely long range of visibility, at least not for me, so on most days each step feels like I’m groping around in the dark for a foothold. That’s an excellent way to accidentally kill plants or step on someone’s toe, by the way.* I’ve got this onboard compass, and sometimes I think it just spins.

And that scares the shit out of me. But my path has taken me to some really amazing places, and it has joined up with what must be some of the best people who ever grew on this planet. So I can’t complain, and besides, who would I complain to?

*For the past several years I’ve been in the habit of thinking about privilege a lot, and the way that privilege can light up a path, or pave it. One thing I have discovered about living on Orcas is that people here who have privilege are really good about sharing their light, or even helping to pave other people’s paths. Orcas Island is the world I want to live in.

4- What are some habits you have that are unique to you?

If we may put aside neuroses and caffeine addictions for the sake of discussion, I’m not really a creature of habit. My wife and I have a tradition that whenever we’re driving and we come to a roundabout and we’re not worried about catching a ferry, we complete a 360° rotation before continuing on our route. That’s about as ritualistic as I am comfortable with.

5- How do you start off or end your day – is there anything unique about it?

The beginnings and endings of my day are probably neither unique nor interesting. At least one of them involves beverages that affect neural function.

6- What do you believe?

It’s not that I believe in ghosts—it’s that I believe in people, places, ideas, all being haunted by them.

I’ve been able to identify a lot of things I don’t believe in by tracing back the line to what I do and do not worship or feel reverent towards. I love art and books and people who make or fix stuff, and I detest national flags and the system of borders they represent. I believe in the beauty of human collective achievement and self-preservation, too, and I’m rather repulsed by the idea of labeling whatever ideological ground I find myself on as a result. So, anarcho-communist? Nah, I’m rogue, baby. With all the other rogues.

Every time I read about religion or patriotism or some other ideology being on the decline among young people I get a little excited. I’m thrilled at the prospect of these things going extinct, but I secretly live in fear of what kinds of group behaviors and cultural vapidity might replace them. Like, we got Jesus out of Christmas, or we got actual religion out of the holidays, and replaced it with something even more aggressively stupid, because that’s something America is all about. But America also produced Maya Angelou, and Lisa Yuskavage, and Steely Dan. We’ll call it a wash.

7- Who do you look up to?

I look up to a good number of the people I get to know, at least in some way. I’ve had amazing mentors, teachers, friends. I still do. My siblings? Excellent, even though I roll my eyes about them sometimes. I look up to my wife. She’s got a crazy energy to her that makes everything else look static. She’s a planner.

When I first arrived in New York I used to say I was going to visit “my old Dutch friends” whenever I was taking myself to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (I was learning to enjoy spending time without needing to have buddies along; probably a twin habit). I’d sit in front of Rembrandt’s 1660 self-portrait for hours, just lost in it, sometimes mouthing jealous curses at its creator’s skill, wishing all the other museum visitors would vanish so Remmy and I could have some alone time. It was one artist (me) actively and wholly appreciating the artistic decisions made by another artist. And that’s a frame of mind I find I can still easily slip into. I’m grateful for that.

8- How do you parent/teach/live that was learned from life’s lessons?

I bumble through. I didn’t really learn any of “life’s lessons” until I was in my 20s, and then only by trial and error, and continuing now as I push 40, finding role models in my teachers and friends. This means I’m figuring out how to be a better father and teacher, while having gotten a late start on my classroom teaching career, now in a district where educators work harder in students’ interests than any other I’ve ever seen. All while learning how to refit an old sailboat, because it’s our home right now. Lots of plates spinning in the air. I’m lucky. I have great mentors and I live in a cool place.

9- What would your ancestors or progeny think/write/say about you if they summed you up in a few sentences of a family tree book for others to read in hundreds of years?

I often say that as a parent, my goal is to not ultimately appear as the bad guy in my son’s memoir.

I seldom consider my ancestors or what they’d think. I’m such a product of the world I live in that most of what I say and do would be incomprehensible to them. I hope they’d think I was a good person who made a positive difference in others’ lives, and that’s really the best I would be able to hope for from anyone. What else is there, really? I’m sure some of them would see me as an apostate (and I definitely am), and I’d delight in receiving such a judgment. At the same time, and this goes for all of you living people, I’m terrified of ever being misunderstood, which I find ironic.

10- What were you born to do?

Definitely not make heaps of money, apparently.

My compulsions tell me, in no particular order, to write, make art, teach, and involve myself with food—mostly consuming it in gobs. I can only claim to have been born to do the last part.

11- Why are you perfect for this era or why are you not? What era would you love to see in person?

I was recently told that I am a Geriatric Millennial. Aside from the very American Middle Class ring to the term, it’s specific enough to feel like it could be a broad stroke with one or two stray bristles that touch me. Most of the people I spend time with outside of work seem to be older. If I’d have been dropped into some other time, understanding what I do now, my suspicion is that the culture clash would cause problems and I’d get homesick for Now. I am way over the naivete of wanting to meet my idols, and understanding a bit of human history doesn’t make the past any more appealing as a tourist destination. That said, the optimist in me is impatient for a certain future—the one I seem to enjoy working towards when I consider the young people in my classroom.

12- What instruments do you play, what skills do you have, etc.?

I’ve been a dabbler in many ways over the years. Evidently I was one of those kids who wandered off into the world from high school with a guitar-shaped distraction from reality. I can read and write music, but it’s ironic: if only it had been code or legal documents, right off the bat, I might now be enjoying more time to practice the bass.

Skills? When I was working at the Children’s House I finally got to use the one sleight-of-hand trick that I know (the “French drop”) to make small “magic-sized” things disappear from my palm, only to reappear inside a coat pocket or behind an adorable little ear.

13- What is a funny story or quirky trait about you?

It must have been a couple years after 9/11. I had a dream one night that I had been invited to attend the war crimes tribunal of Saddam Hussein in the Hague. The whole thing was super realistic; a room full of glass dividers under fluorescent light, people in suits wearing headsets with translations being fed into them. The judges ended up decreeing that I should take Saddam with me and reform him into a decent person. So we went to my palatial hotel suite, where he clobbered me at chess, and other than that was a pretty amiable gentleman.

Two weeks later (this is back in real life), I was stuck in Newark Airport during a blizzard on my way to visit my dad in London, when the TVs in the concourse broadcast breaking news of Saddam’s capture. I continued to watch the whole thing unfold, amazed, but also still feeling like I was dreaming it, until the moment they killed him, and I’ll admit, it devastated me a little.

14- What kind of day makes you feel totally satisfied when you lay your head down at night?

Growing up poor and then staying poor after doing well in college does interesting things to a person. I sleep best under two conditions: on my boat when it’s rocking, and right after getting paid.

15- Any well-known people you’re related to?

My most successful relatives are all known within creative ponds, some of them somewhat cloistered from the big ocean in which our really “well-known” fish swim. I’m a distant cousin of the writer Michael Chabon. Two slightly more closely related cousins are known for their regular contributions to The New Yorker magazine—no, they’re not cartoonists. My younger brother is a Grammy-nominated electronic musician, and my half-sister gained a degree of fame as a singer-songwriter in Israel. My cousin edited most of Michael Moore’s films, and went on to produce some important (Oscar-nominated) documentaries of his own. I’m crooked enough to start dropping names under pressure or drink, but this ain’t it.

16- How did you get to Orcas?

The short version of the story is that my wife’s family has been in the Pacific Northwest for the last forty years. We actually got married on her father’s sailboat in Fidalgo Bay in 2011, almost on a lark; it was supposed to just be me meeting her folks and cruising the San Juans but we decided to get married while we were at it. She and I had planned to leave New York for about a decade, but we were always chained to a job or some other short-term aspiration, and Seattle had been an idea for a while, until Covid put the fire under us and we started reexamining our hopes and dreams. Ultimately, we didn’t want to live anywhere but Orcas. That’s why we risked so much to get here, and we’re clinging onto this existence with such tenacity.

17- Who has changed your life, or whose life have you changed?

Teachers are designated and defined life-changers, so in the interests of not being basic I wanted to seek an answer farther afield, but I think the reason I’m having such trouble is that we all affect one another. We don’t even have to come into contact with each other to change each other’s lives.

For example, you know who changed my life? The person who invented freshly baked bread, or radiant floor heating. The person who figured out that jazz didn’t have to be danceable in order to absolutely cut a person’s heart in two. Salinger changed my life when Holden Caulfield described his late brother Allie: “I’ll tell you what kind of red hair he had…he was sitting there, about a hundred and fifty yards behind me, watching me tee off. That’s the kind of red hair he had.”

I hope I eventually change someone’s life in a similar way.

18- What is your mission in life? (Or at least at the moment, or what were/are your changing missions through life?)

I’m not sure if I am on a mission, but I have short-term goals other than paying the bills. Here’s one: in New York the teachers used to joke that the objective of every teaching day was to not end up on the front page of the Daily News. (For the locals here, that’s one of several metropolitan rags that publishes exclusively inflammatory gossip, with a firm anti-education stance among its editorial positions.)

It’s in line with my usual objective, to try to be better and simultaneously sharper.

19- What types of thoughts keep you up at night?

A student gets called up to my desk during a work period, just before a large assignment is due. We have an interaction that goes something like this:

Me: Hey, how’s it going?

Student: (avoids eye contact, shrugs)

Me: I noticed you haven’t completed much work. What can I do to help?

Student: (avoids eye contact, shrugs)

Me: Well, help me understand better. Is it that you’re having an issue with school right now, is it something else going on, is it the content or the material, anything I can do to make it more interesting?

Student: (avoids eye contact, shrugs)

Me: Well, I could try to come up with some solutions, but I’d love to hear suggestions from you first, because you know yourself a lot better than I do, and you know what might be more engaging for you.

Student: (continues to avoid eye contact, no longer managing to even shrug)

This type of interaction happens with at least one student in every single one of my classes, every few weeks. You’d better believe two things keep me up at night: (1) these students, and (2) how I’d design and build a really gorgeous high-latitude sailboat if I had several million dollars to play with.

But you know who doesn’t have several million dollars to play with? Me. And you know who does?

*sips beverage aggressively*

20- What consistent, habitual thought tends to populate your mind/neuropathways daily?

I notice my aches and pains more than I used to. I also visualize fluid dynamics a lot—not the way a physicist would, because I just don’t have the knowledge, but maybe more the way a stereographer might.

21- What are your goals for the week? Month? Year? Lifetime?

This is going to sound petty, because it is: there are a number of people from my past who need to see my name on the cover of a book I wrote, or hear me talking to Terry Gross on Fresh Air or something. If this happens it’ll restore some kind of equilibrium to my universe and I’ll become slightly less neurotic, I promise.

I’m also, very slowly, learning how to tattoo.

22- Memorable job?

In college I got a job working for this guy who was parting out vintage Japanese motorcycles in his garage. We ended up with a close and lasting friendship, and for a while there I became capable of taking apart any of these beautiful machines and putting them back together. He never told me where he got the bikes.

23- Idea you’re pleased with?

The focus of my master’s degree was on art forgery, and the importance of experiencing and appreciating artwork independently of the external artifice placed on its value by art-adjacent institutions. For my thesis project I created an exhibition of fakes and presented it as real, along with a fake documentary that I made about the works’ acquisition.

24 & 25- Features

I have a peace treaty with all insects that both fly and sting. Happy to share my food with yellow jackets and wasps. I think they’re cute. I’ll just go ahead and pet carpenter bees on their fuzzy little heads. I haven’t been stung in twenty years.

Here are some opinions on music that I could be canceled over: I hate the song “The Girl From Ipanema.” I’m quite proud of hating it. It’s awful. I can’t tell Neutral Milk Hotel apart from the Decemberists, and though I’ve given them an honest try, I’m interested in neither of them. (Sorry Natalie—this is why I don’t force you to listen to Mr. Bungle.)

The most “twin” thing about me is that for the last four or five years, every text message between my twin brother and me has been sent in transliterated, thick, Australian accents. He started it at random one day and I joined right in without questioning it. This exchange has persisted through sharing and discussing deaths in the family, births, moves, job changes, and other important life experiences, without ever breaking character.

26- Your toxic trait?

The most “toxic masculinity” thing about me is that whenever it’s remotely appropriate to put it on my food, I use obnoxious quantities of hot sauce—the hottest I can find—and then try to act all suave about how well I am managing it.

27- Final Thoughts

When I finally moved to New York City in my mid-20s, it felt like home. All those things I mentioned earlier about feeling like a black sheep—those go out the window when you’re living in a huge cosmopolitan area full of transplants and immigrants, and even more so when you’re diverting yourself from the well-worn path between home and work and “approved leisure activities” (looking at you with some disdain, urban developers) as often as possible.

Orcas, for good and predictable reasons, seems to have its own ways of vetting newcomers. In the words of a local friend (ironically, perhaps, another Israeli): “Everybody who is here is here for a reason.” We’ve made conscious choices, sacrifices, to get here, to stay here. We’ve seen the rewards of those choices and we’ve decided they’re worth it. It’s something we are all guaranteed to agree on, and I think that’s one explanation for why the community here is so cohesive, even though it’s socioeconomically and ideologically so very diverse; a combination of people who probably couldn’t get along so well if we were doing this in “America.” It’s hard for me to express how much I love that about this place, and how much I love it here. I’ll be driving, and I’ll glimpse a passing tree, or the vista of Crow Valley on a foggy morning, or Buck Mountain at night lit up like it’s Fraggle Rock, and the feeling of love that I experience in those moments becomes extremely palpable. Do you know what I mean?