There wasn't even a pandemic happening when we had this conversation. How quaint. How fabulous.

There was a pandemic during our shorter subsequent conversation, wherein we go over everyone's favorite virus (further thoughts on that lovely conversation and how it ended up being used in some circles here), but this 20-minute discussion is about everything besides pandemics, which, wouldn't you know, still have relevance!

There is one interesting twist to our thoughts on buses being free, however; in the broadcast we hypothesize about that oft-trumpeted and frankly lovely concept, but COVID-19 has shown us what free buses really look like. I've often thought it was a good idea, but we now know that security personnel at terminals and extra (extra) cleaning would need to be a concern. 

Click here to listen to our January 6 chat! Description from KIRO's website: 

Nathan Vass drives an overnight Metro bus route through Seattle's downtown core. He's also a filmmaker, an artist, and now, an author. On his well-known blog, Nathan tells stories about the people he encounters along his route, and that blog is now a book, called "The Lines That Make Us."
Nathan joins Dave Ross in the studio to tell us some of those stories, and explain why he's stuck around on one of the least popular routes as long as he has.

Here's how it all began. 

Two guys were sitting in the bus stop at northbound Rainier and Edmunds, drinking and talking. I remember noting that with surprise when I first started driving on Rainier: Out here, people hang out in bus stops. I pulled up with my 7, and the guys became animated. "Look, it's Nathan's bus! Let's get on!" 

I didn't know they'd said that. All I saw were two animated friends stumbling aboard. But unbeknownst to me, a woman had walked by on the sidewalk at the exact moment they'd spoke. She didn't need the bus, but took note of the fact that these two had decided to ride a bus for no other reason than that this driver was driving it.

Hm. Interesting. 

Months would go by. The aforementioned pedestrian, a distinguished author and professor of English at PLU, would find herself at the MOHAI gift shop in early 2019. Intrigued by the cover, she picked up my book and would later read it in the spring of that year. She would realize the author was the same person as that bus driver from before. 

Wendy Call is her name, and after reading it invited me to participate as an author in PLU's Visiting Writer Series, a day of events wherein I taught class, got interviewed by the campus literary journal, spoke to a group about life as an artist and the creative process, dined with faculty, and read to another group from my book and blog, with further discussion and Q&A. 

It was one of the best days and biggest honors I can recall, and the highlight of this best day was the scattered conversation held between myself and the students who attended the day's final event, the reading.

Most of the crowd had left, but those who wanted to stay stayed, and after the talk was given and the books signed, we joined each other as the equals we were, unorganized clusters of enthusiasm here and there in the big, now-emptying hall. We rushed to the other end of the room to get a picture together; I scurried to and fro, packing up my camera gear while listening and talking, earnest handshakes as the day finally slowed down, and I could register the beauty of what these folks had to share, their kind words and desire to live in the goodness we had together made. It was the afterglow, my reeling thrill at having made it through all the events, and apparently capably enough. My excitement and gratitude mirrored their own, as we together rose on the altruistic high of a joy only we could cocreate, that of giving and receiving love, and genuine appreciation. 

The highlight of this highlight was going over film photography prints with a remarkable student, the sort whose questions and aptitude remind you that it's okay to believe in magic, that what comes next can be brighter and richer than even what came before. Mathilde had the Glow. We looked at her first contact sheet and talked about contrast levels and depth in the frame, but really we were just sharing joy, riding the epicenter of a wave built by everyone in the room. They made the day possible, most especially Wendy Call, the professor with a sharp eye for life.

Mathilde and I were able to close the evening out as we did because of this moment: Two guys at a bus stop who'd said, "Look, it's Nathan's bus! Let's get on!" 

That and a passersby with an observant eye, who noticed and put it in her pocket for later. 

That's the alchemy of the universe, just the tiniest glimpse of how it all works, and I am left with no other conclusion than that with enough reflection and hindsight, it is an alchemy I could only describe as entirely, unimaginably, and incomprehensibly beautiful.

---

​Above photo by Wendy Call. Some of the various PLU events were filmed; I'll post them here in time!

[This story is now available in my new book.]

“Listen, I gotta tell you a story.”
“Sure,” I answered. “Lemme let these people on real quick.”
“Yeah.”

He was excited, grinning in the dark at Rainier and Othello. By day he was one of those fellows who spin the “Slow” and “Stop” signs at construction sites. Otherwise he was himself, a man who’d survived multiple surgeries and related complications, who’d been told by doctors he’d be dead by now, a stubby older gent whose humble appearance belied the miracle of his every new waking day. He was standing at the very front of the bus, next to me, animated. He leaned forward.

“So this guy I know was plannin’ to kill his wife, murder his wife, and then make it look like an accident, right?”

I struggled to take in the enormity of the sentence and all it entailed. I said the most truthful thing I could think of, which was also the most obvious thing: “That’s a terrible thing to do!”

He was brimming with energy, and slurred past his already shocking statement because, as I was about to learn, he had even more astounding news to relate. “Hold up though. He's plannin' on murdering his wife, but before he can– he goes and gets run over by a train!"
"What?"
"Yeah, he got mangled up so bad… He got so mangled the doctor said they cain't even do no autopsy. He too messed up."
"Man! Justice don't usually work that quick!"
"I know! Crazy, right? He was a bad man, too. I mean bad. Hated women, hated his wife…”
"Yeah, that's no way to treat a lady."
"No way to treat anyone! This guy's plannin’ a murder! Then he goes and gets tore up by the Amtrak! I had to laugh, man. Ah mean you know, but I had to laugh. What he think was gonna happen? Ain’t nobody gon’ notice? Ain’t nothin gon’ happen to him?”
“She's one lucky girl!”
“Yeah she is.”
“Man! She need to go buy a lotto ticket!”
“Yeah she should! Hell, I may get one for her! She's a friend a mine, she was hiding out at my house, ‘cause she knew. She heard him planning it. So she was hiding at my spot, and I think he maybe knew about it, where she was. Except don't matter no more ‘cause brother got creamed. She's so relieved. This guy was awful.”
“Sounds like it”
“She don't have to worry ‘bout nothin' though. Some guy wit'a axe comin' up on her or whatever dumb shit, that's the past. ‘Cause he walked out under them train wheels like a dumbass.”
“Wheels of justice, baby!”
“Literally. They were turning real fast!”
“Love it when it works like that. Usually takes forever, right?”
“What goes around comes around. Sooner or later!”

Somewhere out there a woman was starting life anew, and I knew her relief and newfound freedom would permeate out into everyone around her. She would have the Glow, and though most would never know where it came from or why, the Glow is the Glow, and such goodness makes all things better. I was getting it secondhand, through her friend speaking to me now.

His enthusiasm was infectious. It wasn’t bloodthirsty, you understand. It was optimism and belief confirmed, the proof we always hope for and sometimes see glimmers of; glimmers we know we need to cherish. There's a hint of truth in this mysterious and silent universe, design, workings more intricate and delicate than we can fathom. Sure, this place may be incomprehensible, but isn't that part of its beauty? We’re so in love with logic we’re too often blind to Life’s unspoken vastness, so in the thick of things we only catch a whiff of understanding with hindsight.

But this… this made so much sense, as brutal as that sounds, so much so that even we small humans could put it together. Of course. Joy was coursing through his veins now, for the life of his friend, for the fun of telling me, but most of all for the deep-seated shuddering thrill of Knowing, for even just a moment: Order. The comfort of knowing it might be there. Honing the skill of having the eyes to see it. That is what I try for, and that is what I have not attained; it is what I have to be okay with never completely finding. But I can speak for myself when I say:

Along that journey lies immense peace.

It's the sort of thing you get up to during a pandemic. I've finally had a moment to organize all the film writing I've done onto one easy-to-access page, with new essays on why I find it important to write about film, plus a page dedicated to exploring Terrence Malick's late-period work, about which not enough has been written (possibly because I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who loves it so!).

Also available are twelve long-form essays on various topics, from how Tarantino has changed in his use of violence as he's gotten older to what films greenlit after the 2016 election have in common. In addition to extensive top-ten lists (each with their own writeups on various films) for most of the years the blog has been running, I'm also making publicly available for the first time my 457-page monstrosity of a thesis, which I wrote during my UW years and updated in 2017. I guess you could say I like writing about movies.

​For all of the above and even more, click here.

A huge, huge thanks to Erica C. Barnett for her graciousness and inclusion of all sides of this thorny issue in detail. I feel excited and honoured to be interviewed along side my wonderful bus driver buds, Sam, Audrey and Jeremy; Erica is also a friend of mine from our shared interests in transit and urbanism in Seattle; check out her blog here.  

Doing press like this isn't always a collaboration between friends, but that's exactly what this one felt like. Please enjoy!

Click here for the full article.

Check out the below for more of Nathan's thoughts on COVID-19:

• On a local doctor friend's medical breakthrough, which could save a lot of lives (now updated with med protocol, sources, interview, contact and more)
• On being misquoted in right-wing media after the lovely NPR interview below;
• NPR: KUOW: The Friendly Bus Driver in Socially Distant Times (scroll down for my 11-minute segment)
• Slate: Coronavirus Diaries: I’m a Bus Driver in Seattle, but No One’s Riding
• Urging Mr. Inslee to lock the city down (he would do so the day after this post)

• And, if you missed it, my own thoughts by way of a Bus Driver Appreciation Day post on drivers during the time of the virus!