"We don't want RapidRide," Marcus told me one night. I'd been telling him stops would be eliminated, and how the 49 would be separated from the 7. "We never asked for it, and we don't want it!"

I said, "It's amazing how much they don't get that, huh?"
"No it ain't. They never asked us. Oh they did they lil' outreach thing, and they think they asked us. But they didn't. We fine as it is."

And how.

1. A Few Facts

The 7 already runs at RapidRide service levels, with the same frequencies or better than all existing Rapid lines. It has RapidRide stop spacing, as many routes do: once every five blocks, rather than the old once every two. It has two Night Owls, not the normal one. It has numerous infrastructure investments in place from over the years– bus bulbs, signal priority, lane rechannelization, sidewalk expansion. It's in great shape.

And yet, you'll hear lamenting among transit enthusiast circles these days, about how the Rainier RapidRide has been indefinitely postponed. You'll notice those circles are overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly above a certain income bracket, and most importantly, overwhelmingly not users of the 7.

I've had variations of above conversation at least a hundred times (not an exaggeration). The dominant, prevailing sentiment among working-class people in Rainier Valley is that they prefer the 7 to its RapidRide alternate, for concrete and sound reasons which make sense. They like that the 7:
• Serves the Lake Washington Apartment complex, a large and significant facility on Seward Park Avenue (where a number of my coworkers and innumerable passengers reside).
• Serves the businesses and residents in the vicinity of Seward Park Ave, 57th, and Rainier, a triangle of sorts clustered with restaurants, hair salons, bars, mini-marts, and gyms. This is the densest and most commercial part of Rainier Beach.
• Serves the Prentice loop.
• They especially like that it thru-routes with the 49 at night for direct service to and from Broadway. Many of the dishwashers and servers in your favorite Capitol Hill restaurants, the bouncers and janitors at your clubs of choice– live along the Rainier, MLK, and Delridge corridors (you knew that; who can afford Cap Hill anymore?). They would prefer if it linked more often (a la the old Aloha St turnback for Broadway-only 7s), but nighttime is when it most matters, because that's when you least want to transfer buses, especially downtown.

The Rainier RapidRide would do none of these things.

2. Vis-a-vis Light Rail, BRT, and the 7X

Most people hopefully by now know Link is not a 7 alternative; not only are buses and trains entirely different types of coverage, Rainier and MLK are different corridors. But for the one spot where they meet, the 7 remains the preferred alternative. Why?

It's either faster or equivalent in travel time than transferring at Mt Baker, and of course more convenient. After hours, only out-of-towners or non-residents transfer at Mt Baker to continue downtown– this is especially true during off-peak hours– and sometimes we help them out, telling them that by the time they've expended the 10 minutes it takes to cross the street and walk up to the platform and waited for the next train (another 15– or nowadays, 30 minutes at night), we'll already be downtown. When I used to drive the 7 in rush-hour mornings, sometimes– if we got stuck in enough traffic on Rainier at I-90– we'd take long enough to get to 5th & Jackson that we'd be able to see the passengers who'd left us for Link walking up out of International District station.

Whatever floats their boat, I guess.

In the southbound direction, there's a woman who boards in the U-District in the evenings and departs at Capitol Hill Link station– only to always reappear when I arrive at southbound Mount Baker station, where she reboards to continue her journey home. She always walks by me too quickly, or I'd tell her she could be riding one vehicle home instead of waiting for three(!); I'm literally the same bus she chases through town by transferring to Link.

In other words, speed isn't a concern on the 7. At best bus lanes between Walker and Charles would be appreciated during rush hour; and the only reason the 7 Express was underused was because it was mishandled. With as few trips as it had at the end, of course no one used it. The trick is to make service attractive, and they'll come. Make it more than an opportunity trip while waiting for the local 7. Run it frequently during peak and intermittently all day, like the 9 (this has been proposed to me over a dozen times by passengers over the year), and make it truly an express: five or maybe six stops total, all south of Walker.

(You're wondering why a Rapid line would need to replace the 7 at all. In other cities, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is overlaid onto existing service, so it can be truly 'rapid,' making only a few stops while the local route, or 'shadow,' covers the in-between stops; in King County, BRT is used to replace existing routes, which is why they need to make so many stops. Converting a route to Rapid format is a cost savings for Metro, because RapidRide is in large part federally funded. With a limitless budget you'd just keep the 7 and run the R Line on top of it, and everyone would be happy.)

There are other concerns: Link doesn't run late enough (last trips on Sundays are around 11:30), and unless you have the incredible fortune of having both endpoints of your commute right outside rail stations, Link always requires a transfer. My dishwashing friends don't want to change buses on their way home. If they work in kitchens near Broadway and Pike or Broadway and Mercer, they'd rather walk a block to a bus that'll take them clear to Rainier and Holden, as the 49/7 does, than face the inconvenience of using rail. That's doubly a concern now that Link runs less frequently, and the 49 has been reduced to thirty-minute service(!) at night.

3. The Gentry

There needs to be a strategic shift away from a transfer-based network during this time when service is infrequent. I must also add my enormous preference for front-door boarding for safety concerns: greeting each incoming passenger with respect and acknowledgment allows me more control over the space, a better read of the room, a sense of community, and a safer environment. This is huge. On a route like the 7, respect and community are what will get you and your passengers through the night. I cannot achieve that with RapidRide's all-door boarding. I cannot assert community, positive atmosphere, acknowledgment or safety with all-door boarding. This is why I don’t drive the E Line very much, even though I was all over the 358 for years. I had tools for making it work back then that I no longer have.

Gentrification is when change happens in a neighborhood without that neighborhood's consent. I have the ability to speak for the community because I'm there every evening. I've been there every evening for years. I rode the 7 regularly as a child and have driven it off and on since 2009, drove it five nights a week for four years straight, and remain on it as my route of choice with as few as three exceptions in eight years (let me take a break every now and again!). Basically, I've been out there, and I've taken the time to get to know the people.

They are the least liked, least heard, and most disrespected people in the city, and I am proud to be their friend. I choose them because they are kinder to me. They say hello to me. They value respect.

Yes, gentrification is unstoppable. Capitalism is a beast with a lifespan, and it is aging. As more money becomes held by fewer, larger amounts of people lose access to resources. We've watched as the new buildings have sprouted up. We've felt the folks from the north and east encroaching in. We've looked about in unspoken mutual reflection as the first white faces stayed on the bus south of Genesee, then Edmunds, then Orcas. Orcas! When did that ever happen?

Back during the heyday of blogs, there was a blog called "Stuff White People Like." In a delightfully amusing and now-deleted post, it once noted that one of the Stuffs White People like is public transit– as long as it's not buses. Isn't it funny how that's true? Planes, trains and all the rest, sure– but you don't see Lego making a city bus. There's a stigma, and it's stuck. Fixed-route service is somehow sometimes able to transcend that stigma, and RapidRide has thusly ascended. Something about all the stations and priorities and– well, the just plain specialness associated with Rapid transit. I have friends I cherish in every rung of the class ladder, and for whatever reason my affluent confidants have no allergy to RapidRide.

That is one reason why the Rainier RapidRide counts as gentrification. But the biggest reason is that the neighborhood doesn't give concrete feedback easily (Metro has sure tried, believe me. No organization is more equity-oriented). You just have to be out there, feeling the pulse of the place, how it shifts and speaks in years. Can those who’ve suffered at the hands of authority be expected to give their honest feedback to authorities on command, on terms not set by them?

4. Silent Relief

I write all this because you will have read elsewhere that it's a calamity that the Rainier Rapid is significantly postponed. Don't you worry, reader. Take it from me. We scoff at that lament the way we scoff when a certain publication once actually proposed terminating the 7 at Othello St and not even serving Rainier Beach. We know a wrongheaded idea when we see one, and usually we just tolerate it.

The R Line wouldn't have been as good as the 7 (mostly because: no service to Seward Park residential and business areas, Prentice, and no night service to Broadway), but it would've still been good service. We would've put up with it, as we put up with so many other things.

The night Trump was elected in 2016, I noticed both halves of my route were in mourning, but the Broadway half was more distraught than the Rainier half. I was confused by this, because although Trump's policies would hurt all of us, the Rainier crowd would be more disproportionately damaged. I asked Will about it, phrasing the question as delicately as I could. He was only too happy to reply.

"Nathan, you gotta understand. We're the black man in America. We're used to getting shat on. Now these white folks out here are experiencing what that feels like for many of them probably the first time. But for us it's a way of life. And what we do, is we get on with it. We keep our head down and keep goin'. Survive. Hell, Nathan, you're a person of color. You know what I'm talkin' about. We survive, baby! 'S what we're good at!"

And that's what the folks would've done with the Rainier RapidRide. But in a challenging time, the indefinite postponement of the R Line is, for the significant portion of working-class people I know in the Rainier Valley community, a cause célèbre. Even if it's only temporary this is an enormous win for underserved communities in the Valley. On this particular issue, we couldn't be happier.

I know I don't speak for the whole community; of course that's ridiculous. I don't even speak for the whole 7-riding community. But I at least have the ability to speak for some of the 7-riding community, not abstractly, not from behind an armchair, and not with well-intentioned groundlessness like certain outlets I won't name, but rather from years-long interpersonal primary experience. My word is not definitive, and I know folks will disagree with me; when they do you can bet they won't quote this paragraph. Listen to them. Consider their views. But I say also listen to the people who are actually affected, the gestures of other cultures, voices on the late-night streets.

5. No Blame

I will also reiterate what I've said above and multiple times on record earlier: Metro has bent over backwards trying to get feedback over this. I do not point my finger at them. These neighborhoods are tricky. I don't just have good friends up in the King Street offices, but on the R Line planning committee itself. Their work is tough, and I loved the community-based approach they were taking. My biggest hope is that they'd be able to prove wrong every anxiety I list here, and in reviewing their plans I must share a healthy optimism. They heard my concerns and even spent time on my route, and their RapidRide Art Plan is the best, most inclusive, insightful, community-engaged and people-oriented civic proposal I've ever read (and I don't just say that because I'm in it!).

I'm not interested in assigning blame here. I'm just highlighting voices who may not have been heard in the outreach. Metro’s gotten some good feedback, and I’m merely adding to it. I hear these voices often, have noted the passion with which they speak, and have noted that they don't feel heard. Maybe a lesson can be learned from the recent 106 restructure, which was met with nigh-unanimous and continuing enthusiastic street-level approval.

This postponement's win is that gentrification, even if can't be stopped, can be delayed. Maybe this delay is leading to the bigger win we all need, in that it gives us the time to think critically about how to move forward, and reconfigure what some see as gentrification as something else entirely. If the R Line were given the leeway to happen exactly as described in that internal 2020 Art Plan, which had a lot to say about community and social geography, the Valley would be in good hands.

One can hope.

It’s become a tradition of mine to write a rapturous thank-you post following any big event of mine. You know, where I just can't help myself and have to praise the high heavens that any of it happened.

Why do I do this? It isn't even only with my own stuff (see below for an index). I write about the Biden win here, Bob Ferguson here, and the 2017 Women's March here, to cite just a few examples, in similar terms. I look in the eyes of the people who come to my events, and I just have to raise my hands to the sky. How does any of it happen?

I wasn't raised to expect any of this.

Forgive me if I'm overcome with gratitude, or wishing to divulge more details about this or that event. The great composers wrote devotional music with an analogous fervor, the ancients wrote their psalms, and before that gods were praised and stories told around open fires.

We feel better when we're thankful.

In this 2017 story, Shoeshiner Tim tells me, "the world don't owe you nothin'." I write in the post about how and why those words so liberated to me. Tim has since passed on, but I carry his words in my pocket. Thankfulness is how I stay sane and how I stay happy. I have to keep front and center what's more important than any accolade; I know I don't deserve the goodwill that's been thrown my way. But I do my best to earn it.

So without further ado, let's talk about the four events I just gave at the Redmond Library!

---

You may recall my book, The Lines that Make Us, was Redmond Library's, Microsoft's, and the City of Redmond's choice for their 2020 Summer Reading Program. I'm touched particularly because I worked as a page at Redmond Library for six years, and never for one second imagined my book would even be in their system, let alone a well-above-average 36 copies, nor certainly their choice for the single Summer Book. They usually choose a few titles per summer. This all ended a month ago, and I'm still blushing.

Then there's the Friends of the Redmond Library financing this whole thing, and the exquisite turnout across four events. People who came more than once. Faces who beamed at me through the screens, their essence cutting through the pixels like so much chaff in the breeze. Dozens upon dozens, from teens to ninety-year olds, all with a kind word. It's more than I could ever dream of for an online event.

What particularly strikes me about this event (or four events, rather; they'll go online eventually) is the full-circle nature they engender within me. It goes beyond the fact that I once worked there. It was my first job. I was lonely as a child, and at 14 I began volunteering, coming in with a degree of frequency that quickly led to a hire. The staff, a delightful gaggle of mid-aged women and younger, kindly associates, pages and librarians, took me under their wing with kindness and loving warmth. Kindness and loving warmth? Who finds such things in junior high school? There are many moments from across those six years I best remember now not as events but emotions, gentle nudges from a loving past. The words have names and faces: Bev, Kim, Lynn, Joe, Shuja, Carol, Andy, Malinda, Margaret, Angela, Heather, Sue, Darcy, and many more (I’m not leaving your names out, you others! Blame it on the word count!)… and Dan. Most of these people have drifted out of my life, but Dan has remained a presence.

Very few people have known me for more than several years, let alone twenty. Did any part of me know he and I would collaborate two decades later on a project as important to him or I as this? Dan moved mountains of the most personal nature to make this happen. Many other lovelies were involved (here’s looking at you, Dori and Mary), but for much of the process and because of our history, I felt a certain uniquely collegiate affinity working for Dan. The echoes of years past infused our happy dealings now.  A lost memory of walking by him on a weekend afternoon, or me shelving CDs while listening to him help customers the nearby reference desk; a tall fellow, gentle, measured in movement and reflective in speech. Do you know the kind of person whose chuckle you can always trust as truthful?

It was a haven, the Redmond Library. I felt a sense of belonging in that space, with those people, which I’m convinced played a role in who I am today. In this book and its outlook existing in the first place. For many years the blog was called “The View From Nathan’s Bus;” I still think of it as that, even if it’s now just titled “Blog” in the navigation bar above, for space reasons. It’s about a certain choice of perspective, less mine than the one I’ve absorbed by such kind souls as Dan and the others. Getting to do this series felt like a completion of the promise those early teen years held, returning something to the folks who helped me find my footing. My view. The book contains echoes of their generosity, as filtered through by me, by time, and by the folks on the street.

How many great things exist because someone took a youngster under their wing, made them feel loved?

Thanks, you wonderful people.

---

More Nathan thank-tastic gratitude explosions:
here (one of my first– Seattle Art Museum),
here (on co-hosting with the great Susanna Ryan),
here (an epic 3-parter about Elliot Bay),
here (on the book launch plus last color darkroom show),
here (Seattle Channel),
here (Seattle's 35 Most Influential),
here (Wall of Fame),
here (winning best film at Amsterdam),
here (WA State book awards),
here (MOHAI lecture),
here (PLU author lectures),
here (Top 10 bestseller status), and
here (MOHAI again, clarifying an issue that concerned me).

I think of photography as being more like painting. I want to drape the space with my gaze, let its textures whisper and drift about. The earliest attacks on the validity of photography as an art form were that it captured existence with such replicatory exactness that it couldn't possibly be art; it quite simply looked too much like life.

But you can do so much more than duplicate external appearances. The intense subjectivity of photography has been discussed by better minds than I, especially with regard to choosing what's in and not within the frame; but there's more than that too. There is the matter of how you let colors streak across the scene and with what intensity. How rich you let the blacks bleed, and what you do to make the moment sing with the vibrant, heady, and contemplative rush with which I often find myself seeing life.

I feel connected to that full-bodiedness when I affect these manipulations by hand, through analogue means, in keeping with the tactile language of lived existence. There is no HDR here, no late-night tinkering or showcasing of dexterous software. These are not rows of pixels but pictures of light burned onto silver crystals, my attempts to conduct the ephemeral, to try to add myself to that impossibly alluring dance between light and emulsion. I hope you enjoy.

Click here for the images and an essay of what I was seeing, or trying to see, in Milan.

Click here for photography in other cities, essays on those locations, and more.

Let us use the word we, in reference to ourselves. 

Let us recognize the beauty of what has happened and trust in goodness again, as we should have done the whole time, as perhaps we did do. Has the muscle for such faith grown weak, from four years of buckling strain? 

I walk into the world abused and disliked, as you do. But what do we convey to others if we let that determine our outlook?

We do not lead with those things.

We lead with our best selves stepping forward, giving out light. Be strong, light, easy. Trusting. I don't get much out of being suspicious, fearing the worst in people. I believe in goodness. I assume it. Yes, I'm disappointed when I'm wrong, but mainly: I see it more. I experience it more. I think you know how good that feels. Participating in cocreating its birth, over and over again.

---

Now is the time for joy. We lived through this past week as nail-biters, but history will look at the electoral tally and call this a landslide. They will see it as decisive. The country took its country back, and then some. In a world where you can't undo time, we have done the best and most beautiful thing we can: avert further disaster. 

We will discuss the complications and the other elections, but for the World, for History, the primary concentration of attention will be on the gesture. Biden's decisive landslide– the final tally will be historically perceived as numerically sweeping even if it was a nail-biter for those of us who were there– his decisive landslide will be the triumphant and conclusive rejoinder to a man who will now live in the ignominy not only of losing the popular vote twice, but in joining the short list of presidents rejected by the people they led, the first single-term presidency in nearly three decades.

His political career began as a joke. We didn't take seriously that he might win. For a man who so desperately wants to be liked, he now ends that career in a deeper hole of ridicule than he ever could have imagined; a man who ran himself into the ground unable to close his mouth after throwing a four-year tantrum. No popular figure in recent memory has more thoroughly steeped themselves as a pariah, at least for those with eyes to see. The meltdown we are about to witness in the coming days will define the term sore loser as it has never been before. 

---

But I don't wish to gloat. No need to emphasize his poor qualities; he'll do that just fine on his own. Let us instead breathe in the joy. Let us take to the streets– not against something, but for something. Let us smile, as I did in 2008, driving the 545 at 7 A.M., when an African-American man got on the crowded bus and sat next to me. 

We were the only people of color on the bus, and I was the only young person, but I don't know if any of that mattered, because he looked at my face and he knew. Like minds. He knew I got it. We were screaming with joy in our silence, beaming at each other like the sun's first rays over frost, very soon unable to keep from spilling out in conversation with each other. Shaking our heads in jubilation. 

America. 

What is born must be reborn, and it is born again. We have just rebirthed our country. 

Trump's lasting legacy will be a numerical figure.

People are generally remembered for one thing, and it tends either to be the biggest thing they do, the worst thing they do, or the last thing they do. Heaven help if you're a popular figure with an action in your life that manages to be all three. You're doomed. It's a foregone conclusion that'll be your only act which publicly outlasts you.

Trump's legacy will be a number. It will be the number of dead women, men and children who could have lived if he had acted on the coronavirus.

After enough time, most of the other acts will be forgotten. This won't be. People remember numbers. Sometimes men do unforgivable things they are later forgiven for, perhaps because they earnestly try to improve themselves, and the people around them believe humans can grow and change.

There will be no such understanding here.

The number dooms him. It is large enough it can't go away, but that isn't everything: it is also small enough that people can wrap their head around it. These are the ways in which fame becomes ignominy. 

---

I listened to a man on the bus one night, musing to a friend of his. The speaker was a spry, wiry sixty-something, holding a skateboard and sporting silver dreads with a jean jacket and turtleneck, both of sensible size; he was a touch scruffy, a man both educated and earthy, from a multiracial somewhere. He'd talk about fishing. Or skateboarding. But he always had a book under his arm too.

On this night– years ago– he spoke a thought which seemed to come from nowhere. It was a musing unrelated to their conversation, the sort of thing you build up to in your mind, but which to the listener comes as a surprise.

He said, "Man, I'd rather have no money at all, and be respected, than be the richest man in the world and have everybody hate me."

Mr. Trump did not think about that when he entered the public stage. He lacks this man's reflective abilities. Becoming a pariah is one tough rock to climb out from under. You need commitment, charisma, and an ocean of goodwill. He lacks all three.

---

Years from now, a high school student is going to read about our time period in his history book. He'll be sitting in Social Studies thinking about girls, mildly bored, alternating between looking out the window and idly tapping his pencil eraser on the desk. These will be the days before he settles into himself, those fraught and restless days of youth, when your own problems bounded ahead of you, taking up most of the view. But something will distract him out of his reverie. It'll be the chapter about us.

Way back in the early twenty-first century, they elected a tyrant whose infantile rage and abuses of power recalled ancient Rome, the worst of the monarchies, and mid-1900s Europe and Asia. Despite having a democratic system designed from the start to prevent precisely such occurrences– all that stuff about checks and balances we had to study last month– he will learn that no action was taken. A flawed voting system resulted in a despot taking over and abusing others exactly as he was predicted to do, and worse. Much worse.

Then they voted him into office again.

When he reads that he'll pause. They also didn't fix the election system that got him there in the first place? His earlier reverie is forgotten. He is now very interested. Riveted, actually. And confused.

"Wow," he'll think. "They must have been complete morons."

He will be right.

Vote.

We aren't given a lot of chances to actually do something about world affairs. I know it's discouraging. I tend to focus on what I can do for other people on an individual level; there you can do a lot. More than you think. But we do get one chance to make a difference on the larger stage, and this is that chance. Don't not vote, and then walk in marches later. You want to be qualified to complain, right?

Vote. Let the future see that you tried.

---
​

• Here's what I wrote the morning after the 2016 election.

And my thoughts on:

• Understanding where differently minded voters are coming from.
• The flawed voting system clouds a positive fact: there is actually no numerical majority supporting Trump's views.
• A local government rock star successfully taking action.
• A love letter to an earlier time. ​

“Is that mah boy?”
“Jooohn! What’s goin’ on! Been a long time!”

In the days of coronavirus, pleasantries have to be yelled. John had entered through the middle door and now stood right by it, just behind the velcro strap encouraging passengers to keep distance from the operator.

We went on like that for a bit, catching up. But right in the middle of it he hit me with the news:

"Hey I just got outta th' hospital. I got cancer, man."
"Cancer, that’s terrible! John!"
"Yeah, I got cancer.” He said it as though he was trying out the phrase, testing out its truth, seeing how it molded to his reality. Do you remember the early days of your tragedies, when there seemed a chance they might not be true?
“I got cancer. They said I drink too much.”

He ducked under the velcro strap, carefully, to come closer. The last time someone did that I got spat on. But you have to remember that’s not everyone. These lives out here have nothing to do with each other. One night someone will scare you, and the next night another man who looks the same, talks the same, dresses the same (and, depending on which corner of 3rd and Pike you’re at, smells the same)– will help you when no one else will. Keep this in the back of your head: If someone saves your life, that person will probably be homeless.

But back to John, the 40-something Latino man and fixture on Rainier whom readers of my book will recognize. From one angle, he was another alcoholic breaking the rules on a Wednesday night. For me, he was a friend with whom I shared a history, from whom my life was richer.
“Yeah man,” he said, “I weigh 140 pounds. I used to be 235.”
“Oh, no. One forty? That’s what I weigh! One forty, 145…”
“Yeah, doctor said I only got two months to live.”
“What? John, this is heavy! Two months?! That cancer’s no joke.”
“Yeah they said two months.”

I was so glad he came up. He came closer because you can’t be sensitive from far away. What do you say to two months left to live? I was taught to think before speaking and usually do, but in this moment my body led the charge. My soul cut in, interrupting with the only words that could work, with a verve I was surprised by.

“Two months? Man, you' be around longer than that.”

It’s a feeling more than a thought, and that sub-liminal part of me spoke now with enormous confidence, and complete belief in itself. I, who knows cancer kills people, who knows the very concept of “beating cancer” is nothing but cruel advertising, that cancer always comes back, that it tears you up, that trying to do anything about it tears you up too– that me somehow believed itself when it said,

“You got this.”
“I’m gonna beat it.”
“You are gonna beat it.”

I believe hope in the face of certain failure is still beautiful. I do not know why this is.

“I’m gonna beat it. Doctor said two months, ah say no way. Fuck that.”
“Two months, more like two decades!”
“I’m gonna beat that cancer.”
“You been through tougher stuff than this.”
“Tha’s right.”
“I’ma be pickin’ you up ten years from now, just like I was ten years ago.”

As soon as we had made our own glow, it dissipated. Reality set in, and I was thankful he could share its weight with me.

John the tough guy. The boisterous. The fighter. Comic. Man. John stared into the middle distance, stared forward the way only a passenger on a vehicle can. He said, “I’m sad, man. It’s sad.”
“It is sad.”
“I was 235 pounds. Now I’m 140.”
“That’s crazy.”
“They’re givin’ me liquid morphine. They give me a bottle a week.”
“Man, I bet you can’t feel anything.”
“Nothin,’ man. I only got two months left. They kicked me outta my apartment.”
“Man, that’s heavy. I’m sorry, dude. Now’s the time to hang out with good people. See your family, you know? Maybe you’ll beat it, but either way, you wanna have good people around you. You still see Valerie?”

He was lost in thought. “I stay behind that church there. Hey listen Nate, I hate havin’ to ask you like this, but could you spot me any change? Get somethin’ to–“
“Aw man, you know I don’t carry money when I’m workin’.”
“I know, It’s cool. Hey man, it’s always good to see you. I’ma get out right here.” He cracked a grin– “Don’t cut your hair! And stop beatin’ people up!”

There was an echo in his tone, the enthusiasm you put forth with great effort in those final moments, covering up the realization that you might never see your listener again. That was how he spoke now. He’d decided humor was the note to end on.

Good man.

---

An hour later I would see him, though, with Valerie (read my book for more) at his side. More than once during the ride she’d tell me it’s always good to see me. Finality had crept into our interactions. It encourages sincerity, goodness, truth. She helped John as he moved, slowly, slurringly (“I’m not gon’ lie, Nate, I’m drunk right now!”), down the aisle with a tender gait as never before. I thought of the sillier times: him coming up to the door of my bus one afternoon and stopping in mock fright, proclaiming, “Nathan! Who did that to your hair??”
“I know, I know, I had to get it cut! It was gettin’ outta control!”
“You tell me who did that and I’ll send ‘em straight to Jesus!!”
I laughed. He’d said, “You gotta get those curls back, bro, like mine. We’re like twins. Oh hey, I saw you walking the other day. You know how to walk?!”
“Ha!”

Tonight he was moving slower, but he was still John. They sat in the middle of the bus and struck up conversation with two friendly compatriots and a dog. I couldn’t hear them, but their arms and smiles said it all– gestures of togetherness among strangers, dog stories, travelling stories, communion found in exchanging the breeze. I marvelled at Valerie and John’s stalwart presence in each other’s lives, particularly now as they faced the finish line. A kindness in their camaraderie tonight.

In the last days things will not be perfect. There will be pain, shame, unfulfilled dreams. Your favorite people won’t all be there. But that’s okay. It’s not about that.

It’s about whoever happens to be around.

Have a good time with them. They’ll bring you up. We all have more in common than we don’t. Wave your arms in the air like John is now, telling another story, listening and laughing, making the most of the in-between moments; a post-sunset bus ride on a forgotten weekday, spent in the good company of strangers and friends.

That’s what living is.

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More with John here and here.