Ratchet

I didn’t want to leave Chris’s house all weekend. For the first time in many years, Chris isn’t living in a beatdown rigged-up shamble of a group house. As you may have guessed from the view, he’s renting a room in a gorgeous house up in the Berkeley hills. This weekend was a rare occasion, where I am reminded that money could buy you a really nice way to live. A way to live that would always be so beautiful that it is constantly worth the money.

I tend to discount a lot of the options a lot of money would bring me. For now, the combination of medium income and low demands gives me a very high quality of life. My house is little and just right; I don’t have to work long hours to support it. I don’t trust that expensive houses are worth working hard for; some are, but some are poorly-designed, wrong-scaled monstrosities. Some are beautiful, great spaces, but my sister and I have exactly the same reaction to a big house. We walk by those gorgeous old mansions and our shoulders sag at the thought of keeping one up. We haven’t internalized the notion of paying someone to do that, so just the thought of the work of a big house is a burden. (Remember that we grew up in a much bigger house than the ones we’re in now, although still no mansion. Not worth it.)

But Chris’s place reminded me that you could have a right-sized house, and for a lot of money it could have a view that always makes everything better. Money can buy access that kind of beauty. Oh man, tasteful money is so nice. I’ve seen that before, in Westport, CT. Westport is rich, rich, rich. I’ve been in super-rich neighborhoods out here, but Westport was different because nothing was ugly. Nothing was ugly, anywhere. No overbuilt yucky houses. No tacky signs, anywhere. No bad choices of font, no cheap lights glaring, no blocks with one building that you had to overlook, no sea of parking that kills a street. Nothing anywhere was ugly. I don’t know how they pulled that off. Money alone doesn’t do it. But if someone can enforce the good taste, you can pay for it with money. The result just resonates, feels natural and soothing and right. Coming out of it reminds you that it sucks to have ugliness flashed at you, that you’re constantly screening it out.

At Chris’s place nothing is ugly and you get a huge dose of beauty every time you look out. It was utterly compelling and I stayed and stayed. If I got used to it, I would start to covet and re-think trade-offs.