The Beauty of Kindness

On a recent weekend in Los Angeles, I said a few things about Portland that were perhaps unkind: about the writing community not being uber-dynamic; about the limp food at most local Thai restaurants; about not being able to count the number of times I've seen a person and been unable to determine whether it was a man or a woman. But also while in LA, my friend Sarah and I several times gazed out the car windshield, at Vermont Avenue and Pico and fucking Slauson, and remarked,  "Wow, LA is so beautiful." I remember when Din and I returned from our first real estate-recon in Portland, and after landing in Burbank, drove home to Los Feliz and saw afresh how incredibly ugly it was, desiccated and leeched; as if a hundred thousand people had sucked the teet of the streets and given nothing back but a little bone-dust. Though of course there is viscera, or perhaps bile is a better word, as displayed by the woman in Santa Monica Whole Foods who approached a nanny and upbraided her for speaking Spanish to the child in her charge. The half-Mexican father of the child, who is also editoral page editor for the Los Angeles Times, writes about the incident here. (h/t LAObserved.)

    Sebastian, all of 11 months, was eyeing some fruit being offered for tasting, so Ursula asked him, "Quieres probar?" That's when this perfect stranger — let's call her Ms. Xenophobe — swooped in to impart her hateful ignorance: "You shouldn't speak Spanish to that child," she said, "I am sure that's not what the parents want."
    She is sure, is she?
    Such breathtaking impudence; if only I had been there to give this woman a piece of my mind.

The average customer at Whole Foods in Santa Monica, btw, considers herself the apotheosis of liberal values; a woman who drives a Lincoln Navigator and takes private Pilates classes until her 42-year-old body takes on prepubescent proportions; who buys her eight-year-old son (who is never alone) a cellphone "just in case," and her teenage daughter a new one whenever she loses hers; who does not cook and does not clean and does not work but is nonetheless very, very stressed at all times, because nobody understands the pressures she's under. Why, for instance, doesn't the Mexican gardener dead-head the roses without her having to ask? Doesn't he know to do this? Isn't he a gardener, for god's sake? What is wrong with these people? And here, Juanita, take the baby, I have to lie down for a minute, or get a pedicure. These are the beautiful people who orbit close to the nucleus of the film business, and when they are not ugly, as in the case of Ms. Xenophobe, they are sometimes lost and sad. There is the woman whose family, as another friend put it, "is basically printing money," but who weeps twice a week in her therapist's office; her life is great, everything is great, but she feels so lost and so so scared. And then you watch her tell her daughter, who is crying because her best friend is moving away, "Oh, enough; lunch is ready and we don't keep people waiting," and you see the disingenuity with which she treats others, and you know her hold on the world is very, very tenuous, and the only way to maintain one's place on the ladder is to step on other people's fingers with the precise vigor that comes from believing your life depends on them doing less well than you, which it of course does. That I can think of a dozen such women of my acquaitance may say something about me.

I recall all this because last night I drove into the Willamette Valley just after sunset, to a wine dinner at Penner-Ash Wine Cellars. Being from Brooklyn, I cannot tell a pine from a spruce but can say, the hills were covered with the sort of trees you buy at Christmas, but bigger. The light was magical, low and glowing, and as I turned onto the winery's road, I felt as though I were passing into a dream; it went up and up, but you couldn't see where you were going, a road that was so glorious and spooky that I considered that I might actually be dead.

The winery was lit up and full of people, and after much wine tasting, I made my way into the dining room, where the tables were set for 60, but where there was as yet only one person, sitting before the fire, an 87-year-old farmer who, that morning, had picked the corn we would be eating that evening; we talked about winning Lotto as the others filed in. The meal, which was for the media, included the vinters and the chefs, but also, the people who grew and raised the food. I wound up sitting between one of the owners of the winery and a woman who for several decades has been promoting the region's wines. These are people at the top of their game, very successful, the winery is a marvel, and I'm sure pumped with many millions of dollars. And yet the ease with which we chatted, we might as well have been in our pajamas drinking cocoa; there was zero heirarchy, both were gracious and interested and funny and full of questions and relaxed. This last is the operative word. They were not mellow, or laid-back,  but relaxed. And when one of the servers dropped and broke a glass at our feet, the host held the dustpan.

The beauty of kindness. I've been seeing it a lot lately. I've been seeing it in Din's shop, with the locals who come by just to wish us well, and the florist from next-door who brings fresh flowers but refuses money but, upon reconsideration, will have an espresso, and the fifth grader who apologizes for accidentally taking two samples of cookie instead of one, and Din being fine with the old man taking a rest on one of the two cafe chairs out front, and later, his very earnestly filling out coffee donation forms for Tafv's high school auction, a mom from the fundraising committee having found the shop on the very first day it opened, and when Din gives her three (!) different gifts, asks, are these enough? Kind, kind, kind.

All of which contributed to a very radical thought as I drove away from my health club (a health club where there are no artificial body parts on parade save one dude with a glass eye, and where, because most of the exercisers appear to have been born during the Hoover adminstration, refer to me as "the girl"): that Din and I might stay in Portland for the rest of our lives, and that might be fine.

Comments

[david]

As John Fowles long ago suggested in his book, The Aristos: A Self-Portrait in Ideas (1964) -- and I paraphrase: the two most important qualities to possess are kindness and honesty, either in that order, or the reverse.

I'm not going to compliment you on your writing: there's such a thing as overkill.

[Amy Alkon]

I'm with David, except on the part that there's such a thing as overkill in the writing compliments department. Fabulous, fabulous piece.

[Cathy Seipp]

Still, Los Feliz is beautiful. You're wrong about that.

[KateCoe]

And we're to just assume that Al's story is even semi-true? Why would the evil woman think the nanny understood even that much English? I don't buy the story.
And if you grown up eating food that you've raised, the charm wears off. It's a lovely novelty for you, and it's great that you appreciate those who grow the food you eat, in such charming surroundings with such lovely companions. But trust me, on a day to day to day basis--it's work and not very creative, interesting work at that.

[FoodDude]

Nice.

[Patrick Lasswell]

Oregonians tend to be hostile to invaders in the abstract and welcoming to strangers in person. It is hard to imagine a horde of outsiders doing anything but remaking our home in their image, but it is the most natural thing in the world to help a real new person to grow with us. Visiting California drives home this suspicion of faceless hordes of despicable outsiders with a sledgehammer.

Also, not being able to breathe makes us anxious. Smog-driven suffocation isn't the only thing we fear about a California invasion. The utter dependance on automobiles and the abstraction from humanity the steel shell forces on interaction probably plays a part. Most of Oregon's cities have a downtown that can be and is worth walking around in. Go to Prairie City (population 1,600) sometime and meet people there. I suspect that some of the kindness has to do with the basis of interaction. People used to dealing with steel boxes, treat everything like steel boxes.

[Charles DeDion]

There are some elements obviously missing at that wine dinner, elements that, when absent, make it a pleasant one.

Accusation.
The instillment of guilt.
The promotion of insecurity.
The wish to control.

The original meaning of the word Satan means 'accuser'.

[allan]

I cannot hear or read the word dude without shuttling directly to The Big Lebowski. You are still working out...finally get the wee paunch taken care of? I took a long blog reading break. It's as addictive as potato chips which I quit eating a ways back. I like to quit something good just to show who's boss. The hardest things to leave alone? Cokes. One a day max. Pepsi, RC, Coke, I don't care.

I see the Din man has the doors open now. Any way a San Diego guy can acquire some of those touted beans yet? Or should I say a faceless, despicable outsider with a sledgehammer? Is that a sledgehammer in your pocket, or are you just glad to live in San Diego?

[allan]

By the way, the word satan with a small s came from Hebrew and also meant adversary. The Big S Satan was brought into play during the Hebrews' time being slaves to the Persians. Hell was conjured up in the same time frame. Before that the Hebrews believed when you died you went to a world called Sheol, whether you were naughty or nice. Sheol was a world just removed from the living. You could still look, but not touch. Poison i-ee-ee-vy. Some say that's where we derived our ghost concept. Amazing what you can learn from googling satan + origin.

[nancy]

Glad to see you back, Allan. As for the weight: weirdly, I lost weight without trying, about 137. Maybe it's the gym; maybe it's writing a book proposal and opening a business and getting up every morning at five to bake. Whatever it is, dieting is off the screen for now. And yes, there will be beans to buy; Din would like the website to be up in a month or so. Stay tuned.

[Charles DeDion]

Thanks for that, Allan!
I didn't know all those things about the etymology of the word Satan.

I guess most of us would refer to big-S Satan as to a specific individual, "THE Satan", Mr Satan, so to say. Small-s satan would be more euphemistic, "a satan".

Trivia: There's a slovakian hockey player who's surname is Satan. Printed on his back and all.

But what I wanted to emphasize was how we just can create a good atmosphere by putting a lid on the everyday evil that lurks inside us all.

[Tom Grey - Liberty Dad]

It's not actually Satan, but said like Shatan, Slovaks use the Central European keyboard and have diacritics.

Šatan. My son Michael is called Mishko because the Slovak diminutive is usually a "ko" or a "ka" for boys or girls or dear friends. But it is spelled Miško. Other son Danko for Daniel. Former Slovak PM was Mečiar, or Mechiar, but spelled Meciar because of transcription.

Destructive envy is a terrible sin--wanting something bad to happen to another, usually somebody rich. I just wrote up such a dream contrast for Michael Totten {who linked here).

Capitalism can bring out the greed/ envy side in many people, and that's a definite disadvantage. Rich 'anti-capitalist' hypocrits are even worse.

Thanks for fine writing (from Slovakia.)

[Robert Fiore]

Allow me to explain to you the difference between the Pacific Northwest and Southern California. The motivating idea of the Pacific Northwest is, “Here’s Paradise: Don’t fuck it up.” The motivating idea behind Southern California is, “Here’s Paradise: Use it.” On Southern California’s behalf I would direct you to the Parable of the Talents.

It is true that there are streets in Los Angeles that can make you wonder how a place could have the nerve to be so ugly. The thing about it is, you could be driving down what looks like a perfect Hell street, take a turn off a side street for a block or two and find yourself in a perfectly lovely little neighborhood. The reason is, Los Angeles is a city so devoted to private life that it considers the public sphere a dumping ground. If Angelenos had built Paris there would be auto wrecking yards on the Champs Elysees.

[Robert Light]

who does not cook and does not clean and does not work but is nonetheless very, very stressed at all times, because nobody understands the pressures she's under.

Wow, Mrs. Rommelmann, you certainly hit it on the head with that one. (I regularly shop at that S.M. Whole Foods -- hey, forget bars for picking up on attractive women. Just go to Whole Foods). Hey, but it's rough being what amounts to essentially a whore. It's gotta' be rough on one's psychology. Give the poor girls a break.

[nancy]

Rough... and within their power to smooth. My mother called yesterday and said she was impressed by the 2005 movie "Crash," as am I, but that she didn't get the Sandra Bullock role, "It seemed so throwaway." I assured her, it was not. So sure, these women need a break, not from me, but the insecurities and senses of entitlement they've spun into concertina wire. They (and, I suppose, those who put up with them), made it; they can break themselves out.
I know a woman whose life has been both hellish and Lucullan. Her m.o. is to engage whatever expensive solution is lauded this season: the home-delivered diet meals; the $10,000/week spa that features daily high-colonics; the therapeutic boarding school for her child, who's really, really had a rough time and given everyone else one. The last time I saw this woman, she said, "You should count your blessings you don't have money. You don't know how lucky you are."
But money did not cause her problems. Infusing it into every aspect of her life and believing it would fix things did. My father said recently, "If you have a problem money can fix, you have no problem," and this can be is true. Some problems can be fixed with money, but, at least to me, the truest things have nothing to do with money. My heart becomes a heavy blood-bag when I think of all the people who cannot trust enough to know this.