I returned to southern California seven years ago. I moved into a beautiful, historical apartment building, once a hotel residence to actors as infamous as the Black Dahlia and Renee Zelwegger. Something within me always draws me to the “things of old”….songs…people…places. Maybe it’s their character, quality of ‘structure’, and history – an indefinable purity and strength. It’s a telling irony that when earthquakes come, it’s the old buildings which remain undamaged, and the new ones left in disrepair.
The bible, the Torah, and the Koran each command to “Love thy neighbor”. As a believer, I can tell you that I have tried earnestly in my life to honor this sacred obligation and commandment. Yet, in my humanity, I too have fallen short of this very simple task more times than I care to confess. Today, in writing this entry, I seek not to purge self-absorbed guilt. I write these words on behalf of others….those who are amongst us every day but go unnoticed…because we’re too busy, too preoccupied, too distracted. Today, I write these words for Inez La Bonte.
Inez La Bonte was my neighbor…her front door was one flight of stairs from my own. I passed this elderly yet jovial woman numerous times over the years. Early on, I was befuddled to see this very cheery, somewhat eccentric woman ascending and descending the stairs from time to time, always in a purple pajama t-shirt which was her signature ‘house coat’, holding an archaic transistor radio against her ear, not unlike the device Gilligan had on the Island. To be honest, at first, I thought she may be a little crazy, but one more added bizarre fixture at the Alto Nido building high on Ivar Hill.
Six years passed, and the crazy happenstances seemed to fester like scenes from the scary version of Melrose place….there was the elderly couple next door who, as it turned out, did not have countless “friends” coming to visit as I had presumed, but were in fact, drug dealers. There was the resident downstairs who set his meth lab on fire….the granola lady with the rabid rescue dog who ate the 5th floor girl’s tiny Maltese…there was the guy on the first floor passed out cold in the hallway floor, who I poked several times with a pencil but he didn’t move. I presumed him dead and called the paramedics, but as it turned out, he was just stoned out of his mind. Then, there was the beautiful blonde girlfriend of an Italian actor I had befriended, who showed up on my door step, demanding I come clean with any sexual interactions I had had with ‘her man’. As it turned out, it was the newly-moved in resident on the THIRD floor, NOT I. (wrong apartment, wrong woman -oops!)
Maybe all of these little incidents over the years, led me to barricade myself off in my charming 800 square foot studio, away from the madness and the drama. I had plenty in my own life than to bother exposing myself to the maniacal tendencies of my fellow Hollywood residents. And sooner or later of course, all those who you did have a connection with, pack up and move away…New York…France…or even down the street to a cleaner, safer, more peaceful domicile, with an elevator that doesn’t break every six weeks and where the local vagrants aren’t defecating in the dumpster as you toss out your bag of recyclables.
As a society, we seem to be rather familiar with the latest divorce rate…the obesity rate…the unemployment rate. But what about the rate of loneliness? According to a recent University of Chicago study “of men and women 50 to 68 years old, those who scored highest on measures of loneliness also had higher blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease, the number one killer in many industrialized nations and number two in the United States.” The study suggests that as individuals age, loneliness accumulates gradually and faster. Depression, impaired sleep, a weaker immune system, and even suicide can all result from loneliness. I read this, and my heart just gasped. What has become of us?…that we can live merely steps away from another human being and not knock on the door to say hello…to ask if there’s anything they need…to just check in from time to time. What has become of us, that in such close proximity, we as a residential community didn’t even know a single detail of Inez La Bonte’s life…what she once did for a living…what her hobbies were…if she was ever married, had children, or any family.
One Sunday afternoon, I strolled down to the open Farmer’s market to buy my weekly pick of fresh flowers. On this particular day, I bought an extra bouquet for Inez La Bonte my neighbor, who hadn’t been feeling well for some months, and looked exceptionally pale when I last stopped to chat with her on the drive. As a result of neglect from the building owners, the elevator had been broken for 3 months, and the energy needed to walk up the six flights of stairs to her floor, was painstaking and unbearable. She was very kind to me…thanking me for taking it upon myself to contact and communicate with the councilman’s office, who sent the inspector, who then cited the building with the mandate necessary to get the elevator fixed. But to be honest, her kind and sincere words were to me, misplaced. I realized that even my own genuine efforts on her behalf and the other elderly or physically-challenged residents, was too little, too late. Perhaps, these flowers would be even a minor gesture to bring a smile to Inez La Bonte’s face.
But you see, the thing is, Inez never received those flowers. Because life has a way of side-tracking you and the ‘thoughts that are supposed to count’, don’t really matter much at all if they don’t actually transpire. It doesn’t matter much now, that at the time, an urgent family matter threw me off course, and I was half-way to San Diego, before realizing I had left the flowers in a glass of water in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter much now, because when I returned home, I ran up the stairs to her door, only to find her belongings being packed up and discarded. In the brief few days of my absence, Inez La Bonte had passed away. She passed away somewhere between the busyness, the auditions….the meetings…the late nights out with friends, the running in and running out. She passed away in a nursing home after only a week’s stay…and it was only when she was gone, that I even knew her full name…Inez La Bonte. It was only when she was gone, that amidst the books, the newspaper clippings, the various hoarded items of sentimental value, including a black wooden plaque, with the copper-engraved inscription, “In recognition of 32 years of service”….did we come to know a few of the threads that tied together a woman’s life.
Inez La Bonte was 82 years old. She was born and raised in Boston. She came to Hollywood in the 1970s. Her professional tenure was as an employee in the public relations department for the infamous Capitol Records, just a block away. She was married once briefly, which ended in divorce, and she had a sister and a niece who loved her.
How many of you live next door to someone, not necessarily elderly…maybe someone who’s down on their luck or down in spirit…someone who just broke up with their boyfriend or lost their job…someone who is far from their family or friends…someone you could take just a moment of time, to share a smile or word of cheer with.
Somehow, someway, in this notoriously surface city….there has to be a way for us to ‘love thy neighbor’. Somewhere between the minimal 8 hours at work, preceded and followed by the hour or two shut off in our vehicles driving through traffic….somewhere between the headshots and the auditions, the rejections and the call-backs, somewhere between choosing text communicating and Facebook over live phone calls – I still believe in the basic decency and goodness of mankind and the basic need for human connection. I believe that we really aren’t selfish inhabitants of a place referred to as “LaLa land”. We’re just…we’re just…well, maybe we’re just tired. Tired, stressed out, worried about paying the rent and keeping our health care…tired of bad-attitude customer service reps, high-maintenance customers in restaurants who don’t tip, pot-holes that never get fixed, and tired of the parking tickets…LORD, the parking tickets. No more energy…no extra time. We wake up one morning and find ourselves disconnected and isolated….and maybe even…lonely. But I say, the human fabric and spirit washes away the complexities with the simplest intention…the thoughts that really DO count. Maybe, just maybe, the first step in loving thy neighbor is to merely ask yourself, do you know their name?