“Hey,” she said slowly, pausing as she stepped onboard. “How long has it been?” Far more people recognize me than I them, and this was another instance. Where had I seen her before? I smiled at her anyway, waiting for my brain to catch up. I said, “twelve years.” I assumed she was referring, as passengers often do, to when they first saw me. For some reason there’s a tendency in folks to assume this moment was also my first time driving. Maybe it’s because I’m happy. People will eventually stop thinking I’m young... but hopefully they’ll always think I’m new. My stock answer here is to state how long I’ve been driving in total, because who knows? Perhaps they really did find me in my first days on the road. It certainly seemed the case with her. “Twelve years,” she repeated. “That sounds about right. Maaaan, iss been a while. I remember when you first started this job. And you still here?” “Yeah, I like comin’ out here. Lil’ different each day, people to talk to…” She chuckled, looking on in wonder. She was a mother’s age, mildly heavyset with a sweatshirt, ponytail, and baseball cap, and the sparkling eyes of someone around children often enough to absorb their youthful flair, but not enough to be exhausted by them. “Man, you still doin’ it, huh. You still got that hair! That's how I recognized you!” “Ha! It used to be straight when I was little.” “Huh.” “But yeah, I try to put out that positive energy, you know?” “I know that's right.” “‘Cause that karma comes back around in unexpected ways!” “It sure do! You brave though going out there every day, like with that driver* getting shot. I was surprised by that, happening here.” “Yeah, me too. This’ a pretty good city. I just try to keep puttin’ those good vibes out.” That’s all I can do. I get varied replies in response to the line; pessimists won’t hear a word of it. Neither will anyone who thinks our actions are meaningless, without consequence. I don’t know what’s true. I haven’t been alive long enough to know if being good has even the slightest effect on our lives. But I know what I want to believe. But she was no pessimist, and I found her attitude infectious. She whispered: “Oh, you know they ain't gonna mess with you!” I laughed. “I got my fingers crossed!” “Aw, you don't need to keep em cross', you got somethin’ special. Something nobody could take away. ‘Cause they would a done that by now if they could. Twelve years. Sheeeeeit. It was the hair! What's your name again?” “Nathan.” “Nathan. It was the hair that did it. I saw from a distance and I said naawww, that can't be him, from all those years ago!” “And we're still here! You're still here! That's a modern miracle now, we're still doin’ our thing day in and day out!” “One day at a time!” 1. The Question I’ve given the above dilemma a lot of thought. It was a shock to discover some years ago that, to quote Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” I used to think if we were good, we’d be fine. Didn’t you? But I remember squatting in front of an enormous impromptu memorial in the aftermath of the 2015 Paris terror attacks, having my own sort of Carlton Pearson moment as I looked at this photograph. I distinctly recall having the thought: There is no way these young people deserved to be killed as they were.
2. The Fall That was the beginning. Then things would happen to loved ones of mine, people whose actions I know well, and then to me. We were struck with violence and implacable death. And I knew incontrovertibly that neither they nor I had done anything to suffer these iniquities. This realization terrified me, and altered for the worse my perspective on going out into the street every night. I began to assume evil rather than goodness, defaulting to suspicion and fear over the peace that comes with giving the benefit of the doubt. There’s a colleague of mine who goes out there, on the worst routes, like I do– like I did– enthusiastically, without a care in the world. She’s a trim young woman in her thirties or forties and nobody’s first idea of a tough invincible figure who can fight off anything. But that’s exactly what she is, and she gets her power from her strength of belief. She’s Christian to what I would term a radical degree, religious in her every word and act. She is so confident that she will thrive. I would look at her and think, I used to feel like that. I so desperately wished I could be like her again. My confidence had stemmed from a multiplicity of philosophies and spiritualities rather than a religious source, but it achieved the same end: I trusted the world. I felt like I couldn’t do that anymore, and the most depressing part about it wasn’t that evil might happen to me again, but that I lived in a universe that didn’t appear to care whether evil happened to me, or anyone else. The thought that Cause and Effect might not exist was more existentially terrifying to me than any individual incident. But gradually it occurred to me: This is a stupid way to think. It isn’t working very well. It’s akin to paralysis. I struggled to get through what were formerly the best parts of my day: pulling up to Fifth and Jackson with a welcoming spirit. Saying hey to the guys. Pulling up to Rainier and Henderson inbound with joy, not trepidation. How did I used to do that? 3. The View I thought of her often, the driver mentioned above. I may have a contrasting spiritual identity, but I wondered if it was possible to approximate her fearless approach to life nonetheless. How do you put your hand to a stovetop again after you’ve been burned? I don’t know when I realized it: She isn’t going out there assuming everything will go well. She’s going out there trusting she has the tools to handle whatever comes her way. What tools do I have? Of course Cause and Effect are real. What was I thinking? Our actions do have consequences. Haven’t you seen the smile you cause to bloom on someone else, when you smile at them? The dancing shifts of mood you bring as people respond to your tempo, whether it’s thoughtful, kind or cruel? The most powerful tools are not weapons or laws, but ideas. The idea of respect, the idea of kindness; the idea of patience. These manifest themselves in your customer service decisions, and they have more influence than you– or I– realize. You overwhelm (or at least lessen) negative emotions with positive ones. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, the psychologists say; maybe that’s no less true of the universe at large. Didn’t you always manage to make it through your challenges, fraught and insurmountable as they felt at the time? Let me not be blind to the glimpses we find with hindsight, glimpses that show it really was for the best that it worked out this way. That you might even be better for it now, as brutal as that is to say aloud. On a vaster scale, you can feel the mysterious multiplying effect of being good coming back around. I see it about me gently, like a mirror refracting light. Sure, I don’t understand how it works. Sure, things happen that don’t make sense. But who am I to assume that because I don’t see order, it must therefore not exist? If I am part of existence, how can I objectively comment on it? Where was I, after all, when this earth was forged? And don’t we see echoes of the sublime all around us? Tell me you don’t see something incalculably true being communicated when dappled rays of sun shine through trees. When the stark and welcome beauty of the clouds stops you in your tracks, whispering to you in a language beyond words: “there’s more than you know.” There is a process inside me that’s happening slowly. It worked before, my body says. I seem to be returning to my old easy happy confidence, but with a melancholic openness I don’t have words for. What can I do but take life as it comes, and make the best of it? How could it not help to take things less seriously, to lean toward the light and with laughter? Give me time. I’m getting closer. --- *My friend Eric Stark, whom you may have read about last year. Thank goodness our buses don’t have driver barriers; if we did, Eric would’ve been unable to take cover from oncoming bullets and would certainly have died. Related posts:
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“People wait for your bus specifically. They say to me, Oh, I'm gonna wait for Nathan's bus.”
So said Rahgeh, a fellow operator riding home on my night 7 after a long day of driving the E. We were laughing about why my bus was so full. “Oh!” I exclaimed. “Yeah, I've heard that. Maybe it's because they know I'll give them a free ride.” “Well also maybe because you friendly, you talk to them, nice…” “Nice atmosphere, yeah. Maybe that's why my bus is so crowded!” “Yeah it's a lot!!!” “At eleven-thirty!!” We were giggling. The bus being this full this late made no sense, especially on Sunday. Were some of them taking advantage of my kindness to get free rides or a warm place to lounge? Definitely. But my answer to that would be, who cares? I can’t do anything about that, and I’m not going to change my attitude towards all because of the actions of a small few– and who knows, perhaps a percentage of that few actually needs your help. You will never know. You have to give ten free rides so that the one person out of that ten who actually, desperately, legitimately needed you can benefit. It’s just part of the game. I try to go along with it. His laughter subsided. We were drifting toward more earnest considerations. He said, “and your announcements.” “Yeah I like to do some of the stops, or all of them if it’s busier, to let them know it’s a real person up here! Let them know that I care. I tell myself, I have to find a way to get along with them, because I'm going to see them again. Tomorrow, next week. Or tonight!” “Yeah!” “And if you respect them, talk to them, it helps everything. Of course you will have a few days out of the year that are really hard, but it's okay. Most of the rest of it–” “Yeah most of it, it’s pretty good. Yeah, I think so in all of life. How we look at it.” --- The less often you're on the 7, the more scared you will be of its people. Maybe the kids laugh at you because you're white... And it stings, provoking thoughts in you you don't like. Thoughts you know better than to have. I remember a 7 operator I trained with, blazing past a crowd of teens at a zone, because those were the days of unacceptable gang violence. I remember my black American colleague Alonzo telling an ill-mannered black girl, “man, you're an embarrassment to our people.” I recall my driver friend Sonum saying “in the country I come from, if we talked to elders like those guys just did, we would get slapped.” Yes, there is injustice out here, doled out by every demographic in every direction. But you can’t play judge, jury and executioner. You don’t know enough. You have to force within yourself the discipline to not be God, but rather just a witness. It’s enough to just bear witness. Try and get to know the people. That always helps, but so does something else. Tell it to yourself again and again: Their morality is between them and the Universe. Yes, I believe in What Goes Around Comes Around, but I’ve realized in busland I don't get to play a role in that. I have to prioritize the pleasant present, keeping things moving. If you can let people have the last word, this becomes a lot easier. The operators I most look up to give out love without expecting anything in return. As a woman in a marriage once told me: In life, this advice isn't appropriate. In a relationship it needs to go both ways. You deserve to be loved in return. But. On the bus, things are different. You don’t need anything back. You're teaching. You’re a saint– or, well, you’re trying to be. On the bus you are strong, self-contained, beautiful in your zen presence, infiltrating the air with respect and acknowledgement. Look at you go. We were fresh into town from the long drive up from Rainier Valley, approaching Pike Street, our last stop on Third. A large and hulking figure came up to stand near me, silently. We watched the road together. He had on a do-rag and skullcap, with leather construction boots and an outdoor jacket. Partly for my own comfort, I felt a need to break the ice and offered him a transfer.
“Hey. D’you need this just in case?” “Yeah. Ah ‘ppreciate it, sir.” “Oh for sure.” “What time is it?” “Eleven-thirty.” “Okay.” “Is that a good time?” “Yeah. Just gotta make it home before Mom leave for work, ‘bout eleven forty-five.” “Okay she's workin’ some serious hours!” “Yeah, she gets it done, man…” he shifted his weight, grabbing a stanchion. He was realizing I was someone he could really talk to. I'll never know how or what I do to have this effect on people, but I’m endlessly grateful when it happens. He continued: “Check this out, man. She was raised in foster homes, moved from home to home, dropped outta grade school, didn't go to no high school... But after all that, she decided to get a doctorate in psychology. And she did.” “Whoa!!” “Yup. So that's my inspiration.” “Whoa,” I marveled. The things our mothers have done, often quietly, often hidden from view, for themselves or others. You change the world by being your best self. Did she know she would encourage her son so, and ripple out onto me and so many others? “That's the most inspiring thing I've heard in like a month!” “Ha! Thanks. Yeah, she the one.” “And to think about all the obstacles she musta had in her way, how they say it's harder to go to college as an adult, everything–” “And she did this with five kids at home, all strung out on drugs.” “Oh my gosh!” “They sent me home from the penitentiary.” “Okay she's strong. This woman... Just raising one kid is a straight up full time job by itself, but five! Plus challenges? And getting this degree, from square one?” “They sent me home from the penitentiary to be with her.” “You're awesome and she's awesome.” He looked at me, pausing and newly still. He said, “Man, I love you for that.” “Right back atcha, man. Love and respect.” Firm handshake. “My name's Michael.” “I'm Nathan.” Speak to me not, O Muse, of the heroes we find in history books. Tell instead of the quiet giants who inspire this man and myself, a couple of streetwise youngsters in the urban night, who teach us to believe, be better than we thought we ever could be. The upward nod from his burly form as he stepped out, and more: he waved one last time, after he’d already left the bus. I saw it at the last second. I watched Michael waiting to cross the street, facing the other way but looking back at me to wave again. A woman was standing next to him on the corner, waiting to cross as well. He struck up a conversation with her, full of the verve we’d made, passing on with a smile the appreciative respect and love that came so naturally to him, an echo of his mother’s best qualities. Trigger warning.
“Hello,” I said, not recognizing. He was incredulous. “You still drivin??!!!?” “You know it!!” “Ah was wonderin’, 'cause I ain't seen you. It's been a hot minute.” “Yeah, they had me on another route, it fit better with my schedule but I missed this one, man! I had to get back! It has life out here, you know, energy.” “Energy!” “You know what I mean?” “I do. I got it! You want it?” “Ha! Always. How's your night?” “Slow.” “Yeah. Monday.” “Yup.” He sighed. “Actually, well. Tell you what, man. Some dude done laid his hands on his wife, who is my best friend, and cut her too.” “Whaaat?” “Yeah. And she wasn't having none of it. She told his dumb ass what time it was and beat him down. And then he cut her! He took a knife out, you believe that bullshit? Talkin’ bout a woman here!!” “Oh no. That's just wrong. That's all kinds of wrong.” “So that's what I got goin’ on tonight.” “That's heavy duty.” “Yup. So I'm gon’ go find this fool and beat his ass without a knife. Any man put his hands on a woman ain't no muthafuckin' man!” Time shifts differently in the ‘hood. Is it the nature of the moving parts out here? The pathways and limitations, stopgaps in education and opportunity? You see it in clothing choice and fashion. Here my friends on the bus are wearing what the cool kids in the ‘burbs donned fifteen years ago. There are outliers in either direction, of course, but overall you find less artifice. There are more elemental things to prioritize. You also find sociocultural movements trickling in at a slower rate. Lack of education and different uses of communications technology, along with divergent cultural concepts of noise tolerance and personal space can make the bus ride on this side of town a unique experience. But Fourth-wave feminism has, thankfully, found its way here too. You knew it would; movements improve the world in stages. As psychologist Louise Fitzgerald says, every twenty years people seem to remember that sexual harassment exists... These ideas aren't new, but they're cycling around again, and hopefully they'll stick a little more each time. Supportive comments like the above now find their way into street conversation as often as the opposite, rather than being anomalous. I see it as a confirmation that a movement is truly a movement, undeniable and real. I used to listen to guys brag about how many white women they’d beaten up. Now I hear them reflect differently. “You just can’t beat up women no more,” a man recently mused to his friend one evening. “Used to be, you'd beat ‘em up. Now, you cain’t. Iss a new era.” What struck me was the speaker didn’t have much of an opinion on the new norm, other than that he seemed entirely okay with following it. Like they were orders from on high, and now that they were standards, well, that’s what we’ll do now. Another fellow: “It’s the 21st century! Folks ain’t supposed to be smackin’ folks no more! It’s called respect!” Times have changed, and for the better. These are scary prejudices, but word is getting out, and it’s infiltrating the definitions of normal with pleasant subterfuge. Contemporary feminism isn’t just a preoccupation of the middle and upper class, as movements often are when they begin. It’s full-blooded, and has touched minds at all levels of society. The hard work done by folks during the Third wave is in full blooming echo now, as more people in more places than ever before acknowledge the rights of a larger percentage of humankind. We're getting somewhere, slowly. “Laying your hands” on your wife, as our friend above describes it, used to be legal. Now it isn’t just a prosecutable offense, it’s regularly recognized in the court of street opinion as a moral violation. No tribunal may know to stick up for the abused wife he mentions tonight, but he sure will. Because it’s important, and he knows it in his blood. --- Related posts: The running joke in my head is, I just don’t know how to talk to the ladies!
I think of it when I have particularly awful or unsafe encounters on the bus, which in my experience have nearly always been with female passengers. Most of my worst nights on the road have involved challenges with severely unstable women; I imagine the opposite is true for my female colleagues. I’m also guessing it’s harder to be homeless and female rather than homeless and male, perhaps accounting for more extreme cases. Personally, I chalk my circumstance up to coincidence and find it unhealthy to do otherwise. Regardless, anyone who thinks all women are angels has clearly never been on an elementary playground, gone to high school, or driven a city bus. This job has taught me in potent terms that no declarative statement on human behavior is ever true. No demographic fits into a box, or has a monopoly on good manners. It’s easier to just say: Everyone’s great, and everyone’s awful. You drive long enough with open eyes, and you’ll find a counterexample to whatever we've been taught to assume. There are nice cops, despotic women, polite hoodlums, capable female professionals, snobby homeless people, safe Uber drivers, buff nerds, tender he-men, black people who don’t like sports, Asian people who are bad at math, compassionate and empathetic rich white people, responsible drug users, criminal angels and every other stereotype-busting attitude you could possibly imagine out here. It’s a wide world, as they say. Tonight a lone King County Sheriff was gamely doing his best to remove a passenger from my coach. He kept politely exhorting the young lady sprawled out across the front seats, telling her this was the last stop and so on. I’d tried the same to no avail earlier. She ululated in tongues, a primordial roar from a time before language, expressing anguish in its purest form. She periodically rose from a shapeless collection of sweatshirts and sagging sweatpants to assault the air, besieging him with profanities you know he won’t be repeating to his mother. A couple had gathered outside the bus– a thirty-something pair, good-looking as models, perhaps young professionals out on the town for a night out. The woman, with straightened blonde hair and fashionable knee-high boots, held her fellow’s arm as they looked on, watching the proceedings. He had close-cropped dark hair and a fitted rainproof jacket. They took a step forward, catching the Sheriff’s eye; the man made a gesture with his hand, one I had not seen before. The Sheriff nodded, and the couple took a step back but continued watching. Now the woman inside leapt up with her arms flailing, her teeth bared and going for the officer’s neck. Her mouth stretched wide open with eyes squinted almost shut, giving the impression of a faceless collection of incisors, saliva flying and bellowing with vampiric abandon. Here is the man from outside already bounding in, his arms forceful and crooked at ready positions, completing a precision strike I was still trying to process as his steel-toed shoe intersected with her right calf, neatly reducing her to the ground without a sound in seconds flat. I thought, that’s combat training for sure. They didn’t know each other, but he’d communicated by signal beforehand: I’m here if you need me. Together they carried her wrestling form outside, efficiently, avoiding her still-gnashing teeth. I stepped outside the bus also, hands in pockets and taking it all in. The blonde half of the professional duo who’d been watching approached me. “How are you,” she asked, with an easy smile. “Oh, pretty good. She was fine two hours ago,” I said, referring to our misbehaving friend. “But I guess we have our good moments, and our…” “Not so good ones?” “Exactly, not quite so good! How's the night for you?” “Pretty good,” she replied. “We're just visiting for the weekend.” “Oh, cool! Where from?” “Well, Washington. Just the other side of the state.” “Where all that great sunshine is!” “Yeah! It's a desert. We live in a desert.” “I love deserts. Do you like it out there?” “It has its good moments and it's not so good ones, I guess!” “Right on! Your man's awesome, by the way. I really appreciate you guys taking a second to check in on us and help out.” “Oh totally. No problem. My husband's with the police force over there.” “Oh okay. Cool!” “Yeah. It's like a brotherhood kind of a thing.” “Gotta look out for each other?” “Yeah!” “That's great. Props to him, to the both of you for taking the time.” “Oh, it's really no problem. So, do you have kids or anything?” She was so friendly. She had the ready welcoming charm I’ve found more often in small towns or the Midwest, where I’ve noticed a more prevalent tendency to take real time to help strangers. How wrong I had been to assume they were a couple of young hipster Seattleites looky-looing their way past a Sheriff working way too hard. No, they were skilled at the patient art of caring, of civic brotherhood and support. She was genuinely interested in making conversation, the two of us discussing child-rearing as the boys struggled with handcuffs. How little did I know. Another assumption checked off the list: a chic couple strolling through Chinatown dressed like supermodels maaaay sometimes stop everything they're doing and take time out of their evening to use highly specialized skills and help strangers out of physically dangerous situations! Just another day in the game of life. It's so much fun to be interviewed about stuff besides the coronavirus...
More importantly, it's an honor to be recognized the New Renaissance Film Festival as their Artist of the Month, and a special treat to be interviewed by Anya Patel. I can't stress how gratifying it is to work with such a professional as her, who read up on me and my site in detail before preparing this interview– which allowed us to skip past the usual "so what inspired you to become an artist"-type introductory questions. Click the link below to dive deep on my film, cinema, the importance of strong female characters, recommendations for aspiring filmmakers, and a whole lot more! Read the full interview here (with clips, trailer, other video and photos!). Enjoy! “Here is really shitty,” she said.
It was an appraisal of frankness I wouldn’t have expected given her appearance– older than my parents’ generation, possibly much older, with an accent hailing from somewhere far away– maybe one of those hidden countries, the kind we forget to remember. She seemed rich with unseen culture. I wondered what worlds she once daily knew, perhaps in Belarus, Moldova, the Baltics. We were heading up Third Avenue, approaching Pike Street. The view was an echo of New York City before the 90s cleanup– life in profusion, reduced to scraps and oozing with color and death. “Sometimes,” I replied. You know me; I can’t agree with such a statement outright. “Ha!” I like it out here. I met her halfway, saying, “Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.” She chuckled. Our comments sounded ridiculous looking around, surrounded as we were by sharp and putrid angles lurking in the shadows. But I think she caught the reason for my drift; I have to be out here, and I need my soul to survive. Bemoaning the state of things never helps. I said, “I have to look for the bright side, you know?” She nodded wearily: “Yeah, it's true.” “It's how we stay sane.” “They're mostly harmless. These people.” “They're mostly harmless.” “In my opinion,” she added. “They deserve better.” “They deserve better. I agree.” “It's just shitty. Amazon, what they have done. They say they give 500 million dollars, but where is it? I don't see it. I think it's corruption. In my opinion.” “I think so too! They've made life hard for everybody!” “I was going to make a donation. But I decided not to.” “That's good.” “There is so much corruption going on right now, this country.” “It's terrible!” She shook her head. “I think this country is corruption.” “I think so too!” Her accent told of places and times where such thoughts were not allowed. Her sharing this was special. A gesture. Her next line, a farewell, was a wink: “I love this country!” “Ha! I love this country!” It was both a world-weary joke and a genuine expression, all at once. We do love this country. We who know of inhumanities abroad have the perspective to realize what freedom exists here. I thought of a young African immigrant who recently exclaimed to me, “Are you kidding me? This place is great! Here you can be who you want, how you want! Do you know how good you have it?” Then I thought of Churchill’s famous quip, and its reminder toward frame of reference: “Democracy’s the worst form of government. Except for all the other ones!” Yes, there are things intolerable in this place. But here we don’t have to express such by fearfully repeating, “I love this country.” She could say that to me not in self-preservation, but for a companionable chuckle. We ended on a note of humor, not dejection. Laughter keeps us closer to the light, gets us through life’s journey intact. You have to laugh. I watched her walk across the street, through the lingering mass on the corner– through, around, and completely unafraid. He was smiling so hard I had to laugh.
It was infectious. I’m guessing he was older than he looked; the sort who says it's good genes that are responsible for their looks, but you know it’s as much their beaming attitude as anything else. Confident happiness is more attractive than the sharpest cheekbone. He was a balding black man in nondescript jeans, stocky, warm jacket over a thick sweatshirt, and he was happier than I was driving the bus– which is to say, he was ecstatic. “How's your day been?” I asked, matching his grin without realizing it. “It's gotta be a good one!” “Oh man, it's been so great. You're the first bus I stepped onto after they let me out.” “Well, I'm glad you chose my bus!” “Ha! Thank you for your attitude!” “You got it goin’ on too, I could feel that positive energy! I'm glad you're out!” “Oh you got no idea. The food in there. Check this out. They give you one boiled egg. The yolk is black. The white is green.” “Uugh! That's like something right outta Dr. Seuss!” He guffawed with his whole body. We laughed together, sub-guttural happy, joined in unstoppable goodness. We couldn’t stop. His relief, reader! The welcoming sensation of an equal plane, shared and free of judgment! The music in his barrel-chested laugh. We were equal, respected, loved, and seen, here on this tiny bus in the corner of a small American city. We were huge. The ridiculous image of the eggs, now forever consigned to the past, had just become a symbol that conclusively collapsed his entire inmate experience into a chuckle, a thing one has conquered and now successfully pushed aside. Go forth, my friend. The world is yours again. He was talking about his dog. After rush hour and after sunset, there is time for dog conversations.
“I don't let people pet them though,” he said. He was a younger man like myself, at the in-between moment of your thirties– neither young anymore nor old. You’re merely there, hopefully aware the prime of your life is drifting by with each passing second. These are the days of laughter before forgetting, when we still remembered the lessons of careless youth, but could temper them with the insight of the years. The problems in your life may be harder than before; but you’re now better equipped to handle them. He reached a hand down to his pet’s affectionate lapping tongue. “Just today I was walking them right over there by Safeway and this white girl wanted to pet them and I said no and she called me a nigger.” “Oh no,” I moaned. I wanted him to know I cared. “In this day and... man, stuff like that breaks my heart. People using that word.” “It took me back… She called me a nigger!” “That word’s just got too much awfulness behind it.” I was reminded of a conversation I recently had with a middle-aged homeless woman I enjoy chatting with. She’d just been called the same, and we agreed the word has more hurt than people know. We were standing outside my bus at the U District terminal as she said, “kids throwing it around like it don't have no effect.” “Totally. I mean I get the idea, what they're trying to do, that by overusing the word people might divest it of its hateful power. I get the idea. But. It hasn't worked!” She nodded emphatically. “It hasn't!” “It's just as horrible and awful as it ever was!” I tried to sum all that up in a line to the dog-owning passenger beside me now: “That just hits me where it hurts, somebody throwin’ that kind a energy at somebody else.” “And she was wit’ a black dude too!” “What?” “I know!” “That don't make any kind a sense!” “And she said it loud. Other dudes heard everything, and they were like, these two white dudes even were like damn, that's fucked up.” “Well, yeah,” I said. “‘Cause it is.” “I stay up in Fremont,” he said. “But this was just– this was down here in the ‘hood!” “Ohmygoodness that was here?” It was almost funny. “Who did she think she was? Where did she think she was?” “All I said was don't pet the dog.” “I'm so sorry that happened.” He looked up. “Dude, you don't gotta apologize!” In Korean there are two words for apology: one implying guilt, and another for what I was trying to express now– a general observation that you sympathize with a wrong being a wrong. English doesn’t offer the distinction; you have to qualify it. I said, “I know, I just feel bad that it happened!” He watched the streetlights go by. We drifted toward a red as he leaned back. “It's that Trump, man. People be sayin’ this shit more now. At the rallies out there, they're beating up black people!” “He enables these type of attitudes that should've died out years ago. They gotta get somebody else in there next term. Anybody.” “Not just anyone, anything.” “It doesn't matter who it is. I just hope people vote!” He wasn’t riled. His voice was a musing one. “The thing is, he's not really racist. He just don't care about anyone but hisself. He just in there ‘cause he angry that a black man was president. White people think he care about them, but he don't.” They were words that had been living on his mind, and he finally had an outlet for them. You could feel the gentle rushing flow of energy, the strange mixture of enthusiastically talking about something negative. The pleasure of understanding through reflection. “That's true,” I said. “He's just taking advantage of ignorant white people who think–” “Yeah, like rednecks! They believe whatever he say, they think he's gonna do something for them. If he actually was, givin’ them money or something, sure. But at the end of the day they're still gonna be rednecks.” There wasn’t much I could add to that. We drove forward for a spell, passing through Columbia City, as I considered the varying perspectives and reactions people make based on the information they have. How life looks when you don’t have to interact with a lot of people outside your culture and class group. The easiest way to develop prejudices is to have no contact with the demographics in question, and rely solely on the questionable information of others. How lucky I am here, in a neighborhood this culturally dense and rich. This street has more of the globe’s cultures than entire states in our Union. My mind wandered back to his anecdote. “Was she older?” “Naw, she was young. Twenty-something, twenty-five.” “Man. I keep hoping those type uh attitudes will die out with the new generations. But then stuff like this happens. What's confusing is she's mouthin’ off in the hood…” “Yeah. If this was up in Fremont... If I’da done something like, really horrible, then I could understand it more.” I admired and appreciated his perspective even as I felt compelled to undermine it. “That's generous of you, bro, but even if it was in Fremont and even if you had done some kinda unspeakable thing it still wouldn't be okay. And she was with a black guy?” “Yeah.” “Let me guess,” I said. “He didn't say anything.” “Yup, he's just lookin’ at the ground.” “Musta been ashamed, didn't know what to say.” “She must be real good in bed. You know she's good.” “It's just– it's unforgivable. If your girlfriend goes around hating on folks and saying the N-word to people, are you gonna stay with them? No. You're not gonna stay with them. You're gonna leave ‘em! Who is this guy?” “Don't make any kind a sense!” “You know, she was lucky. That it was you and that you're a guy who thinks ahead, who's…” I just came out and said it. “That you're a nice guy, basically.” “I didn't do anything ‘cause it ain't worth it. If I sic these dogs on her, it's gonna be my fault and they ain't gonna give me no inch.” I tried to reassure him. “You don't gotta do anything though. ‘Cause someday she's gonna say something to somebody who's not gonna tolerate her behavior and they're not gonna be smart like you. They're not gonna put up with it. If she keeps up like this, she's in for it. It's like I tell myself on the bus, if somebody comes at me, I tell myself I don't have to do anything, 'cause somebody else will take care of this guy for me down the line. ‘Cause I'm trying to keep this job!” “Yeah.” “That's how the world works. What goes around comes around.” “What goes around comes around.” These are the days of settling awareness. Ten years ago I don’t think either of us would’ve had the presence of mind to so easily see beyond our emotions– especially for that to be a default response when negativity’s being thrown your way. That’s when you really need to think a few chess moves ahead, and that’s also exactly when it can be hardest to do so. Emotions are hot, loud, messy things, and they make us human; they give us color. But wisdom is never loud. “All epiphanies are whispers,” Ernie Lawton told me. Sometimes the quiet path is the higher one. Sometimes not acting is an act, not responding is a response: an essential gesture of discipline and example, a reminder to yourself and others of more important things. Sometimes you just have to keep walking on by with your dogs, head held high. You can always talk it out with the bus driver later. The pandemic interviews continue!
The wonderful Kapish Singla interviews Nathan for TransitCenter's High Frequency podcast. We explore sanitation measures, reduced bathroom access, rates of change within bureaucratic systems, and much more. Listen to or read Kapish's Ep 6: Nathan Vass - Operating a Bus During a Pandemic here! (The audio is better than the transcript; like all transcription software, the translation of both of our words isn't perfect.) |
Nathan
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