A lovely early morning gift from my friend Julia today: Two copies of The New Yorker.
She handed me these when we met for coffee at a relatively new place near her studio in the western part of Amsterdam. Ex-pats and Dutchies, mostly with kids, sat outside, got caffeinated, and enjoyed the August sun.
After we parted I cycled towards home but passed a new coffee place. Obviously, I needed to stop in, check out the vibe, and read into the magazines while watching people walk by.
Julia had recommended I read an article about the painter Salmaan Toor. I got through most of that (he’s a big deal, I learned) before turning to a story by Ian McEwan. I read Bill McKibben on the climate deal. I relished the cartoons.
And I read about Starbucks closing down six shops in Los Angeles because, in essence, it is just too problematic to hold them open. Crazy people, homeless people, a third space that can’t be safe or civil enough for even the biggest retail seller of coffee to, you know, sell coffee.
Five years ago or so when I was in San Francisco I was shocked at the level of homelessness. By level here I don't just mean the numbers, which are extraordinary, but how damaged the homeless people looked. Does someone punch them in the face every single day? I wondered.
I asked a friend I knew in the city about all this and he said, “Oh yeah, we just don't see them.” Did he say this ironically? To point at the tragedy? Or callously, as if to suggest how one lives under such conditions? (I never figured that out.)
From where I met Julia to the place I read the article meant covering a reasonable swath of this city, a swath increased when I went to a third place to actually do some work.
Yes, there are certainly people who live on the streets here, but not many. And it is certainly not unusual to spend a full day without—and I am putting it this way on purpose—having to see anyone who is destitute.
Having to see.
Let me digress for a moment. You’ve probably heard the idea that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. If you think of a child whose parents are indifferent or know how the the “troublemaker” at school is just putting bad attention over not being seen you will know how true it is that indefference can be worse than hate.
Lionize the wealthy, demonize opponents, and simply scan beyond those so broken they live in the streets or terrorize Starbucks. Clearly, Americans are not seeing each other well, not seeing each other “rightly,” in “a healthy way.”
I miss America. Sometimes I long for it. And neither homelessness there nor its lack here would keep me from returning, as I often think of doing. But for sure, if you are talking about wealthy societies—and both the Netherlands and America are wealthy societies—you have to wonder why you can drink coffee all over Amsterdam but not in Los Angeles.
After drafting the above I went out to a place called Sla, an industrial salad place that closes at 21:00, meaning I had to take my “Ceaser Pleaser” to go. Fine, I had my New Yorker with me and walked around the corner and under the railroad tracks to a place you can sit and look East across a canal as the West-facing side of buildings glow red, the water beneath doing the same.
As it happened somebody had left two decent chairs right next to the water and I chose one of these while behind me a man on a bench kept talking. I could not hear him the whole time—he talked quietly and was a bit distant—but it was unclear at first: Was he on the phone or just talkiing to himself? The latter, it turned out, something he continued to do while making obsessive gestures over his small bag and braided belt.
Though less than altogether pleasing, I finished my salad and my magazine and was greeted by the man after I got up to leave and walked by him. I asked him to speak English and this he did fluently and in a choppy boyish tone of someone trying to be friendly.
Was he lonely? Was he hungry?
He told me he had a good sleeping bag and that it would be a good place to sleep.
I never carry cash anymore and had none to give him, but he was not asking for any either.
Should I invite him home to sleep on my sofa?
What is my role here?
For all his difficulties and all my callousness, he was not beaten up. I obviously did not see him as he needed to be seen, or that my seeing mattered, but I did not not see him either.
I wished him a good night—fijne avond—and he wished me the same.