This is the second in a series of three texts that are exciting and meaningful to me. Don't you enjoy how standing in front of someone's bookcase tells you things no other method of learning about them could? This series is a bit of my mental bookcase. My first essay was on Steinbeck's East of Eden. My second, below, is on a painting not many know about.

2. Annunciate Madonna, by Antonello da Messina, 1476. Oil on wood; 17.5 in x 13.6 in.

Currently in Palermo, Sicily. Click here for an up-close, full-size version of the painting, courtesy of Wikipedia.

People don’t talk about Antonello da Messina when they talk about Early Renaissance Italian art. They talk about Botticelli. They talk about Piero Della Francesca. Maybe they talk about Fra Filippo Lippi. But who was Antonello? Where’s Messina? How many artists have worked alone with passion and skill, in unknown rooms?

Something compels me about these hidden lives, the daily truths lived, textures of ordinary existence and struggle untainted by the anomalies of wealth and attention. In school I gravitated toward the classmate who sat in the corner of the room or alone at their lunch table, just as I now find myself drawn toward these souls. Perhaps because I am one of them.

The onward flow of the human project is embodied most fully not by rulers and despots but by people on the ground, those with dirt in their fingernails and whose souls are just as deep with experience filled to bursting, but who from the outside we forget to take notice. The divide would have felt wider for Antonello, as the royal court spoke different languages (Catalan, Aragonese) than the citizenry (Sicilian) at the time. The plates and jars and clothes of these peasants, masons, carriers, maids, smiths, cooks… do not survive in museums. Their dreams and ideas are recorded only broadly. These are the people I write about today.  

1. The Times

Born in Messina in 1430, where he would later return to die only 49 years later, Antonello lived under the receding shadow of the Black Death, by his lifetime part of the past but no doubt a recurring event in the perspectives and guiding principles of his elders. He would have heard stories growing up. Messina was a port city on the island of Sicily, and in 1347 “death ships” were sent to Messina from the Genoese city of Kaffa (now the disputed Feodosia Municipality in Crimea) and other eastern cities along the Asian trade routes. These ships were filled to the brim with dead and dying plague victims, who were then dumped on the island. Naturally this resulted in widespread death of Sicilian residents and the rapacious spread of the Plague into mainland Italy and Europe at large. Antonello wouldn’t be born for another hundred years, but what impact did being raised in the aftershock of this landscape have? How would it have affected the prevailing belief systems of the day?

Writes historian Jennifer Hecht in her excellent Doubt: A History, “we simply do not know how much Christianity ever penetrated the great mass of peasants and workers of Medieval Europe…. Rural priests complained that their flocks showed up at church to gossip and play, and that when they took part they barely knew what they were saying.” Remember, the printing press and thus the Bible wouldn’t proliferate until well after 1453, and although Christianity was the sociocultural reference point for all classes in 1400s Italy, a new religious cynicism was spreading, partly as a result of the Church's wars on heresy and imposed economic turmoil. Historian Giulio Ferroni writes that this “lent greater importance ‌among the middle classes to the tangible and utilitarian aspects of life.” Then as now, times were complicated, and as ever there is so much we don't know. Not much is written about Messina in the 1400s, other than a university being built in nearby Catania, a slightly larger city and over a day’s journey on foot. Did Antonello think about this? Did he ever go there? We don’t know.

2. The Craft

We believe he apprenticed in Rome and then moved to Napoli, where Netherlandish painting was in vogue. He loved Van Eyck. He loved the Flemish tendency toward infinitesimal detail and careful attention to minute gradations of light. We think he was in contact with Van Eyck’s follower Petrus Christus in 1456, and suspect that Antonello taught Petrus Italian linear perspective; Christus is the first Netherlandish artist to employ the approach.

Correspondingly, Antonello likely learned something of the northern tradition from Petrus, as Antonello is the first major artist in Italy to replicate Van Eyck’s oil-based, detail-oriented style. He must have gulped down these Netherlandish tendencies, because his work positively blooms with the approach: hyper-detailed minutiae, attention to light (down to the consideration of how light would land on light-absorbent objects like dark fabric), black backgrounds, frontal portraits (a novelty depending on where you were in Europe), and a tendency toward calmness and the enigmatic in facial expression and tone. Remember, this is before da Vinci. Writes Ingrid Rowland, “No one, not even Leonardo or Piero della Francesca, has ever paid such penetrating attention to the way light works. He knew nothing of photons or electromagnetic waves, but he understood, and recorded with uncanny penetration, the differences among beams, rays, reflections, glow, luminosity, and radiance. At the same time, he was a master of psychological detail and of nature, taking care to paint the reflections of infinitesimal ducks on a distant pond.”

Why is the best-known portrait of Antonello vandalized? Why do portraits show him smirking, raising an eyebrow, or displaying other intriguingly quizzical touches? When a man leaves behind more questions than answers, we lean in. Giorgio Vasari, the preeminent Italian art historian responsible for as much fiction as fact, never travelled further south than Napoli, which is one reason why Antonello isn’t well-known. His accounts of Antonello are brief and disputed, written nearly a century later at a time when Tiziano’s entirely different style was the reigning subject of conversation. Vasari claims Antonello apprenticed with Van Eyck, which certainly never happened since Antonello was 11 when Van Eyck died; on the basis of nothing he also claims Antonello decided to live in Venice forever because of “pleasures and everything else to do with sex,” sounding suspiciously like a 16th-century version of The National Enquirer.

The once-presupposed theory that Antonello majestically toured Northern Europe and its most famous painters’ workshops is now replaced by the more plausible understanding that the poor man came across a couple Van Eyck paintings on display in a 1445 visit to Napoli, and was thus inspired. What can be said is Antonello played at least some role in introducing oil paint to Venetian painting, as art in Venice (Bellini et al) looks different before versus after his visit there.

3. The Ephemeral

The other reason Antonello isn’t well-known has nothing to do with skill, and everything to do with circumstance: Messina wasn’t only ravaged by the Plague. In 1783 and again in 1908, the city (located on a fault line, evidently not a concern when the Greeks founded it in 730 BCE) suffered two diabolically cataclysmic earthquakes, especially the 1908 iteration. That event leveled nine-tenths of the city’s buildings in under thirty seconds, with a subsequent tsunami and three hundred aftershocks decimating the rest. Only one of Antonello’s Messina altarpieces survives, and with heavy flood-induced water damage at that; most of the thirty remaining paintings we know of come from the brief year he spent in Venice in 1475-6, just a few years before his death. Scholars assume about ninety percent of his work is lost.

What did he think about? What compelled him to paint snails and cats and potted plants in the backgrounds of his pieces? To paint Jesus “as a blunt-faced, almost homely man,” to use Ingrid Rowland’s words, “his reddened eyes brimming with tears and his mouth downturned in desolate sadness”? You look at a painting from 600 years ago and you recognize yourself, not in the face but the attitude of the brush: the same secret longings, the same confused awe at an inexplicable universe... look at us, trying to understand. Maybe no time has passed at all.

Some say he had a son; another record shows he gave away a daughter to marriage. Maybe both are true. Two Sicilian scholars (Gioacchino Di Marzo and Gaetano La Corte Callier) assembled a life history of Antonello just before the 1908 earthquake, in which those painstaking compilations were promptly destroyed. We do know he was offered the role of court painter in Milan, but declined on the basis of Lord Galeazzo Maria’s tyrannical tendencies. Smart man, I say. Fame and fortune aren’t everything.

4. The Long Gaze

Most artists don’t live to see their work admired; Antonello did not live, thankfully, to see the vast majority of his work destroyed. But the difference between one surviving piece and none is much greater than the difference between a few works surviving and many, and we at least have these thirty paintings. I believe he would be appreciated now if even only one of his pieces survived: his Annunciate Madonna (above), from 1476. Aside from oddly persistent simplification that Antonello “brought oil painting to Italy,” you could argue his reputation today stems primarily from this single image. What sets it apart from other paintings and artists of the time? Writes Rowland:

“Of all Antonello’s paintings, the most remarkable, perhaps, is his Annunciate Madonna, a young woman who pulls a glorious true blue mantle close around her as she takes in the message the angel Gabriel has just delivered: she is to bear the son of God. Her right hand stretches out as if to pause the angel’s headlong announcement—or time itself—a brilliant exercise in foreshortening and a still more brilliant exercise in light, shade, luminosity, and the minute highlights that led curator Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa to call this ‘the greatest hand in Renaissance art.’

Many of Antonello’s Madonnas are plain-featured, with relatively short, small noses, in dramatic contrast to their aquiline-featured Byzantine counterparts or the long, haughty pointed profiles of the Dalmatian sculptor Francesco Laurana. But as two women passed by her image in Palermo recently, I heard one say to the other, “Now that’s a real Sicilian face. She’s siciliana, siciliana. I have a niece who looks just like her.” …[T]his Madonna, and her counterparts, for their very ordinariness, manage to create something more marvelous than transcendent beauty: the miraculous illusion of reality.”

Compare that to this Madonna of the same event, painted by the same artist three years earlier.

Much is the same– a young woman wearing a blue robe is interrupted in her reading. There is the black background, in true Netherlandish fashion. Yes. There are artfully painted hands.

But this isn’t even the same ball game.

In this 1473 version, Mary has already heard the ‘big news,’ or is perhaps in the process of hearing it just now. Its import, in either case, has already landed by the time of the moment depicted. She’s taking in the size of what she’s heard with reverence, and her reaction isn’t surprising: it’s a momentous moment, and she reacts accordingly. This is in keeping with earlier medieval art which, beautiful as it is, tends toward the decorative or instructional, with human faces often repetitive and mostly blank ciphers. These were images less of people than of ideas. The Renaissance involved integrating Classical Greek ideas from sculpture (not from paintings, which were all lost) into contemporary religious art. At the time this combination would have been an anachronism, but it achieves wonders in elevating the work. Compare Cavallini’s 1293 Last Supper with Leonardo’s famous 1498 version of the same scene:

Human psychology is the main event of Leonardo’s piece; each disciple reacts to Jesus’ announcement of betrayal differently. There’s a lot to take in. No such nuance is visible in Cavallini’s piece (for a middle ground, check out Ugolino da Siena’s 1325 effort):

If Antonello’s 1473 Madonna seems more tied to past periods, to earlier Medieval ideas of depiction– albeit with his trademark detail and care– the 1476 version is more of a piece with painting’s future: the Renaissance and all it would bring. I find it richer and more redolent of the multitudinous variations of human existence. Look at the full-blooded withholding of her face. Its ambiguity, discipline, quietude… holds us like a magnet. Antonello chooses an ethereal slice of being just after the big moment– or is it before? Perhaps Gabriel hasn’t even spoken yet. Mary holds out that now-famous hand in a gesture of staying, holding off what she doesn’t yet know is big news. She was reading. Not yet, she seems to say.

Equally legitimate is the interpretation that she’s taking in what’s just been said to her. The news is too large for her to have an assembled response. Is she rejecting the idea? As in, No, that can’t possibly be me? Or is she accepting with grace and benevolence, rising into a new form of being? Either way she seems at once earthly in her tactility, and divine in her demeanor. On another plane, even while of this world.

What other masterworks did Antonello paint, I wonder, which are forever lost to us? Were there works which surpassed even this one? Do lost legacies leave behind a phantom sensation of presence, in the way amputees can still feel pain in their absent limbs? I look upon this painting and experience something different than when I appreciate work by the better-known masters.

This one is loaded.

I look upon her face, the robe, the austere black and the impossibly truthful light and hand, and I see the 1908 earthquake. I see buildings levelled in seconds. Survivors picking through rubble. I see the biography those two historians gathered and composed, buried under stone.

Loss, ephemerality, death: these are the galvanizing elements which teach us most about valuing things. Her face contains for me the heft of unknown secrets, mysteries known only to time, the oldest of surviving trees and rocks in the Messinan countryside.

The Greek ruins at Paestum as I found them in 2015, five hours north of Messina by car. Built 900 years before Antonello's time.

Sources:

Cardona, Caterina, et al. Antonello Da Messina: Inside Painting. Milano, Skira Editore, 2019.
Cohn, Samuel K Jr. “Epidemiology of the Black Death and successive waves of plague.” Medical history. Supplement ,27 (2008): 74-100.
Ferroni, Giulio. Storia della letteratura italiana vol. I "Dalle origini al Quattrocento." Turin: Einaudi, 1991.
Hecht, Jennifer Michael. Doubt : A History. New York, Harpercollins, 2004.
Rowland, Ingrid D. “‘A Painter Not Human.’” www.nybooks.com, www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/05/09/antonello-messina-painter-not-human/?lp_txn_id=1286657. Accessed 20 Oct. 2021.

I was once asked to name 3 texts– whether books, film, music or otherwise– which are meaningful to me. After spending too much time excitedly mulling over the idea, I thought I'd share my answer here on the blog as well. I'm avoiding formative texts I've discussed elsewhere, like Underworld, Anna Karenina, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Radiation City, Terrence Malick or any of the many films I've written about here. I'm also avoiding non-fiction because I'm more interested in advocating for art than information. Information speaks for itself, but Art elevates us to something higher. Each of the following represents a full, rich experience which has elevated how I see. Here goes.

3. East of Eden
John Steinbeck, 1952. 612pp.

Why read the old books?

Steinbeck's East of Eden paints a reality we can feel in the marrow of our bones. The brushstroke that is his pen paints the truth of his experience and that of turn-of-the-century rural America with deep-rooted thoughtfulness, a probing consideration of the grit, texture and light that was once oh-so-familiar, by someone who was there. His pen knows the details and lived-in psyche of a certain breed of American experience that a writer now, for all their historocity and enlightened perspectives, will fail to comprehend. We must preserve the earlier works, and value them for what they do, rather than what they don't do. If we don't know our past, how can we build a future?

Steinbeck's concerns are not primarily historical or political, but human. His interests transcend time and culture. He observed the goings-on around him with undeniable and clear-eyed care, and the insights one gains from reading East of Eden are as enriching toward deepening our worldview as any of the best philosophy or religious texts. Go ahead and pull it off the shelf. Read Chapter Thirteen– don't worry, it doesn't spoil anything. Read it while alone, and dare yourself to look at today's world with the same eyes afterwards. For me it's the chapters involving the conversations between Sam, Lee and Adam that I'll carry with me forever. Do you remember when they talk about naming the children? The kindness and infinite depth of their discourse? Or his understanding of Cathy, probably the most nuanced exploration of implacable evil and the question of confronting it that I've found in art. This is why you read classic literature instead of Tweets of headlines of articles. This is why you turn pages instead of send texts and play Candy Crush.

Many years ago, I was riding a 41 home and asked the young-ish looking businessman seated next to me what he was reading. He explained that he made a point of returning to East of Eden every five years or so, because it enriched his sight and kept him on course. It seemed to expand each time he read it too, telling him something about himself, and about the America we come from. I remember a quiet passion in his demeanor; he had a father's knowledge that gentle persuasion will work better than vociferous insistence. He didn't tell me to read the book. He simply shared what it did for him. I told him I'd check it out sometime. It may have taken me over a decade to make good on that promise, but here I am, thanking a man whose name I don't know, whose appearance I've forgotten, whom I remember only by their poise and words. The book was everything you said it would be. I do all I can do now, which is pass the torch along.

---

Stay tuned for the countdown!

I don't consider myself a political creature. The transformation of my perspectives into political views is always a transformation of reduction. I find people too rich and nuanced, the world and its problems too complex, for the American obsession of turning everything into a competition to have any value. Ideas on ethics, rights, justice and progress, fundamental and important as they are, should least of all be subjected as fodder for a hyped-up contest with only two sides. Could there be a more awkward fit?

You might imagine that, what with my immigrant background, enthusiasm for the rights of marginalized peoples, support for maligned and subjugated demographics, and livelihood resulting from subsistence on Unions (I'll always capitalize Union!), that pegging which voting body I vote for would be too easy. In one sense you would be right. I'll never run out of bad things to say about Reagan, Nixon, Bush and Trump.

But.

It's just not that simple. There are as many attitudes co-opted by the Left that I find insufferable as on the Right. If you have to ask what those are, forgive me for lovingly venturing to suggest that you might be in too deep! The game of politics has become the game of judging others, creating distance and putting people in boxes so they can be written off. Such things wouldn't even be appropriate on an elementary playground. What do the children think of us?

There are life lessons I've learned from red-staters I put into practice every day. Moments I've appreciated with people I know vote differently than me, people whom I respect, have worked with, listen to. I'm tired of judging people. Aren't you? Doesn't it feel better to find common ground together? Isn't it invigorating rather to carry within you the Emerson quote, "every (wo)man is my master, in that I may learn from him?"

Think about this the next time you're tempted to fall into the Game. If you're in small-town middle America on the side of a road with a flat tire, a Republican will pull over and help you fix your tire. A Democrat will instead go blazing past without stopping, but will vote for infrastructure programs that help people with such problems. Which is the ideal solution?

Both. Obviously.

Democratic Left is a New York quarterly print magazine published by the Democratic Socialists of America. They've published a piece of mine in their latest issue without ever asking my political background, and for no other reason than that my piece compelled them. Maybe it will compel you too.  I'm a humanist, and humanism transcends the pesky labels we like to throw around these days.

If you live in NYC, pick up a copy! If you're elsewhere, click below for the article, which is about Seattle's crisis state and what we can do about it:

Give Us Shelter: A Bus Driver’s Story

And, further reading on related topics by yours truly:

• Understanding Love & Hate During Trump Nation
• More than Health, More than Money
• On Tom McCarthy's Stillwater
  

Felt this way before.

These are sensations I have before today appreciated. But distance away can clarify things, bring into sharp relief what you've forgotten was never ordinary.

I've been away from the 7 for over a year now for a collection of boring reasons, mostly pandemic and schedule-related (where did the breaks go?). Today I took a rare overtime shift to cover an expense, and when you take on overtime you don't get much say in the route; you take what's available, which was a C Line. But when you've got a C Line and you're Nathan, you do what you have to do, which is get to the base early and ask all the operators in sight if they're by chance about to do a 7, and could we please trade? Pretty please?

I'm pretty sure I made Amrit's day by trading my C for his 7. He didn't know when he woke up this morning that he'd get off an hour earlier doing a route he infinitely prefers! Amrit looked at me with pleasant surprise bordering on confusion, as in, is this guy for real? You actually want this?

Did I ever. I had to stop myself from skipping as I walked up to the relief point and took over the big monster, piloting a trolley bus for the first time in a year-plus, taking the turn off Jackson slowwww, the way you do when you're relishing every moving second of the new day.

After driving diesels in various far-flung and (currently) underpopulated corners of the county, I can say that driving trolleys in town is an altogether different job. I'm frankly surprised they carry the same rate of pay. There is so much more density to process and handle within each moment, from the coach to the wire to the cars to the pedestrians to your riders. There is the anticipation of problems, the need to read people faster and with greater stakes at hand. Time rubs against you lightly; you're living closer to the leading edge, where everything's happening at once and the best parts of yourself aren't just a help, but necessary to the success of this moment.

---

Of course there were the familiar faces. Melody is now in a wheelchair and the better for it, no longer wincing in pain at every step, able to smile more easily– though she always did, even when things were hard. She updates me on another regular, Charlene, who's broken her arm but is surviving. I'm touched she wanted me to know; she knew I would care.

There's a man seated next to Melody who might be her friend, might not be- it's not so clear-cut, in a community where strangers talk to each other. The distinction loses importance.
"That was nice a you," he grunted after I waited for a running passenger running the long run from Goodwill up to the King Street bus stop. He and I both know the stop was once much closer, and the knowledge of that shared history makes me more forgiving with runners there. You act differently when you know a place.

I notice more people using the front door to exit, which I like and encourage; more community, more chances to say thank you and interact. Bean-counters may not see the value in such things, but we out here do; a bus has the potential to be far more than a travelling bottom line. Yes, society today discourages real-world connection... but that doesn't mean we've stopped hungering for it. We have always been the social animal, and we will not outgrow our wiring in a lifetime.

Here's former regular Mia, bringing me fancy water from her trip to the store. Here's a young man smiling with eyes of recognition over his mask, giving me a fistpound through the shield glass, the way we used to with our bare hands. Do you remember how much we once touched each other?

I honk and wave at the folks sitting in "the circle," a half-ovular piece of landscaping on Henderson that forms the entry point to "the path," a walkway leading to the backside of Safeway that you're told to avoid at night. I recognized the three people sitting there getting day-drunk in the afternoon sun, and they lit up with joyous surprise at my double-tap and wave. Has any other bus honked hello at them since I did, pre-pandemic? I did so repeatedly as the day wore on, with the accumulating newer neighborhood faces seated there acclimating to this idea, a happy bus driver who says hi to us.

Makes no sense, but we'll take it.

---

The neighborhood continues to change. Many was the new apartment building I'd never seen before, complete with the American tendency toward utter architectural ignorance of history and place– but I looked for what, or whom, had the resilience to still be standing a year later. Look at that stalwart figure panhandling on the corner at Seward Park Avenue, antsy and alert, with an expression carved by time right out of Evans or Robert Frank, ignored by the smartphone-surfing white resident walking past. I have to wave. I have to give him true, real eye contact and respect, the kind he isn't getting from the new neighbors.

Another neighbor is sweeping the sidewalk at inbound Henderson. When did you last see someone volunteering to sweep up not their driveway or walk-up, but the public bus stop? Stewardship never became the buzzword many predicted it would, but in places like this, where the words neighborhood and community are still interchangeable, it lives on. Through my open doors I call out, "hey, thank you for cleanin' up the neighborhood! I appreciate it!" He responds with a friendly nod.

At a short break I connect with Karen, another operator, talking together about the breaks. As an aside she says, except the recovery time "there's nothing wrong with this route–" and I smile inwardly, inspired. How many good things does that say about her outlook, priorities, her good character? No one says that about the 7.

In comes Jennifer, who responds to my attempt to place her by explaining we went to high school together ("Ms. Ledesma's math class!"). As she prepares to exit I wave her up, saying, "I don't usually drive at this time so it's unlikely I'll see you again. How's life??"
She projects confidence, the relaxed peace with oneself neither of us had twenty years ago. I tell her about my day, bubbling over. "Routes like this bring me a lot of joy."
"You're rare," she laughed.
I'm just learning from my favorite colleagues, I think to myself, remembering Karen. We inspire each other with the best parts of our imperfect selves.

---

Not everything on the 7 makes sense. Here's a collection of jackets and rags draped around a figure, a mixture of neon athletic wear and fluid-soaked undergarments stumbling into the street at northbound Genesee. What's he doing, I wonder as I amble closer with my bus.

He's pouring out liquid detergent from the bottle into lanes 1 and 2 of Rainier Avenue, waving it around in arcing splash-patterns only he understood. Is he cleaning the streets like our earlier street-sweeper was, if with a more gonzo touch?

No. He's making himself a water bottle. He returns to the sidewalk drinking fountain with his now-empty detergent bottle and begins the process of rinsing it out, or trying to, all the while gyrating with wild rhythmic enthusiasm to the hot beat coming from the battered '90s minivan in front of me. He sees me through my glass doors and calls out cheerily in a language I can't understand, say-singing to me as his body bounces up and down, his detergent bottle occasionally filling up amidst all his chaotic excitement. It's as complete a portrait I can imagine of the happy, zany absurdity of bus-driving life I so relish and appreciate.

However, the 7 and everything I love about it was most fully summed up by a different incident, earlier in the day. Melody's personable maybe-friend, mentioned above, was still on the bus and seated up front. Toward the back, two boisterous friends, a man and woman, perhaps coworkers or college classmates, were laughing it up together.

Were they laughing at me? As an operator you often suspect that, but as a frequent passenger I know it's usually not so. As ever in life, it's usually not about you!

But I'm more of a presence on the bus than many an operator. I call out the stops, greet everyone, yell out thank you as folks jump out. And I think I was new to the duo in the back, and thought I heard them discussing bus drivers. Who cares if they laugh at you, I reminded myself. You don't do this so people will like you. You do it because it makes you feel good. If they like you that's extra.

---

The two friends got off at Laetitia. So did another man, a solitary forty-something fellow with dark sunglasses, shaved head and a polo, following them out the back door. They walked forward, toward the red light I was now waiting for. Mr. Sunglasses walked behind the back of the bus and dodged across Rainier's four lanes, now also walking forward toward the intersection but on the other side of the street. My bus driver brain clicked: something missing here. The picture's not quite right.

That's it: the bicycle. He'd gotten on with a bike. I honked and honked again, softer at first and then really laying on it, lay-tapping in irregular rhythms to get his attention, my window open and waving out, never mind that everyone's staring now. You've just gotta do it.

But he doesn't hear me. I decide to yell.
"EEYYYY!"
What is it about the human voice that works so well?

He looks up and over, responding to my wave but unsure why.
Me, pointing to the rack, at the top of my lungs: "Do you want your bicycle???"
"Oh, sshhhhhhiiitt!!!" he yells. The word has never before played as a roar of equal parts recognition and gratitude, but that's what he made it now, springing into action and athletically dodging back across Rainier, arriving in front of my bus in seconds flat, me lowering the front of the bus to expedite.

"DAYUMN," he breathes, shaking his head and looking at me. My doors and window are open and I can hear him as he adds loudly, "you really are one of the best."
Melody's friend in the front seat has witnessed it all and echoes the sentiment. The two laughing companions are now standing outside by the front of the bus, having seen everything too. Whatever they were saying before is erased as they look at me anew. The woman leans toward my front doors to say with conviction, "You are amazing. Seriously." Her friend: "you're a hella cool bus driver, for real." The sincerity in his eyes reached right through me, eager with the need to tell me this sort of caring happening in the real world meant something to him.

I thanked them with hands in supplication and a half-bow that was only partly in jest, grateful for their appreciation and respect–  which was more exciting to me than anything I'd just done. The light turned green and a white Chevy Prizm to my left began to move forward too. There was a young girl in the backseat of who'd watched the whole thing and understood, and she smile-waved at me till she was out of sight.

---

The moment would echo throughout the later afternoon, as people conveyed their gratitude with gestures of their own. An Ethiopian woman getting off through the middle doors at Henderson, nodding thanks to me with her hand on her heart, as I sometimes do. The Chinese grandmothers at 12th Avenue, eyes wide with delighted recognition. How is it they remembered me, tiny blip in their lives that I must be?? Or another woman walking past my open door at the terminal, who'd been on earlier, with deep surprise in her grateful eyes. I can still see that look.

This outpouring of love toward me is of course gratifying, a humbling gift I'm thankful for, but it also has me worried: how are these folks being treated generally, such that what I'm doing– which I don't think is all that much– is cause for such vocal thanks? What have these folks become accustomed to? How is it they value my sweet nothings (as it were) so much more than other neighborhoods do?

Only they can answer. For myself I can merely say I'm thrilled they're able to somehow perceive my joy at being out here, my appreciation for their respect and my desire to serve. The exchange feels so equal, so unique compared to my experiences in more affluent neighborhoods. Nothing described above takes place in those areas, or occasionally at best; whereas all the above is from a single day. These moments of communities coming together, of strangers reaching out with love and togetherness, are to me life-giving, intoxicating, a rejuvenation that makes me forget the passage of time.

That's not to say I don't appreciate the peaceful quietude of my current northern routes. I'm happy to pick up an entire generation whose idea of communicating is playing with their phones.

But boy, do they not know what they're missing.

Recently a woman yelled up toward me, "there's a guy smoking crack in the back of the bus! Tell him to get off!"

To which I immediately replied, into the microphone and at the young twentysomething man furtively kneeling over in the back bench, "okay my buddy in the back, we can't be doin' that in here. Gotta take it outside. I know it's hard, but outta respect for everyone else in here, there's no smokin' crack on the bus. Yup, that's one of the rules..."

And so on. The woman left us; it was her stop. After she had, the man stood up and earnestly said, entirely convincingly, that "I was just picking up some trash, that's all! God. I don't know why she was picking on me like that. Probably just 'cause I look like a bum or something."

I stared at him. Whom do you believe, in a moment like that? I had nothing to go off of. I had to admit I hadn't seen him smoking anything. Between the two, his words seemed more plausible to me, uttered with the heartfelt indignation of being falsely accused. Also, the woman was gone, and I needed to get along with who's still on the bus. Which meant this guy.

After an awkward pause I said, not through the mic anymore but just with a friendly raised voice, the better to be more personable, "I'm sorry, dude. I misunderstood the situation. I apologize."
"Naw bro, you're cool. You're always good to me."
"Thanks man. I didn't mean to embarrass you, I's just trying to figure out..."
"Oh it's totally cool. People're always pickin' on me. You're one of the good ones, man, seriously. You're always respectful to everyone. We appreciate it."

He got off at the next stop, by the now-defunct encampment in Lake City. Immediately after he did, another person who'd been sitting in the back now piped up. This young man, a hospital employee and regular rider on his way home, said, "he was smoking crack. I saw him loading his pipe and everything."
"Shoot. Thanks for letting me know. Well. Now I feel like an idiot! I have no idea what's going on from way up here!"
"Oh no, it's whatever!"

What compels people to distort the truth in their favor? Everyone does it a little, but there are a special insecure few who prey on the gullible beliefs of others. We might label this as cruel; I'd prefer to call it lonely. Imagine the pressure of trying to get by in a world of peers who seem to have it together, who don't give you their attention. I know I'm flawed, you may think in that situation, but how can I hide that from the world?

Youngsters make mistakes like the rest of us, only they don't know it's okay to admit it. They don't know everyone else is imperfect too, and there's no need to try so hard. Thank goodness our brains dwell on the positives of childhood... because we forget how hard it is. Do you remember the stress, the anxiety of pretending you've got it together when you don't, searching for ways to conceal your embarrassment or shame?

When do we discover we don't need to do that?

I believe the young man was so convincing in defending himself because a part of him really wanted it to be true. We build up lies to cover up our embarrassments, and his lies had more adamant conviction than the two other people's truths. Why? Perhaps because he had a bigger stake. He needed those listening to believe him, because if we believed him we would be unable to perceive his guilt and shame. And I'm as gullible a person as you'll find; since I'm always trying for kindness, I assume others are too. I trust in the goodness of people, and though I've suffered greatly on a few occasions as a result, I'd still conclude it's brought me more good than harm. My book and blog wouldn't even exist if I was darkly suspicious, assuming the worst in everyone.

How would I have reacted if he'd told the truth? I'd have felt gladdened by the courage of his vulnerability, closer rather than further from him. But how would he have felt, I wonder? It makes sense to hide his illegal behavior, but I like to imagine him trusting I'd still treat him as human; discovering with relief that he didn't have to pretend in order for me to respect him. Is there a greater anxiety than projecting a false version of yourself to others as a way of hiding from your real problems?

I think he felt more accosted by the fact of someone designating him as inhuman, as a failure. When he told me he was innocent, he wasn't trying to convince me he was drug-free so much as human, real, unique, more than a statistic. And he knew from previous rides with me that I understood that about him, no matter his current circumstances. Our subsequent exchange of respect was as truthful as anything else spoken in those five minutes, and perhaps more resonant. I hope he felt appreciated by me.

We make the best decisions we can with the information we have. Which of today's addicted souls will live long enough to transition to a different modus of problem-solving? Who will render today's misdeeds a distant regret, paved over by insight and better experience? I'm hopeful he'll be among that lot. As I parked my bus and headed home, the moment from the day I carried most gladly in my pocket wasn't the reporting woman or clarifying hospital worker but the young man's smile, the smile of someone appreciating kindness and doing their best in the situation they've been handed, trying, however imperfectly, to get through the day.

You'll make it, friend. You still had your spark in the lowest moments. I saw it.

I'll see you down the road.

There is a bewilderment that sets in with age. We look around ourselves in mild confusion, heavy from invisible blows, unable to summon the energy to do much more than wonder, and hopefully marvel. What world is this that swirls around me, and when did it replace the one I thought I knew?

It sometimes happens that older people, in having lived for a longer time, are more likely to have made mistakes and therefore be forgiving of others who have misstepped also. To be understanding. Sometimes they're more prone to recognize a person is greater than their worst moment, and that people have the capacity to grow, learn, improve.

Certain other folks, sometimes younger, have the privilege of knowing none of the above. They have the luxury of being unforgiving. They can be didactic in their morality, without compromise, and not know their error. I've done this. But life is not so clear-cut. Life is the trick of accepting multiple truths, and holding them in one hand.

There was a time when I would have looked down at Matt Damon's character in Stillwater (2021, in theatres now) and judged him, written him off as another Oklahoma redneck, defining him by his reductive political views, prejudices, and lack of culture.

I can no longer do that.

The simple fact is that life is more complicated. As director Tom McCarthy points out (more below) about his film's protagonist and others like him, many of these people don't spend a lot of time thinking or talking about politics. That's often more of an urban pastime. The immediate concerns and realities of America's rural poor are the ones we forget about when we chastise them.

Also, if the journey of one's twenties is largely the journey of coming to terms with one's own insignificance, I, as someone in my mid-thirties, am simply unable to consider myself worthy of judging others. Who am I to deem what "culture" is, or assert my definitions of better and worse on another's experience? We grow when we try to understand people, not when we demonize them. We begin to see they are like us: flawed and confused and trying to get by. Doing their best with what they have.

McCarthy's excellent new film, Stillwater, has no political axe to grind and sees Damon's protagonist as merely the product of his environment that he is, trying to negotiate a world larger than he ever imagined. He thinks he can fix everything. McCarthy deftly interweaves the bewilderment that comes with aging described above with the different and humbling confusion of realizing one isn't the hero one always thought oneself to be. Casting Matt Damon is a clever move: he brings a baggage of extreme competence from other films. We assume he'll win. But his– perhaps our– notions of American individualism, exceptionalism, and moral authority are in for a wakeup call. We are left finally at the film's end with a moment of reflection I find both crushingly real and strangely optimistic. It's never too late for an awakening, and they often happen of their own accord, almost in spite of ourselves.

This is something to be thankful for.

---

Avoid the film's trailer, which amusingly misadvertises it as a thriller! Check out these interviews with the director instead:

• Variety: ‘Stillwater’ Director Tom McCarthy on Casting Matt Damon Against Type and Amanda Knox Criticism
  
• The Observer: How ‘Stillwater’ Director Tom McCarthy Challenged Matt Damon’s Hero Image and Tried to Capture Reality
• UpRoxx: Tom McCarthy Tells Us Why ‘Stillwater’ Is A Metaphor For America
• The Boston Globe: Tom McCarthy on cracking the case of ‘Stillwater’

EDIT: I'm bumping this up by request– sounds like more of us are thinking about becoming bus drivers!

Generally, bus drivers don’t talk about driving. They talk about people. You might think this job's greatest challenge is maneuvering those big lugs, but it's funny how easy the driving eventually becomes. It's our planet's fellow cohabitants that make this gig the challenge it is, and what justify its status as the all-singing, all-dancing customer service profession of all time. Nothing else comes close.

It's possible to have a great time doing this job. I promise (days like this and this are what keep me comin' back!). Crusty senior colleagues will tell you it's only a matter of time till your enthusiasm cracks. They have the experience to back that up– their own. Their experiences are valid, but they don't have to be yours. Nod and smile politely, appreciate the good qualities and ideas they do have, but remember: you have control over your experience. I've been doing this for twelve years, and I've driven the "worst" routes, at the "worst" times, on the "worst" days, for years on end. I love this stuff. They're going to tell you you're going to become miserable, gain weight, become jaded, injured... but the evidence is that some of us are still here. Yes, you'll find your patience pushed on certain days to the absolute limit. But.

You have control over your own experience. 

This job, like others but moreso, is a mirror; you'll get out of it just what you put in, in unexpected ways. Not everyone you greet will respond, and not everyone you're kind to will return the favor. That's okay. Things come back in a larger, subtler way. You say hello and help out, not to get kudos or acknowledgment (though you'll often get that), but to do your part. To feel the relaxed ease of being your good self, of having nothing to prove and nowhere to be in a hurry. 

You're getting paid; you need to be nice. They're not getting paid. They don't have to be anything. They're going through things you couldn't imagine. Just help and acknowledge, help and acknowledge. They may not love you today, but they may later. Others certainly will. Positive attitudes get noticed, and respect has massive currency on the street.

You may have a few days where you go home stressed or unhappy. The important thing is, as they say in dieting, to not let it become a habit. Eat that wedding cake, but not every day. Identify patterns of negative thought or behavior early on and do something about them. Sure, you'll have a few days out of the year that go spectacularly poorly. It happens. Don't be discouraged; as the wise man said, we learn more from failing than succeeding. The trick is to just not do it too often! Think about how you'll deal with whatever it is next time, how to think about it next time– because there will be a next time, believe me. The fix might be as simple as a tone change of tone or perspective. 

Below are a few links I urge you to check out. Maybe you only have time to bookmark this page for later. I get that. But keep in mind these three bullet points as you start your next trip:

• Do not concern yourself over schedule or fare. You can't control those. Disregard them. You only need to do two things: be nice, and don't hit anything. You can control those.
• Take care of your body. It's easier than you think, and more than worth it. if your hurting physically, everything else is that much harder.
• Pretend to be happy. The funniest thing will happen: that pretending will start turning into actual happiness. It's bizarre, and I don't how it works, but by God, am I glad it does.

I don't have all the answers, but I do have a few:

Two lists you might find useful:

1. A Love Letter for My Colleagues: Exercises and Stretches for Operators (mostly physical stuff)
2. What I've Learned From Other Bus Drivers (mostly customer stuff. If you click on only one link here, let it be this one)

A few stories on topics that might be stewing on the brain:

• Bad days;
• Being new (and skip-stopping!);
• Handling fights and other security issues;
• Being afraid;
• Homeless laziness;​
• R-e-s-p-e-c-t;
• Littering, et cetera;
• Sleepers;
• Being (un)deserving;
• Race (an overview);
• Race (a story);
• Defusing scary people;
• Unwanted attention;
• Tone of voice;
• Positive gestures and their value;
• The importance of staying 'insane;' and
• The Big Picture.

Let me know how you're doing. Seriously. We're here to help. Say hello if you see me!