Wherefore Walla Wallas?

My friend Dan wants to go and live with the Walla Walla tribe.

I should point out that this is a fictitious tribe, contrived out of thin air on Montague Street Saturday night. The Walla Wallas were used as an example of another way of life. They spend considerably less time working and considerably more time with their friends and their families. Of course, there are other trade-offs. The Walla Wallas don't have televisions, or Tivos, or computers or, you know, Mallomars. But they are a content people, because they get to spend more time with people they love. Whereas, the group on Montague Street on Saturday night doesn't spend nearly enough time together.

Life goes along, as it does, and we all do the best we can to meet the demands of work, and relationships, and laundry, and friends. Sometimes friends get shoved aside, only because work is work, right, and relationships are relationships, right, and you gotta do the laundry. So you see your friends when you can, and it's never as much as you want. And then there's the problem of friends that live far away. If you can't see someone who lives nearby as often as you'd like, how do you make sure that you keep up with people who live 3,000 miles away?

I have often spoken of "the commune" to my friends – it's a joke now, after all these years. My commune, if you will, is simply a neighborhood where all of the people near to my heart live. Somehow there is this plot of land, and we all build our homes on it, and live together and take care of each other and work for each other, as well as the common good. (I guess my commune involves somehow winning the lottery.) As I get older, the idea of the commune becomes more cherished to me, because my friends become more cherished. I originally conceived of the commune as a place for me, and all of my single friends, to live when we got older. Proximity would enable us to take care of each other. Now I have Rebecca, of course, so now the commune is not just for singles any more. I want all of my good friends there, and I want my family there too. What a gift, to be able to be surrounded by the people you love all of the time.

Which brings me back to the Walla Wallas. The group on Montague Street kind of goofed on Dan a good bit when he waxed philosophically about the Walla Wallas, mostly because we think that Dan's head would explode without his computer. The truth is, though, it wouldn't happen. Dan is a softie at heart and wants to see his wife, and soon, his baby, more often than he does. He wants to see his friends more often. We all do. Maybe it's an offshoot of living in such a hectic city. It's a blessing to live/work in New York but it's also a curse. It makes me sad to look out of my apartment window at all of the other apartment windows, and the people inside of them. Are they looking out, toward me, dreaming of keeping friends and loved ones safe and nearby?

Are we all dreaming of the Walla Wallas?

Comments

[Dan Katz]

It's the city... I hate to say it, but the city eats you alive. The fact that no one cares about anyone else in the city (unless they personally know them) hurts. In the few days after 9/11 there was some consideration, but two week later it was back to "normal."

I've been trying to figure it out all these years, and I realized it just a few months ago. No one thinks about the person next to them around here. The easiest way to see this in action is to look at the Brooklyn Bridge. We all know it, the on ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge from the FDR or the exit from the Bridge to the BQE. There's only one lane and it backs up at almost all hours of the day and night. Some people wait their turn in the line, because it's the right thing to do. Unfortunately they're matched equally by people who wait until the last minute to cut in line. These people are, effectively, flipping off the rest of the line. It hurts to see people who are so inconsiderate of other people. For years I've complained about that bridge situation and never understood why it bothered me so much, that's why.

We New Yorkers take that attitude into the rest of our lives. The way we treat people in general is poor. We step over (even on) the homeless without thinking about them, we work on Wall street where we trade corn for prices that leave farmers struggling to survive, we make corporate decisions which destroy people's pensions and then go home to our Park avenue apartments with our wives, 2.3 kids and a dog, we look at a dying person in a hospital waiting room and ask for their insurance card before letting them get the care they need. (yes Liz, that was a run-on sentence, deal with it :)

When I put it like that I realize that it's not just New Yorkers (though we're the worst, I think), it's Americans in general. The capitalist market was supposed to provide opportunity to the masses, and in some ways it does, but mostly it's a false hope. We all know the old adage that "if I could make a million dollars, I could use it to make another million." That may be true for a million, but for most of us trying to make an extra thousand out of a thousand, we find that you can make only about $50. (Wamu is having a 5.00% CD special; put in $1000 and in 13 months we'll give you an extra $50; thanks I'll stay liquid) At that rate it would take me about 400 years to make a million and by then a million will buy a pack of gum.

So I say send me to the Walla Walla's. They're happy. They don't think about cutting in line at the bridge because the guy you cut off may be the one who will help you build your house, er hut, er shack, ah whatever. Money isn't the major issue in their minds, life is. They live in a society where hard work is paid off with the appreciation and friendship of an entire community. Where we don't worry about who's watching our kids because we know that everyone is. Where a day's labor starts at 9AM and ends by lunch time, and lunch is spent enjoying life with our friends and loved ones.

We might have Tivo's, computers, the Internet, the Space Shuttle, modern medicine, and Starbucks. We may live to be 70 or 80. We might have air conditioning and indoor plumbing, heat and hot water, electric lights and cars. But are we really better off for it???

A quick calculation shows that I'll spend about 19.6% of my life working/commuting here in NYC. Assuming a Walla Walla works 7 days a week with no vacation and starts working at age 13 and dies at 40 without retiring, he would spend 8.4% of his life working. That's an extra 11.2% of lifetime in my book. That's 4 years, 175 days, 7 hours and 12 minutes of time he can spend "waxing poetic" on (the Walla Walla equivalent of) Montague street surrounded by his best friends. That's living.