The world was ending, or so we thought. The malaise people have forgotten has previously existed was once again upon us, a new and bodied thing, stifling our ability to believe. There was the late summer smoke and all the disillusionment it brought, the toxic glory of sunsets with double meanings, a volume in the air, weights both literal and figurative: our hopes seemed a poor fit for the world we now lived in, a crumbling wasteland of institutional ignorance, abandonment, and general uncaring from all sides.

Have you felt this way lately?

Have you felt it around you, the presence of an attitude trying to get in? We the city looked around, regarding ourselves, our brethren in their drug-fuelled outbursts and stupors, a confused and growing suspicion gnawing at us– that our institutions are somehow making money off of homelessness, for there could be no other reason they allow it to perpetuate. What could be more depressing? We felt now what our forbears felt in 1968, 1934, and so many other moments throughout history.

It was the day of the final Mariners game of the 2022 season. It will remain historical only in the sense that everyone who was there will wish to purge it from memory as quickly as possible. The crowds I saw for the event, a pivotal one for fans in being the first (and last) Mariners playoff game in two decades, were assembling at 11h00, for the 13h07 start time. I spoke to people who’d traveled from across the country to be here. They were excited. They wanted something to believe in. I drove my route through the city, expecting the crowds to emerge a few hours later. They didn’t.

They wouldn’t surface until 20h00, as silent and demoralized as I’ve ever seen a congregation numbering in the tens of thousands, hoarse and spent after an 18-inning game featuring only one run after 6.5 hours– a run which decisively ended the Mariners’ decades-building hopes for playoff glory. The masses boarded my bus without speaking, eyes averted as they sheepishly told me the game’s outcome. There was no positive spin for this event within the world of sports, and the general chagrin seemed a synecdoche confirming the awfulness of everything else. Their dismay felt of a piece with the smoke, the climate, the crime, the city, the country, the politics, the drugs, the everything. A man murmured a refrain I’ve heard for the last quarter-century: “everything the Bible says in Revelations… is coming true. Right now.” He muttered darkly to himself and anyone who would listen, utterly convinced of his words as they applied to mid-October 2022.

A few hours later the fans were all home and the roads reverted back to just the street denizens and myself. I was still carrying the sorrow of the day, their sorrow and that of the times. We do this without thinking. Happiness, as age progresses, seems less a default than a choice. You have to work at it.

--

Here he came now, a shadow hobbling up the sidewalk side of the bus, hustling as much as his aging, fading body would allow. I almost didn’t wait for him. But I did. The conversation began as so many conversations on Third Avenue do.

"D'you go to Virginia?"
"I sure do. Yeah, come on in!” I looked at him, adding, “glad you made it." I meant the words now, but wouldn't have five seconds prior; I'd been somewhat anxious to get to my layover, and dozens of buses on Third go to Virginia Street. Did I really need to wait for him, when there were already more coaches appearing on my mirrors? But I was warming up to the man. Some people, particularly older folks, have personalities which overwhelm the decrepitude of time. They have a spark which reminds you to slow down, calls your goodness to waking life and reminds you the present is right here, not at the layover.

“Me too," he said. I didn't recognize him, but he did me. He looked at me after tapping his card, saying, "I ain't seen you in a while."
"Thanks for remembering me!"
"Of course I remember you!"
"I usually do that 7, but I'm taking a lil' break. Lil' bit of variety. Variety's the spice of life, right?"
"Sho is!"
A pause. I spoke. Why not speak? If the hairs on the back of your head are not standing up, I say go for it. "So how's the year been for you?"
"So far, so great, man,” he replied. “I'm pretty much blessed.”
“Man, that's so good to hear,” I marveled, quietly blown away by the utter contrast to earlier. His words and their gentle tone couldn’t have been farther from the day’s previous chaos. I continued drifting up Third, hoping he’d elaborate. He did.

“I got an apartment, my own place, two bedrooms, up in Shoreline…”
I’d assumed he was homeless. “Oh, you got it made! Two bedrooms?”
“I waited my time, lemme tell ya.”
“I hear those waiting lists are no joke!”
“Ha! You got that right! And I been (unintelligible) fifteen years now,” he said as a passenger stepped on dragging a soiled blanket, one of Seattle’s many young newcomers with the telltale lighter, straw and foil crumpled in his swollen and ash-stained hands. Remarkably, he tapped an ORCA card. I thanked the youngster while asking our older seated friend what he’d just said.
“Hold up, you said fifteen years what now?”
“Oh.” Slightly sheepish: “Since I been offa crack.”
“Oh, man. Congratulations! You got will power, bro, cause there's temptation out here.”
“There is, there so is!”
At this point the young user asked to leave, though we hadn’t moved. Not a conversation he wanted to hear. I closed the doors and we carried on.

“That's an even bigger deal than housing. Fifteen years?!”
“I had this car accident fifteen years ago. It was a wakeup call. Went off this embankment in Georgetown. I actually fell asleep at the wheel.”
“Oh man, that's one of those life events where everything is either before or after that moment. A wakeup call.”
“A wakeup call for sure.”
“Fifteen years,” I repeated. That’s how long I’ve been bus driving. “Man, I'm so impressed. ‘Cause I talk to a lotta guys out here you know, they're trying to get where you're at, but they relapse, man, six months, a year, six weeks…”

Spoken clearly, the years of grit and struggle effortlessly echoing behind the syllables: “You have to want it.”
“Well, you seem like you musta figured out a system that works pretty okay!”
“I don't know if you seen the way I walk. But I got some rods in my spine.”
“Yeah, I noticed you got a lil' something goin on–”
“–And they're always there as a reminder, that I gotta make sure I find something else to do with my time, or else that's where I'm headed. I'll take your next one. My name's Marshay.”
“Marshay, it's an honor to shake your hand. My name's Nathan.”
“It's an honor to shake yours, Nathan. I'll see you again!”

It wasn’t the end of the world. All societies in all time periods have all believed they were living during the end times. We don’t get to choose the age we live in; but we can choose how we think, feel, believe. Live. Marshay was thankful for the roof over his head. He had reframed his debilitating car accident as something to be grateful for, something that gave him purpose and direction. He had even the wisdom– the courage– to be thankful for the rods in his spine and the limp in his walk. This is where we find our solace. Never mind the ball game. The other distractions, as real and cutting as they are. All the rest can be true, too. You can reinvigorate your perspective. Reframe the ordinary.

This is how we remind ourselves of the daily miracles.

Look at the two of them swaggering onboard, one man tall and the other short, their arhythmic head-bobbing, shoulder-swagging, pimp-rolling gait living out as large a square of real estate as a few steps can contain. They roved into the bus’s entryway as if in slow motion, giant mythological beasts too majestic to move quickly. The 21st-century psyche of the male 99-percenter knows he cannot access true power; he is thusly instead concerned only with the appearance of power.* And these two men were excellent actors.

“Ey, Jewish,” the tall one said to me, with an upward nod. “Wassup. Ah remember you from yesterday.” We assume other people are similar to us; perhaps he thought I was Jewish because of his own background, though I wasn’t about to presume, nor certainly to deny a connotation which clearly boosted his admiration of me.
“Yeah, welcome back! What's going on?”
He sprawled out in the front three side-facing seats, a geometrically impressive feat his shorter partner in crime attempted on the chairs opposite. The speaker, bald and tattooed, was a fellow of textures tonight: shiny bald, rough stubble, gravelly voice, ochre and tan and denim and black. D. H. Lawrence’s famous line about the American soul being hard would’ve made sense here… but only superficially. There is always more.
“Iss good,” he said, responding to my query. “I’m so glad they got you on this route, man. Some of them other drivers is jerks out here.”
“That's true.”
“Ah just got back from Hawaii.”
“Oh, how was it?”
“It was amazin’. Ah put my daughter there, ah put my son there, ah put muh wife there, 2013…”

He sallied forth with the details, interrupting himself to tell a female passenger: “Yo, that's a nice backpack. Ah like the pattern. I ain't trying to get your number or nothin’, just givin’ a compliment!”

He turned back to me, reverting to the earlier topic of bus drivers. “Yeah sometimes they be jerks. Like it was this one time when some guy– this wasn’t in Seattle, but back home– didn’t have the right amount of fare and wanted a transfer. And the driver was houndin’ him, bro. Houndin’. And so finally the dude who wanted the transfer had enough and he punched the driver two times.”
“Oh no!”
“But they wasn't done, ‘cause then the driver stepped out and followed him and started beating his ass, and then the dude took out his gun and shot the driver five times.”
“Oh nooooo!” I exclaimed. “That's a tragedy. Letting it escalate over such a tiny little thing!”
“Over a freakin’ transfer!”
“Coulda just been another normal day.”
“Yeah!”
“Driver didn’t deserve to get injured, but it's almost like he was practically askin’ for it, raggin’ on the guy like that.”

I was overstating myself of course, but I felt a need to concur with the enthusiasm of this man’s disinclination toward disrespectful behavior. A transfer, I marvelled. Street fights are always about the tiniest of things– or at least that’s how it seems in retrospect. James Gilligan, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of Violence, states that all acts of violence are “attempts to ward off or eliminate the feeling of shame and humiliation… and replace it with its opposite, the feeling of pride.”** It all boils down to that, which is why the currency of the street isn’t money, or love, or status, but Respect.

“Yeah, ‘cause he was usin’ humiliation–"  he stretched out the word, teasing it into a larger shape, pulling up on the penultimate syllable, emphasizing its dangerous music and terrible power, almost as though he knew I’d been reading about the subject– “humiliation, and he wasn't stoppin’. So yeah, he got shot and they made him a hero and everything, but whatever. People shouldn't be doin’ like that.”
I agreed. “People got to have empathy for each other.” I expected him to assent and leave it at that, but he had an even better story for me.
“Like the other day this dude came up to me and said he was gonna kill me and my dog.”
“Whoa!”
“But I didn't do nothing, I just let him walk away. And then later that same day Ah saw the same guy again, and you know what he said to me?”
“What'd he say?”
“He said, ‘I’m sorry.’”
“Thaaaat's beautiful!”
“Yeah it is!” Grinning in the dark. “It didn't need to be anything more than that. He was just hot over somethin’ else, and we had a nice conversation.”
“That's beautiful. That's so beautiful. Empathy!”
“Empathy. I needed some help from my bro though. When dude said he was gonna kill my dog, I said damn! I'm gonna run up on this fool! But my bro right here, he helped me check myself. Reminded me it ain't worth it.”
“Sometimes it helps to take a minute!”
“Yup. Makes all the difference. Empathy, bro. And I could see you got that good attitude too, you care about the people. So thank you for rollin’ this route.”
“Thank you, for puttin’ out that good energy too!”
“Yeah man. I'll be seeing you, I'm always on this bitch.”
“I’ll be around!”

They swaggered off as they had swaggered on, but with a slight difference: their expressions were now vested with something fuller, less ironic, at once lighter and more substantive. There was less acting going on. Coolness is all about projecting an exterior, putting up a guard. You do it in adverserial environments. But here, now, Mr. Balding Textures was in a safe space. He could relax into himself. We could praise the unglamorous things, the sensitive and the kind, and let live what we truly cared about.

They had found something greater than dominance:

Connection.

--

*’Power’ is a broad word; I use one of its more petty definitions here, in reference to sociocultural status and financial freedom. Says author and journalist Susan Faludi: "I don’t see how you can be a feminist and not think about men. One of the gross misconceptions about feminism is that it’s only about women. But in order for women to live freely, men have to live freely, too. Feminism has shown us that what we think of as feminine is actually defined by cultural messages and political agendas. The same holds true for men and for what constitutes masculinity. Being a feminist opens your eyes to the ways men, like women, are imprisoned in cultural stereotypes." Interview with Ms. Faludi about her book on this topic here.

**Yes, all violent acts are attempts to restore pride, to ward off shame and humiliation. But: shame and humiliation occur in all demographic groups, in all countries. Why then, you may be asking, do younger and poorer men living in countries with a high inequality index tend to be the only ones who translate those feelings into violent acts? The answer may be different than what you suspect. Refer to Chapter 10 of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.

“Nathaniel!” Marlon called out from midway back on my E Line.
“Heyyy,” I replied. Must be someone I’ve chatted with in the past.
“When you get up to 100th, can you hug the curb real tight so I can kick these boxes out?”
“Hug the curb at 100th, yeah sounds good!”

As Marlon stepped out I called out, as I often do, “stay safe!”

After I did so I heard an echo from the back of the bus, speaking the words in exactly the same tone I had: “stay safe!”

I figured it was a youngster mocking me. Youngsters do that sometimes. As I’d just told two sex workers about an hour earlier: “you can’t control what other people say about you.” The ladies were telling me about how “one of our own was talking shit about us to the other guys.” The three of us had agreed that you simply can’t control if others make fun of you, what slander they come up with, how they may try to smear your character… but you can control how you respond. You can control your character. If they want to play nice and talk, that’s another thing, but otherwise… “If you just keep doin’ you,” I’d said, “nevermind what they say, eventually people will realize what’s true and what isn’t. Holdin’ your head high, right?”

So I ignored the boy in the back. It had to have been him who’d spoken; he was also talking to himself, half-singing and half-talking, energetically gesticulating to the empty back lounge. He had on a standard-issue university alum sweatshirt and beanie, no hood, curly hair like me and a similar complexion, and pajama pants. A dozen blocks later he began walking forcefully toward me while we were stopped at a zone, not jumping out the back door, not going out the middle, continuing up to me, closer– this is when bus drivers always take a deep breath, preparing for the worst–

Which is when he said, breathlessly, “hey man I just really love how you roll I just wanted to come hang out with talk to you for a second while I ride into town, bro.”
I couldn’t hide my enthusiastic surprise. “Yeah man, absolutely! How’s it going?”
“It’s been pretty dope, just riding around in my scooter all day I’m new in Seattle just checking out everything looking around, it’s really cool!”
“Aw sweet, welcome to Seattle! Where you comin’ from?”
“Phoenix Arizona.”
“I’m from LA–”
“Oh that’s hella cool, but also like hella crazy, ‘cause every bus driver I’ve met so far has been from LA.”
“That’s so wild!”
He said, “what do you like about Seattle?”

I thought for a moment as I looked at the Amazon towers far in the distance. This city used to be so easy to praise. I said, “the fresh air.”
“Me too. I’m going downtown because it seems like a hella lit place to ride your scooter around at night, man! I just don’t like the drug use, though. Hey I hear there’s this new thing called fentanyl they’re smoking it on buses.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, “it happens sometimes.”
“What is fentanyl?”
“It’s… it’s kind of like morphine, except it’s way more intense. It’s so– get this, it’s so potent that two milligrams is enough to kill an average-size person. No joke.”
“Daaayumn.”
“Yeah and two milligrams is like four grains of salt.”
“Oh wow that’s really crazy.”
“Yeah it’s super intense, and it’s really easy to OD on. It’s so easy to OD on. And it makes me sad because fentanyl is mostly used by younger people, right–”
“Right–”
“–and I’m like that’s my generation, man! It’s not good!”
“Yeah I don’t do that. I don’t like drugs. I just smoke cigarettes, which I know they’re bad for you too.”
“Well. It’s not the worst vice.”
“For sure I just do it for stress.” We were discussing the worst news in the city and he remained unflappably himself. Isn't this the ultimate skill? To remember the muscle of joy, of goodness, through thick and thin? In a tone of exultant curiosity he said, “hey so there’s a couple questions I always ask bus drivers ‘cause I wanted to be a bus driver I just turned twenty-three–”
“Oh cool! I started when I was twenty-one–”
“Really?” he continued, in his apparently customary breathless excitement. It was contagious. “Awesome I always ask bus drivers what do they like most about driving a bus and so far they’ve always every one has said they like giving people a good safe ride so people can get where they’re going.”
“That’s really cool to hear that’s what they say. For me I like helping people. It makes me feel good, you know? Like talking to them, helping, connecting helping them feel connected, like they belong and stuff.”
“Yeah you give a really chill ride. Hella smooth, bro. like I was back there just chilling out.”
“Yeah I try to keep it really smooth.”
“Yeah I’m never gonna report you!”

Every time I announced an upcoming zone over the microphone, he’d exclaim, “niiiice!” He looked out at the Aurora Bridge with such enthusiastic verve the landscape had to work to keep up. “Yeah I love Seattle,” he breathed. “I just don’t like all the drugs though.”
“Yeah me neither. And the thing is it hasn’t always been like this. Fentanyl’s super new. It’s only been around a few months now.” This was last winter.
“Yeah three four months–“
“It’d be cool if it wasn’t around too long.”
“That’d be hella awesome. I love riding around on my scooter and looking at all the people who have jobs working. It’s just crazy to think each of them did all the stuff you gotta do to get ready and apply and get a job and keep a job. I rap and I ride my scooter. I just got this house, man, it’s just me and my girl for now but I wanna find people who wanna just come live with us for free you know, ‘cause I got a PS4 I think and a PS5 and hella video games, and it’d be cool to just find some people who’d wanna live with us without paying anything and just hang out together with me and my girl, you know?”
“Oh you’re not gonna have any problem finding people who wanna come live with you for free and play video games!”

He was finagling his scooter now, trying to get it through the front door to deboard while also stepping over it. An older man was outside waiting to enter and after a few seconds of waiting began to curse the boy out. “Goddamn shit! Come on!”

While I can’t say our youngster didn’t notice the man berating him, I can unequivocally say that it didn’t have the slightest impact on his psyche.
“Right on,” he said in amiable distraction as he scooted out.
The man’s hate was an inconsequential puff of smoke, an almost pathetic attempt that had nothing on our friend’s breezy goodness. He was riding a wave of his own making. Already flying away on his scooter now, there he is, singing, waving his arm in some way that makes sense to him, gestures for an audience of one as the stars and clouds smiled from up on high. He looked up at them as he rode and somehow didn’t fall down.

Keep doin’ you, I said to myself.

--

P.S.– I'll have artwork on display in this month's Pioneer Square artwalk! More here.

My film, Men I Trust, has won itself another laurel: Best Editing, at Tokyo International Short Film Festival! We spent over a year editing this picture, which is long for a short film (33 minutes) and involves multiple time periods, memories and flash-forwards. Thank you, Tokyo, for recognizing our efforts! More on the film here.

Click here for the festival's interview with me. Hope you enjoy!

I can still see fairly well without my glasses, but I can’t make out faces at a distance. I stepped onto the light rail after a full evening of driving, surveying the interior; in the late night hours you have to do that. I didn’t think I needed glasses anymore tonight, living in the antisocial city of Seattle as I do… but wait, I was forgetting that my Seattle isn’t antisocial. It’s vivacious and welcoming. I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear enthusiastic voices.

I. Matt

“Hey, is that your buddy?” someone asked someone else.
“Heyyyy!” said the other, standing to face me.
I could recognize him now. What was his name? It’d been a while. “Is it… Matt?”
“Man, you’re good! What’s up, you just gettin’ offa work?”
“Yup, just got done doin’ some E line. How ‘bout you?”

He was the same person who’d scramble onto my 7 and spend the entire ride carefully putting on lipstick and eyeliner. That takes courage, especially in the excessively heteronormative space the 7 can sometimes be. But Matt is Matt, fully, scruffy and effeminate no matter who’s around, and there’s something impressive about his committed enthusiasm and confidence of self. I never saw any of the neighborhood brothers bother him. Tonight he shared about his day with characteristic fast-talking speed, the words tumbling over each other as he mentioned an Issaquah-Sammamish bike ride, “then went south to see a friend now my buddy and I we’re on our way home.”

I nodded at the other man, a considerably shier fellow slightly younger than me.

“Issaquah, that seems like a nice place to ride bike,” I said.
“Yeah, but…" Matt paused. "It’s their world, you know? All those rich folks out there.”
“I know what you mean. Didn’t used to be like that.” I spent much of my childhood on the Eastside, and could relate. The image of the old Bellevue Square flashed in my mind– a welcoming space of brick and green trim and natural light, the kind of middle-class suburban haunt you went to during adolescence. Now it’s an impenetrable fortress of glass and gleaming marble, no longer Orange Julius and World Wrapps but Ben Bridge and Burberry. Those of us who remember the old Eastside can still find our special corners, the hidden parks and open lots, hints of a time before the suburbs became so class-specific. Matt would’ve liked the old mall.

“They’re doin’ it even out there now though,” he was saying. “The pills.”
I was incredulous. “On the Eastside?!”
“Yeah and then on the train earlier we saw like fifty pieces of foil all over. It’s bad, dude," he said, breathlessly. "I was talkin’ to this cop outside my house, I live on the bottom floor and I have a window and right outside the window in the alley there’s guys there doin’ the, you know, and I was like 'if they’re in the alley can I ask them to leave.' He said it’s better just to tell him. Don’t want ‘em to…”
I understood. “Right you don’t wanna antagonize them, and then they know you live there. Are there bars on the window?”
“Naw, but it’s, the panes are too small for a person to squeeze–"
“Okay good good–"
“Yeah they’d have to be really desperate!”
“That’s the thing now,” I said. “You used to be able to talk to anybody. But if they’re, if all they’re thinking about is getting a fix, you can’t talk to them, can’t reason with them.”
“Right. Their brain has no room for anything else.”

II. David

I looked over, noticing a commotion by the nearest train doors at Westlake. A familiar Dostoyevskyan figure was trying to get on. In June 2013 I described him as "an underweight man in the massive black jacket, with rotting teeth and dirty fingers,“ a description still accurate tonight. I say points for consistency! He thrust his cane forcefully into the train doors to get them to reopen.

“This guy’s cool,” Matt said to me, reassuringly.
“Yeah, I know him. One of the twins!” After the fellow had made it onboard, to the chagrin of everyone around, I called out happily to him. “Heyy! David or Daniel?”
“David!”

They’re identical twins, but David’s always had it a little more together. He uses a cane now. I can barely understand him, but we’re fluent in the language of smiles, having grinned at each other for over a decade. Matt and his partner left us at Capitol Hill and I went over to David, grabbing the seat pair in front of his. I tend to run into more of my friends in the last train car, but it’s also often the dirtiest. I gestured at the floor around us, which was swamped in a viscous pink and brown liquid I had to laugh at as stepped around.

“What happened here?”
“It wasn’t me, I just got here!”
“Ha! I know.”
“I no see you on 7 for long time.”
“I’m doing the E Line now, every night! I’m gonna get back to that 7 though. I miss it.”

He said something unintelligible, I think pertaining to how the streets have changed. Something about 12th and Jackson, the telltale Target shopping bags and blue pills changing hands. That’s the subject of conversation nowadays among us street denizens; I mostly know old-timers, and fentanyl is by and large a young person’s game. The new crowd on the street may be obsessed with it, but the time has come for that generational divide which always comes, where the older set can’t believe the new drugs the kids are into. “I thought I was gettin’ high,” a mid-aged man told me one night, incredulous at the amazing foolishness of his youthful compatriots. It wasn’t always the case that street people were repelled by other street people. A voice across the aisle spoke up in agreement to David’s musings and my last comment.

III. Tommy

“That E Line is da worst fuckin’ bus route of all da buses in this whole city. Every single one they fighting, they putting needles in theyselves, they something goin’ on in da back. I no take that route unless I absolutely have to.”

Like Matt and David, he was in his forties, and as uniquely himself as they. Whereas Matt marched to his own drumbeat no matter who was around, and David was an ebullient propulsive force with an enthusiasm not even canes, train doors or a decade of street living could diminish, this new fellow had the discerning eyes of a thinker. You got the impression he did a lot more observing than speaking; a lonesome face that hadn't always frowned, with a lot on his mind and not enough people to share it with. His accent and deep olive skin hailed from warmer climes, and the scissor-cut of his salt-and-pepper beard told you, along with the angular lines of his prematurely aging face, that this was a state he’d grown accustomed to surviving, and that there had been other, different states before.

David left us at the next station, and I continued listening to this third fellow. I couldn’t argue with him. I’ve had a different experience of the E myself, but only slightly. I think I get away with a lot of good graces by respecting people. That helps you 90 times out of a 100, but there are still those remaining ten times where, as anyone alive long enough will tell you, the world explodes on you no matter who you are. He changed out his sock for a fresh one and expounded.

“Dey beat each udder up, dey shoot themselves up and drop their needle, drop their foil, and there are decent people around!”
“Exactly!” I said. “Old-timers, kids, sitting right next to them!”
“And nobody do nothing. At McDonalds Third and Pike they do this with their hands on the wall, [unintelligible] red meat, dealing, shooting, and cops on the other side don’t do nutting! Dey know what’s goin' on. You try to tell them what’s goin' on and they, they just–"
“‘Oh, we can’t do anything–'"
“Exactly! They blame it on someone else. Always it’s someone else. No responsibility. So: who is it who is responsible for what is going on the streets?”
“I don’t even know, man. I can’t, as a driver I cannot call for help, because they won’t come!”
“I know,” he said ruefully (more on that can of worms here). “No one does any-ting, for real.” His accent and greying beard combined to suggest wisdom, some Central American prophet deep in the mountains. He also had a habit of avoiding eye contact, as though he had access to some vague and distant dimension I could only imagine. “Dey can’t arrest me 'cause I only speak da truth. People just walk past, or dey sit there, broad day-light–" he spaced out the syllables of the phrase– “like nothing is wrong, looking at their phone. I’m like are they crazy? Do they see what is happening right next to them? Do they see anyting, any reality good or bad?”
“They only see their phone! Or their earbuds, like this. Totally closed off.”
“Totally.”
“They used to talk!” Our voices rose in fervor and enthusiasm. He was looking at me now.
“For real!” he exclaimed. “I would walk through Pike Place at the park by the water up above and say to the families, the people walking around, ‘look! It’s a beautiful day! Look at the sunshine!’ And they don’t say nutting. Dey pretend I’m not even there. Now, I don’t say anyting because they all think I’m crazy. Like da world has turned into some new planet where nobody talks to nobody anymore. Sometimes I think to myself am I da one who’s crazy, cause I feel like I be the only one.”

IV. Togetherness

I was grinning. We both were, alive to each other’s solitude, finally able to share. He was a waterfall held back, and now the floodgates were opening. Do you know the freedom of finding one of your own, at long last?

I said, “no man, it’s not you. They used to talk to people! Now, it’s totally different.”
“Totally different."
"They’re better at talking to computers than they are at talking to people.”
“Ha! Yes!”
“And I don’t think they’re happier! You look at them, how they look at their phones... they don’t look happy! They look depressed!”
“They are depressed!" he exclaimed. "You can tell! It’s easy to tell!”
“I’m like have they forgotten, it feels good to talk? It feels good to look around? Okay there’ll be a sunset, everything very beautiful the sky the clouds you know–“
“Uh huh.”
“–and they’re all looking down like this!”
“Hahahahaha!”
“They don’t even notice!!”

We were screaming. We were by far the loudest people on the bus. Two men in the back of the last car, straddle-sitting over what was probably a pile of melted ice cream, roar-laughing in joyful communion… and no one gave any sign of noticing.

“Ever since this coronavirus everyone has become so scared,” he said. “They block out the world, they block out people. They do phones, they do drugs, whatever.”
I heard the sentence and heard it again, doing a mental double-take. He'd put it together in a way I hadn’t. I’d never thought to associate the two before. But of course. “It’s all addiction,” I said by way of paraphrase, sitting in new understanding. “It’s all the same.” I could hear an echo, a line from one my favorite films: “no one cares about reality anymore.”
He said, “they all turn away.”

We went on like that because we had to. We needed to burst out laughing, to name the absurdity of new urban living, because no one else would. And yet in that absurdity, I found myself recoiling from the sensation of deriding these others. It is not for me to judge the age we find ourselves in. What’s wrong with retreating, hiding, being safe, being wary and careful?

In my own way I do those things too. I lack the resilience to scroll through news of our globe’s atrocities. I also turn away, but in the opposite direction: I take refuge in the present. In the prismatic glow of sunset light reflected between our skyscrapers. In the precision dexterity of piloting a trolley bus through a switch. The small realities, the ones we can reach out and feel. In the flash-hot silence of a recognized soul, the glimmering echo of a stranger’s eyes. Can you feel it? It was there, in between Matt’s glitter-punk eyeliner. It was there, in David’s ease with me, his comfort in being around someone who respects him.

I saw it too in this man’s eyes, a personality caught between condemnation and laughter, encouraged now by our togetherness. We were rebelling mightily against the pandemic-reborn ethos of “every (wo)man for himself,” because it was our nature to do so. Yes, that makes me outcast from the norm, a better fit socially with these misfit old-timers than everyone else on this train. But being the best version of yourself usually involves going against the crowd, and often– necessarily– means being lonely.

But who cares? That was always true. Who cares, when it also means the connections you do make will resonate that much more? When you're at peace with your own company, the one person who won't let you down? Because I was who I was, I was talking to him, and versa vice. I could hardly want it any other way.

“Thank you,” he said. “It makes me feel good I’m not the only one. I am happy we had this conversation ‘cause I was worried! Like I am the only person in the world who feels this way and there is something terrible wrong with me!”
“Naw man, it’s two of us at least! What’s your name?”
“I was just going to ask you. I’m Tommy from Jamaica.”
“Tommy from Jamaica, I’m Nathan. I’ll see you around.”
"Nice to meet you."
"You too!"

Today marks ten years to the day since this blog first began.

As you might recall, I decided to "retire" this blog in early 2020, for reasons explained here. For eight years I posted a new story about once every three days, and to give the blog an appropriate climax I shared a walloping 55 stories all at once to celebrate the blog's "end," and give readers something to chew on for a while. In case you missed it, here's a video of yours truly telling the blog's "final" story, in video form:

The problem is, though, that artists never retire. How could you ever stop having things to say, ideas to express? Life is too interesting. What I suspect in the above video has turned out to be true: the blog has continued alongside my other endeavors, as there are simply too many good stories happening out there, and I just can't resist sharing them with you. I've settled into a pattern of posting new content here at the start of every month– check back in, and tell a friend! (You can also use the "Subscribe" button on the upper right of this page (desktop format; scroll down if on a phone) for automatic updates!)

For myself, I've been hard at work on a second book, promoting the first one (including two wonderful talks for the folks in Carnation and Northgate, plus a great show at the Wing Luke), and working on a new film project. I'll have some cinema-related material for you soon.

Although I don't post stories as often now, the ones I do post come not from obligation but from a deep, compelled desire to do share. They're often longer and more substantive. Here are a few highlights from the blog's "post-retirement" phase:

Bus Stories:

• It's About Who's Around: This is the story that got me to break the retirement. I couldn't not write it. It was too meaningful to me.

A few reflections on how our current hard times shape how we see others, and what we can keep in mind on that score:

• Do Not Hide From This Awful Sensation
• Not Because it is Easy
• Better to Suffer Injustice Than to Do It
• The Antidote

More generally–

• Release: Some thoughts on embarrassment, shame, and growing up.
• Raskolnikov in a Beanie: two passengers argue over mask-wearing and reveal much on race.
• Something Early: An E Line story both hard-edged and soft.

...and three deep dives:

1. Cigarettes and Fentanyl: All Aboard: You've been wondering about all the drugs on buses now. Here's the skinny.
2. It's Complicated: Why Rainier RapidRide seems like a good idea, but isn't.
3. The Gift & the Question: A piece on returning to the 7 (again) and how good it feels to be among people who still talk to each other.

On Films by Others:

• Trois Objects 1: on Michael Mann's Heat: An essay on the afternoon that got me into films.
• Stillwater: I do not require my friends to think like me. I share common ground with this film's protagonist as much as anyone else.
• Neither Here Nor There: My take on the Slap. Yes, that slap. Or more accurately, the more interesting fact that Chris Rock did not strike back.

On My Film:

• Grateful: A piece on my film's journey through the festival circuit;
• Reviews: Three reviews for my film, Men I Trust, by UK Film Review, Film Threat and more;
• Anya Patel interviews me at London's Dreamers of Dreams festival (video).

Press:

• Why I Wrote the Book (video, 6 mins): For Redmond Library's Summer Reading Program: a video intro on why the book exists:
  

• A favorite of the interviews I've given, an in-depth piece for PLU's student journal Saxifrage;
  
• A largely non-political essay I wrote for Democratic Socialist's of America's newspaper, Democratic Left.
• Seattle Met selects me as one of their 100 Power Players for 2021;
• International Examiner interview, plus a rare essay on race and being Asian-American;
• Two more pieces in Seattle Met: on driving during the pandemic, and a panel discussion transcript about fare enforcement.

Photography
New work and accompanying essays on place and feeling within the following cities:

• Shenzhen
• Taipei
• Milan

On Art

• On Seattle's Waterfront: Before and After: two favorite essays of mine, the first of which appears in local treasure Laura Hamje's book Concrete Ghosts, discussed by me here. There was a Seattle before the Seattle we see today.
• Reflections from Workin' On It: Another essay diptych, for Hart Boyd's zine, this one about artmaking in childhood vs. adulthood.
• Trois Objets 2: Antonello da Messina: I keep coming back to this painting, and not just because it's finally getting its due for containing "the greatest hand in the Italian Renaissance!" Everything I love about it and why.

This list is incomplete. If you're on a desktop, check out the selections and archives on the right; if you're on a smartphone, scroll down for the same. Enjoy the links above, explore more, and don't forget to check in around the 1st of every month for new material!

Was there a soul leftover at the end of this, another nighttime trip on the E Line? I looked in my rear-view mirror. Yes, there was. There are canned announcements you can play to ask people to leave, or follow directions, but I never use them. Just tell the people yourself. You can achieve wonders with your tone: what words you use, and how.

But this guy wasn’t budging.The odd thing about it was that he looked awake. I spoke into the microphone again. “Alright my buddy, it's our last stop here. Thank you so much.”

No reaction. He simply looked up at me, but not with the evil eye; his was the neutral eye, altogether more beguiling. After a long enough span of time, nothing is more terrifying than a blank expression. I sauntered back, swigging from my glass Perrier bottle. I carry it not as a weapon but as a noisemaker, and have found it essential for waking people up. I was about to speak again when he preempted me.

“How you doing, my brother!”
My friend! I exclaimed inwardly. He was no stranger but a familiar face from the 7, smelling much better than he once did. “Hey, maaan,” I said excitedly.
He reached up for a fistpound, stretching in his seat. Don’t you wake up slowly too?

“It's good to see you,” I continued. “Long time!”
He was middle-aged rugged, with a few gold teeth, but not in the gangster sense of things; he was too friendly, too present to those around him. Look at his inquisitive, wide-alive eyes and the defined jaw, like an African Brad Pitt with five o’clock (make that nine-o’clock) stubble. Perhaps at a loss for how to express his gratitude, he suddenly said with amiable force, “I’ll clean the bus for you!”

I knew I couldn’t stop him. Reader, if you can believe it, this has happened more than once. A passenger will be so appreciative of my treatment of the people, my enthusiasm for them, that they'll manifest an energy of thankfulness they hardly know what to do with. In looking around at the ubiquitously filthy E Line interior, they'll declare something along the lines of, “you deserve better than this. Here, gimme one second, I’ll take care of it for you!” For myself I don’t at all mind the squalid innards of my chosen routes, but I’ve discovered you can’t stop such a gesture. It would be like refusing a meal from those countries where the sharing of food is an almost holy act. I laughed with gratitude and said, “aw, you don’t have to do that!”
He replied loudly, “I heard your voice,” pointing to the microphone speakers, as though that quite naturally explained his janitorial enthusiasm now. “I knew it was you!”

I was moved, because last year's stint on the E Line was such an impersonal experience for me. They all scurry on and off through the back doors, and you have no opportunity to establish community, to create a safe space (more here on why Rainier RapidRide is a bad idea). It’s why I’ve since returned to the 7, despite my love for the Aurora Avenue corridor going all the way back to my 358 days.

“You're the best driver,” he was saying. “Better than all these motherfuckers. Even the Africans!” He meant it companionably, as in: even more than my own people!
“Nooo. Thank you.”
“You are the best one!”
What can I say to such things? Of course I’m not the best one. But again, you can’t refuse a meal. “That's an honor. I'm honored, man. Thank you.” Then I added by some way of explanation, “I try to respect everyone.”
“We can tell!” He practically brayed the line, so deep was his elation. “You think people don't recognize you, way up there.” Wagging his finger, with a singsong grin you couldn't resist: "Weee recognize you!”

His name was Biniyam. He and I stepped off together just as the security crew at Aurora Village came walking over, asking if they could help me. I love having those guys at various terminals now, but tonight I didn't need them.
“Actually, that turned out to just be an old buddy saying hey!”
They were as pleasantly surprised as I was. A week or two later in the same place, I saw another E Line parked with all its doors open. I could see the driver was having trouble getting someone off the bus, and walked over.

“Hey, do you need help waking somebody up…” I said as I entered, and, turning, recognized Biniyam. He began beaming, and changed his tune completely. But of course: he was no longer being yelled at, but smiled at. Sometimes it’s all about the soft approach (more tips on sleepers here). We pounded fists yet again as he said: “if you ask me to get up, I get up!”

We walked out together again, waving at the relieved and entirely nonplussed operator. Biniyam exclaimed to me, “I love you man! You love the people!”
I resisted the praise, as I always do, and focused instead on congratulating his resilient spirit. If these guys out here are able to be happy, to find respite in life's momentary joys, I have no excuse.

--

Not long after I would be helping David (whom I meet for the first time here) get settled in his wheelchair at northbound 85th. As we cruised up Aurora, he suddenly blared out in his customarily stentorian voice, “Yo, Nathan.”
“Hey!”
“You know what makes the world go round?”
“Tell me!”
“It ain’t love, bro.”

I had a reply of my own, but kept silent because I wanted hear his answer. I grinned when he voiced the very same word that was on my mind.
“It’s RESPECT.”
He roared the term like the monolith it was. The word was a landing. He hovered in between the end of the first syllable and the start of the second, the "–SP–," carefully holding the size of it, gifting the forceful second syllable the power of an airplane’s wheels on touchdown. ReSPect. He enunciated the final consonants like they were critical to the term, a denouement of sorts, a jet wing's trailing edge flaps deflecting downward, the comforting proof that you have made it home. He said the word, and the word was good. In life at large I continue to suspect that love is the answer, but in the world of The Street, in David’s world and mine, he was right.

It’s Respect.

It was respect that made the moment between Biniyam and I, sauntering up and out of the bus, exchanging a fistpound, his gold smile glittering under high black and grey clouds as he stalked off into another north end night. We carry such moments with us, or at least I do. They buoy me up when I'm alone. They remind me amidst all the hardship going on, of the good things I cannot forget are also true.

Thank you, World.

I like the ten P.M. crowd.

If you drive buses through downtown at the top of this hour, you'll notice it contains what I call a "rush hour echo”– a spike in activity entirely benign in nature. These folks have just finished their swing shift jobs and they're ready to go home, grateful to see you. They have completed their toil at a panoply of interesting worksites, those places where you use your hands, developing calluses and camaraderie; the humble and hidden jobs which are not confusing but easy to explain to others, elemental, and which keep the city running. I have a soft spot for these guys.

I am one of them, after all.

Here is a tall, able-bodied regular with flowing light brown hair down to his hips, running up to the opposite corner at 9:59, almost too late as I pull up across the street. He must jet out a few minutes early every night to catch my trip. The man always waves a silent hello as he boards through the back of my E Line, and it is in appreciation of his friendly waves that I tarry for him tonight– I arrived one light cycle early and could've taken this green and left him in the dust. But no.

These are my people.

I gestured at him across the roadway, letting him know he's good. The timing allows another fellow to squeak in, a thirty-something with a well-groomed Afro, the round halo surrounding his excited face in an unapologetic '70s style. He will thank me verbally from the middle doors as he leaves later tonight– notable, in these terse and antisocial times.

In between zones in Belltown, I pull over for two figures waving their arms in the dark. I sense something of myself in their companionable yearning gestures; I know what it's like to plead to get on a bus at night. As passengers they're the sort I'm grateful to pick up. Probably coworkers, two black American gentlemen, effusive in their kind gratitude toward me and happy to be chatting with each other, their soft-spoken banter lighting up the bus's middle section.

Rounding out the crowd are a scattering of your expected E Line neighborhood flavors, but of a mellower stripe tonight. An elderly army vet, built like an ex-footballer. A woman who hears my Have a good night! at the last second, her hand waving thank you from the back after the rest of her body has already deboarded. A bedraggled grandmother twice my age with her belongings in hand, including a fishing rod and 101 Dalmatian pants, catching a nap in the back. A stentorian but amiable fellow up front I’m chatting with, who tells me what you learn as a footballer if you’re small and have a tough father: “You can’t meet force with force. You have to go around it.”

So true.

There were his thoughtful words and more, other faces you forget, the youthful outcasts you're surprised to discover do have destinations. Here is another man at the end, Aurora's answer to Gary Payton, only less lucky. We're at Aurora Village and he's very lost, asking where Salvation Army is. I perk up when I begin to realize he's actually trying to get somewhere, and he perks up when he perceives I'm giving him genuine real directions because I care, explaining the slightly confusing path for how to get there– all the way at the other terminal.

We have a good group tonight.

I really like these people. I look at them in my rear-view and smile involuntarily, deeply contented by the opportunity to serve these folks, to get to be in their presence. I feel a motherly caring for my fellow humans, and I embrace them with my bus.

This is what we can do, while the institutions slumber around us. It is what we can do as individuals, and what we have to do. In my book, I write of passenger Rachel, who once told me, “We have to allow ourselves to love so other people can receive it. People need to feel loved in their lives. It’s not just for us, it’s for them.” She phrased it as a responsibility done on behalf of others.

I know that’s harder to do now. I know you’ve heard the horror stories of this route and others. You may even have lived them, as I have. I know that in order to pick up the above people you have to pick up others who may give you grief. But can we take a moment to remember all the rest is happening too? Can we remember that during your eight-hour shift, the terrible thing that happened probably lasted less than five minutes? That we can be our best not only then, when it may accomplish little, but for the other seven hours and fifty-five, when it's just as worthwhile to let people feel acknowledged? To keep community alive?

We try for the right things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because they tell us something about ourselves, about the person we'd like to be. We try not because we will succeed. We do not expect an outcome. No, we try because doing so inches us incontrovertibly closer, curves the air around us, the listeners and futures and notions of truth, toward a better definition of things.

That is all.

---

This is a spiritual follow-up to this post: In Praise of the Swing and Grave

Although it has nothing to do with buses and almost nothing to do with cinema, I find myself drawn by "the Will Smith moment," because it has everything to do with human behavior, which we know is the only reason any of us are interested in the above two worlds in the first place.

1. A Different Stage

The uncensored video of the incident, which international audiences saw live, just plain fascinates me. It represents in microcosm a multitude of things, one of which is rarely to be found on television: I appreciated seeing a moment of actual true emotions, expressed with zero pretense. In watching the sort of exchange I'm rather more familiar with seeing on the nighttime street, I realized how much context can make a thing seem stranger than it is. We live in a world where the image of something seems to count more than the thing itself. But this was not the image of decorum. Here was The Thing itself, ugly and terrible but real, borne out of force and truth and shame and guilt and anger.

This was no performance; this was a man who always has to perform, and for thirty seconds decided not to. Do we decry him for this blip alongside decades of good behavior? By what standards do we measure a life with different problems than our own? In pointing fingers at others, are we trying to draw attention away from our own flaws?

Last night Will Smith responded to a perceived barb as many folks have on the 7, the E Line, or in Philly, where Mr. Smith comes from– except instead of those milieus it was in an elevated and rarefied atmosphere. The shock on people’s faces; the pregnant and confused silence as recorded by writers who were present; Rock’s shaken replies, making clear this is no stunt (as Smith’s manner in repeating his line also makes abundantly clear). We thirst for truth, and found it in an unexpected place last night. 

2. Personas

The most inexplicable part of it for me was watching Smith, who initially laughs– and not a little– at Chris Rock’s joke... and then watching him wallop Rock for precisely the same joke less than ten seconds later. I can’t help but wonder if being caught by his wife at laughing inflamed in him a desire to overreact against himself, against the shame of his own initial lackadaisical reaction.

What further intrigues me is that Smith has been very good at sustaining a nigh-universally likable public image that convincingly conveys being in control and being easy-going. While I have no expectation of someone being those things all the time, as a public figure one knows one has to moderate one’s responses disproportionately, especially in a live broadcast environment. The hitherto-unsullied degree of Smith’s reputation and his longevity in being well-liked in the industry suggest his amiable persona is probably  accurate.

He had to have known how long-lasting and ignominious the damage of such a rash action would be, to himself and those around him, and how messily it would complicate his career. I wonder if he felt a desire to rebel against an encroaching pressure of keeping a good face on at all times, as he has now so obediently done for decades. I’m reminded of Tom Cruise firing his publicist in 2005 and behaving in a way he likely found liberating and truthful, even if it cost him fans. As Sasha Stone, another journalist who was in attendance pointed out, Smith's smug confidence as he returned to his seat is entirely at odds with the Smith we think we know.

3. Damage Control

I’m also intrigued that Meredith O’Sullivan, Smith’s longtime publicist, and others (namely Denzel and Tyler Perry, as well as Nic Kidman, who stopped by to give him a hug) huddled with Smith during commercial breaks, with O’Sullivan consulting with him quietly but earnestly during every single commercial break between 'That Moment' and Best Actor. To me this implies resistance on Smith’s part to take O’Sullivan’s advice, which had to be some variation of what all celebrity apologies require to be effective:

1) taking responsibility for one’s actions,
2) acknowledging the hurt they’ve caused in a manner that suggests self-awareness, and
3) (though it’d be too soon after the event for this one) indicating a concrete plan for self-improvement.

I imagine Smith said he was willing to apologize to everyone except Rock, since that’s exactly what he ended up doing. (To no one's surprise, Smith released a predictably thoughtfully worded piece hitting all the right marks today.)

I can’t help but wonder if his rambling if heartfelt six-minute speech, waffling as it did between defending himself and apologizing to secondary and tertiary parties, made things even worse. While imperfect messiness is to be expected when forced to comment without deliberation on such a recent mistake, his lack of apology to Rock is an omission that deafened in its silence, and subsequent notices of him dancing the night away at afterparties to his own previous musical hits don’t do him any favors. 

It was a highly imperfect speech. There was an opportunity to restage the event hypothetically ("here’s what I should’ve done"); there was an opportunity to transform the moment into a teachable one ("learn from my mistake"); there was an opportunity to emphasize that people act in ways they regret ("a person is more than their worst moment; I ask for your forgiveness"); and an opportunity for Smith, a father, to iterate to boys everywhere that violence is an inappropriate response to non-violence (“yell at comedians, don’t punch them”). As Ms. Stone notes regarding abusive relationships, what follows a physical altercation is the tearful apology. I find it strange to listen to Smith extolling the virtues of love mere minutes after punching someone out in front a global audience, with the expectation that we should take both moments seriously– but such is the nature of the contradictory human animal.

4. Matters of Principle

I find more curious his unquestioning advocacy for “protecting” women, and am reminded of the great writer Susan Faludi’s articulation of the “protection racket” in her monumental study of postwar emasculation, Stiffed: the Betrayal of the American Man. The "protection racket" is the long-standing practice where men seek to “protect” women from other men they deem worse than they, but in the course of doing so sometimes exhibit behavior just as oppressive. I can hardly think of a better example than last night. Does Jada Pinkett Smith need Will’s "protection?” Support, certainly, but… this? In 1963 Betty Friedan argued that women are adults who can take care of themselves. Conversely, Tiffany Haddish calls Smith's reaction “the most beautiful thing I've ever seen” and “what your husband is supposed to do, right?”

Clearly mileage varies...

Either way, I believe Smith’s motivations were entirely personal, and naught to do with Jada’s honor, but his own definition of himself as a man in relation to Jada, and in relation to Rock. He wasn't thinking; he was being. The host of factors and principles which impelled him out of his seat are too myriad to name. For me, the thought of Smith noticing his wife's hurt at his own laughter at a joke made at her expense, and finding reprehensible that part of himself, is touching. How human of him to try to stamp it out, to erase with vigor and conclusiveness the actions we most regret.

Who has not been at war with the lesser versions of their self?

How easy it is to make things worse. You learn in the Chinese board game Go that some mistakes just have to be moved on from, their losses accepted, because further intervention only worsens matters. You can't fix everything. We do our best.

5. The Thing No One is Talking About

Which brings us to Chris Rock. After doing what he often does– improvising and taking chances with jokes that push the envelope, often with cutting insight, though rather less so here– Rock shifted gears, realizing the mood of the person antagonizing him was not at all in jest. I find it riveting. Ridley Scott’s G.I. Jane is a positive portrayal of a strong (bald) female character, which is probably why Rock felt like chancing the joke, in poor taste though it is. Complicating the moment is Smith and Jada already being made fun of earlier in the same ceremony, as well as Rock poking fun at Jada’s expense at a previous Oscars in 2017. Will and Jada have also been having their own relationship difficulties, though I’ve made an effort not to read about that (not my business!). Basically, it’s never just the last straw. 

But the one thing no one is talking about is also the thing I find most impressive: 

The fact that Chris Rock did not strike back.

In America we think of the doer as the subject, whether in grammar or otherwise; that's why we speak of this as the "Will Smith" incident. But inaction is as powerful as action. Restraint can save the day; silence can speak louder than words.

Such non-action as Rock displayed in last night's heated moment takes guts and character, as we know from the world of the street. It is easier simply to act. Rock chooses to think first, refraining from responding physically– despite the mano-a-mano challenge in front of a massive audience of peers and strangers numbering in the millions. Susan Faludi would be impressed. A recent NYT profile of Rock detailing his newfound passion for therapy and emotional investigation now further serves to explain Rock’s reaction, unequivocally displaying how that approach has paid off. It helps to think a few chess moves ahead.

It helps to think, period.

(That Rock manages even to remain standing is its own feat, given the size difference between the two and the complete unpredictability of the event. There is a significant physiological difference between having even a slight expectation of physical conflict, and predicting none. Rock predicts none because this is the Oscars, and he still manages to keep his footing.)

That Rock regains his composure and goes about the business of presenting Best Doc (to Summer of Soul, in a moment of almost absurd irony) in under a minute is impressive. I call that consummate professionalism. He’s being paid to do a job, does so under humiliating duress, and completes his task. If either of these men is at all qualified to give a rambling six-minute monologue on an international live broadcast about the importance of tolerance and loving others, it would be Chris Rock.

6. What Didn't Happen

Additionally, Rock benefits from Smith’s overreaction in that it rather forcefully swings the spotlight away from the misfire of his own joke; without it, all our Monday morning carping would have been about Rock’s misstep as a comedian, and how comedians have a tricky job of pushing the envelope and trying to search out where the line is. That type of work, because it involves taking risks, necessarily requires that there will be mistakes. There will be moments of going too far. Like perhaps this one.

It is human to make a mistake.

If Will Smith had instead boldly walked up on stage, as he did, but instead asked for the microphone and said, "Chris, I think what you just said is hurtful and unkind. My wife has been battling this auto-immune condition for years and I'm right by her side, and because of the heartache and pain and disruption it has caused us we are unable to tolerate your wisecrack. You're better than that."

You know what would've happened. Chris Rock would've stood in cowed silence, as he did, except as a monumental dolt, and we would all nod our heads, agreeing that making fun of alopecia is, yes, a mistake. But that is not what happened. What happened is that Rock's flub will forever be a minor sidebar in the conversation of someone else's history-making overreaction, a monumental lapse of judgment which will make comedians everywhere nervous to try out their jokes, however (mis)calculated, for some time to come.

7. What I Saw

It is human to make a mistake. When I see Chris Rock I see an enthusiastic jokester who improvised a line he quickly realized would've benefited from more consideration.

When I see Jada Pinkett Smith I see an actor in failing health doing her best, here in support of her partner's big night and trying to make the best of things, tired from the beguiling fact that no matter how easy life gets, it remains primarily a series of struggles.

When I see Will Smith I see a devoted husband who saw a look from his wife and no doubt recalled their shared struggles with her illness, no doubt recalled the tearful nights and hard decisions and times shared high and low, and realized with forceful passion and deep anger that he had violated himself. That moments of painful weakness with his wife were being ridiculed in broad daylight. And he saw that he no longer wished to play along and wear a dumb grin after every comment made. That his allegiance was not to cameras or fans or even career but to his life partner. I saw a man furious with himself, furious that he had betrayed something precious to him for things less important. Who stumbled through his acceptance speech about as well as you could hope given the pressure and circumstances, who plaintively tried, and partly succeeded, to convey with inarticulate and unstudied words that he, at large and deep down, endeavors as best as he knows how, to the absolute upper limit of his human abilities, to be a good man.

Now that I do believe.

Let’s talk about it.

What of the great unwashed? “They,” who have broken your windows, stolen from you, robbed you of health and sleep, forced you out of the neighborhood? The fundamental question here becomes less what to do than how to think.

People don’t do the things they’re now doing because they’re diabolical monsters, but for rather more banal reasons better explained by things like brain chemistry and childhood trauma. What happens when these folks don’t receive care? When they reach for easily available band-aid solutions (needles, pills, straws, foil) instead of turning to longer-term systems that strike at the root of the problem (education, medication, therapy, housing)? We could blame the individuals if there were only a few isolated cases. There are not. The problem is not individual.

1. What's Goin' On

Yes, people are smoking fentanyl and doing other things on buses in profusion. Yes, there are new policies which allow unsafe behaviors and reduce quality of service. Whatever you’ve heard, this is an unusual case where the reality is more extreme. The incidents happen so frequently that for us drivers, documenting them seems pointless (though Security Incident Reports on drug use inside buses have risen from 44 in 2019 to 73 in 2020, to 398 in 2021). The new and constant refrain among operators is, Never call. No help will come. Or if it does, its hands will be tied. Non-using passengers know this too, which is why they don’t get mad at me when all I do is politely ask whoever it is to stop having a party.

No one knows better, though, that no interference is coming than the tempted downtrodden themselves. They comprehend per a new pattern of non-enforcement that smoking cigarettes, crack cocaine, inhaling fentanyl, displaying weapons and shooting heroin are all allowed on Metro buses.

Deal with it.

I have witnessed each of the above and more with regularity, and mention them here without exaggeration or hyperbole. They are simply the new facts of existence of living in Seattle, of sharing enclosed spaces with others, just as smoking once was in our nation’s airplanes, bars and offices. Seattle is trying a well-intentioned new approach, and I won’t tell you what to think about it. I will say, however, that your belief in this method’s efficacy may be linked to how much face time you’ve actually spent at the intersections and streets named here, and which buses you ride and at what times. The tone among my transit-dependent riders has changed; now they tell me they’re saving up to buy a car, confessing that they now carry weapons because others do too, or are looking for a different job because the commutes have become too scary.

Washington State no longer arrests for drug possession, and although I can perceive the intent behind that move, I’m not sure solutions yet exist for a number of its unexpected outcomes. As a security officer told me recently: “as soon as we get on, they stop. As soon as we leave, they start again. There’s nothing we can do!” With the new policy of non-removal on buses being known, Metro is the ideal new venue. And the public is now becoming aware of how badly some people are hurting, and the methods they're resorting to.

I haven’t had this much secondhand smoke stuffed down my throat since my childhood visits to Grandma’s house. But unlike her house, some of our buses don't have windows that open.

2. What's Been Goin' On

Let’s remember that opiate abuse has been in existence for longer than six months. It was always possible to light a cigarette on a bus before last summer; it just didn't happen. My friends working in transitional housing and other social services are not surprised by these newly public behaviors. The difference is there used to be places where they could happen out of sight. Many of those locations are now closed, and the boundaries of the remaining spaces have to accommodate what used to take place behind closed doors. To the parks, libraries and buses we go...

Perhaps it would calm us to remember that street folks are processing trauma as best they can, in a society that doesn't provide  much of a social safety net. They are resentful toward a system of institutions that has rejected and ignored their plight, which pays lip service to "the homelessness crisis" while appearing to glibly pocket your well-meaning taxpayer dollars. Can you blame them for being depressed, tired, at their worst? Are you not also angry? Disappointed?

You, who are infinitely better off than they?

This is the bad time.

My friends on Jackson and Third Avenue reach for the solutions that are available to them. If you are mentally stable, have no addiction challenges or criminal history, and have your paperwork in order, homelessness is merely a stumbling block. With the resources this city has you’d be on your way, no big deal. But heaven help you if you have any of the above four obstacles. Drugs tempt because they seem to fix things– like untreated mental health or unresolved trauma– for now.

Famous last words.

The slope is slippery, but anywhere along it the truth remains. Let’s repeat it: these people are doing their best to process trauma using means easily accessible to them, without a social safety net.

3. The View for Operators

I listen to my operator colleagues bemoan the passengers, sharing their horror stories with me. I listen without trying to change their mind; I have my horror stories too. But I make every attempt to avoid yielding to despair. I do not brag at the base about leaving passengers behind. I do not boast that I don't even open the doors for people, or abandon the schedule and leave all the riders for other bus drivers, as some of my colleagues selfishly do. They are trying to survive, I think, and survival is inherently self-absorbed. It makes you disregard the problems of others.

There has been no new training and precious little acknowledgement from management on the problems we now face, nor an official explanation of why formerly useful resources work differently now. A brief example:

The lack of interdepartmental and interagency communication is so far gone that operators are quite literally unaware of certain resources set aside specifically for them. These days on Aurora Avenue in particular, you’ll often have a KC Sheriff trailing your bus as you drive, just in case anything happens inside your coach. This is a resuscitation of a service I was trained on in 2008. Back then it then was called a ‘trailing escort.’ If something happened on your 358, you stopped your bus and put on your reverse lights, which alerted the officers behind you that something was up. Not only do today’s operators not get that brief training, they do not even know they are being helped. I’ve had five different drivers tell me variations of: “I keep getting tailgated by cops on my route, and I have no idea why!”

The operators around me are mostly new, due to recent workforce turnover, and the team ethos of my former colleagues is absent at the precise time when it's needed most. We have forgotten how to help each other, stick up for each other, recognize we are part of a larger community.

I wonder if my coworkers realize they have something in common with the afflicted users, the unstable and hungry denizens they so fear and struggle with. They, we, us– all feel abandoned. Those street folks are not them– they feel as we do but moreso, we drivers who feel our superiors have left us. We working people at jobs of all kinds who are now asked to do more, risk more, pay more, "figure it out yourself," for less. Does that sound familiar? The folks on Third Avenue, the broken heart of Seattle (as my colleague Yen poetically calls it), feel that abandonment too, but on a deeper and more biting scale.

Humans were never meant to be isolated from each other. The toll this pandemic is taking is as much mental as physical, and no one is unscathed. We are all infected. A light used to burn within us, and it is in danger of going out.

You are better than that.

4. The Problem Is

Pessimism simplifies what you see. It tempts you to believe it. It’s the easy route. So is finding a villain. Your fear will tell you that the solution is to arrest everybody. That’s as much of a band-aid solution as fentanyl is. While addressing matters in the short-term, let’s remember to ask: What are people experiencing such that they search for these coping mechanisms in the first place? What basic needs could be addressed, that aren’t? When mental health, housing, and medication access are available, other problems tend to diminish on their own. You stop needing the coping mechanisms. Fentanyl seems like it’s the problem. It isn’t. Vandalism, vagrancy, burglary, assault– aren’t the problem.

It would be so nice if they were. That would be so easy.

Last week I listened to another driver as I scarfed down lunch at the base. He’s one of the great ones, and I learn from his charitable views. He was sharing a moment on his bus which stopped his heart. A young man with a cart of belongings was talking to him on his 60. “No one cares," the kid had told him. "I want to move forward. I’m ready. But no one will help. No one cares about us. They leave us out here like this, every night.” My operator friend could do nothing but sympathize, and watch as the boy deboarded and walked off into the black evening, empty-hearted and catastrophically alone.

Most of us are sad. All of us are lonely. When morale is low, you the driver take it out on the passengers. When morale is low, you the youngster light up another one.

The problem that needs to be addressed is the sensation that people believe they are on their own.

5. Where I'm Coming From

I do not write these words from a place of distaste for the people. I like the people. I love the people; you know that. The sweetest man on my trip last night was a young fellow of the trademark ash-stained hands, with foil, torch and straw in hand. He was having a hard time putting his bike on the rack while also holding onto his paraphernalia. I stepped out to join him, helping him lift his bike and securing the handle.
“Hey, how’s it goin’. I can help.”
“Aw thanks dude! I really appreciate that.”
“For sure, no worries. Hey man I just gotta ask, could you put the foil away for the bus ride?”
“Oh yeah man, yeah no problem. Of course.”

And he did. There are good people everywhere. I am especially grateful to the brazen passengers who take matters into their own hands to help the crowd at large; more than once I’ve been saved by such courageous souls. Unlike me, my superiors, police, security or any other authority figure in King County, they have the unique ability to remove, by force, a passenger doing the above-mentioned activites. It’s an unfortunate truth that that is sometimes necessary.

Nor do I write from a place of anger with Metro management. I’m on friendly terms with many of those folks, on up to County Executive, and I’m not qualified to evaluate their performance from my bus-driving armchair. There are politicians here I like and respect, including some who have reached out to me personally and who bend over backwards fighting the good fight. There are police(wo)men I personally know and appreciate. As ever, the problem is not individual. John Steinbeck spelled it out for us 83 years ago, and it’s still true today: it’s the System. These officials, like me, like my using passenger friends, like my dispirited colleagues, are ordinary (and understaffed!) people under extraordinary circumstances. I’ll admit I do wish our top management came around to the bases more often like the last two administrations did, because nothing brings people together like, well, coming together in person. But hey, maybe there’s a pandemic happening.

I write rather from a place of disappointment. Fentanyl and the other misbehaviors I mention above are primarily a draw for young people– my generation and the new one under it (I’m not getting a lot of beef from the old-timers). I am excited about the prospects of young people. Sure, they’re obsessed with technology and not very good at talking to others, but they have their qualities, don't they? They were so good at caring about many promising things– equality of all stripes, the environment, innovation. The nice thing about Fentanyl is that its high makes one docile. The problem is that it’s unbelievably good at killing people. And I’d prefer not to see my own generation wipe itself out before the pandemic is over.

Go easy on yourself. On others. It isn’t only you who is suffering. You will make it through the night.

I’ll be out there, waving at ya.

6. Low-Cost Suggestions for the Short Term

For those in positions of power who read this blog:

• Incidents on buses like the ones mentioned above happen disproportionately in concurrence with rear-door boarding. You get something from face-to-face contact that you can’t get any other way. Consider pausing the 3rd Avenue all-door boarding rule, as there’s no need to expedite boarding right now. Safety and community take precedence.
• Communicate with frontline staff in a visible manner that performs equalization of bureaucratic hierarchies. It is worth the effort. A happier workforce, one that feels heard and cared for, performs quantifiably better.
• Statistics show us that playing classical music in public spaces reduces crime as well as physical and verbal harassment by significant margins. What would happen if the crew at 3rd and Pike (which now houses the old 12th & Jackson crowd after the recent 12th Ave cleanup) had to listen to Fur Elise and the Brandenburg Concertos 24/7? I promise I’m not just saying this because I like classical music…
• Let’s be mindful of what southbound 3rd and James has taught us: moving zones across the street doesn’t solve anything. It merely brings everyone across the street.
• In the tradition of building skateparks, consider offering a venue, even if obliquely, following the model Vancouver, BC has established. Food for thought: this is the purpose the Jungle performed in Seattle from the 1930s to the 2010s.
  
• At the very least: let's lose the "it's a great day to ride Metro" PSA, and fast. I know it wasn't meant to sound tone-deaf, but in these new conditions it sends exactly the wrong message about organizational oversight.

For everyone else:

• Let's try to look after each other this season. We are the help we can provide. Be aware of your surroundings and consider the needs of those around you. In the community you have access to, try make people feel less alone.