"How was your evening, Mister Ernie?"

What ends up being formative? Do we know, in the moment? Sometimes it can be as fleeting as somebody's line, a seemingly throwaway word sequence that reveals volumes, rewires how you consider life. Before I began this job I'd ride around with my close friend Brian Bell, who at the time drove delivery for Honda Auto Parts. We'd sit in traffic together, catching up. One day I asked him how he dealt with all this ridiculous traffic. The backups, the slowdowns, people zipping in and out.

"You get used to it," he said.

It was his tone which struck me. I'll never forget it. It was so calm, so nonchalant. It revealed he was in a headspace where traffic problems were of such minor concern as to be almost completely inconsequential. What should it matter, after all? You're a professional. It doesn't bother you. 

Brian may not even remember that brief reply of his, but I've carried its implications through the years, and it's proven formative in how I think about traffic.

You get used to it.

Ernie, above, is a colleague whom I've looked up to since day one. In reviewing the earlier years of my blog I've discovered I've quoted almost exactly the same line of his several times. It too was a formative sentence. He first said it when I rode his bus one evening (here), and I later restate the line in different contexts here and here, with another brief thought of his here. I thought I knew the line's import, but I didn't, and would only later fully internalize the concept through a horrific incident that proved excellent as a learning lesson. It's too much of a wound right now, though; maybe I'll write about it when it's a scar. 

In any event, Mister Ernie and I were walking to our cars at the day's close, and our brief discussion circled toward another facet of that key idea of his which has been so useful for me. 

"Great," he replied, in answer to my question. "So great. There's some challenges, but…" he paused, but only briefly, finding the words. "When you're serving, everything is better. Everything is better. 'Cause you know what? It moves yourself out of the way, and things are unstuck."
"'Cause it's not even about us!"
"No! It's not!"
"It's not about–"
"No!"
Our words tumbling over each other in our enthusiasm. I said, "we're not good to people so that it comes back at us,"
"No!"
"Although it often does,"
"It does,"
"It's about. It's about giving it out there."
"And leaving it there."
"Exactly!"
"And then doin' it better the next day. How do you fine-tune–"
Yes, I thought. Yes. Wow. This guy. I couldn't contain my admiration, and exploded with: "Ernie! You are one of the great, towering, thundering statues of existence in our time!"
He laughed. "You know what, I throw it right back at you, Nathan! I throw it right back at you with impunity."
"Thank you."
"With impunity! It's always an honor just to see you, even if you don't talk. I just know. I know. I just know."
"Right back atcha! Ernie!"
​
He grinned wide, laughing out the line one last time: "With impunity!"

There is no entitlement in Devin. Among society's disadvantaged, some people act entitled precisely because they're not, trying to cover up for their bruised egos by over-asserting themselves. But there are those who recognize kindness is not a right. It is a privilege, to be treated well, and something to be thankful for. Devin's like that. He's disadvantaged only in the sense that in appearance, he's precisely the physical type people have been stereotyped into being afraid of:

Strong, young, hip, strapping black American male.

I imagine he's regarded standoffishly, suspiciously, or worse too often, and you can see the appreciation light up in his eyes when you give him the opposite. That enthusiasm carries a spark both profoundly beautiful, but also hauntingly sad to me, because it even has to exist.

"Hey," he says at Andover tonight. "Could I ask you for two transfers for me and Mister March Fifteenth?"

"March Fifteenth" being our colloquial code name for his friend Anthony, so named because Anthony and I have similar birthdays. The two of them represent a certain go-getter motivation I find hugely inspiring, and best represented on the blog by one of my favorite exchanges, wherein Anthony gently spars with an older drug dealer about how to go through life. As for Devin, you may remember him reacting hard at the end of the Black Lives post.

I reply with, "how could I turn you guys down, that would be absurd!"
"Ha!"
"Tell him I said hey!"
"Will do!"
"That's good of you to look out for him," I say, noting their friendship, his consideration of Anthony's needs.
"Hey, that's how him and me do it. 'Cause I know he would think of helpin' me too." 
"Tha's beautiful."
"And we don't keep track of how many times I've given or he's given, we just keep carrying it on." I can learn from that, I think.

We're about the same age, he and I. We've spoken before, and on tonight's empty bus, our conversation moves to relationships. This was during my break-up phase. We talked at length about different methods of parting ways, how some are kinder, how some take two to put in the effort. The notion of having the courage to redefine a relationship as a friendship; the value of sustaining civility, such to emphasize the impact of good you had on each other. Devin finally said, "end it on good terms, always be on good terms so no matter what, you could call, if you was in the neighborhood you could say hey, how's everything, hope everything's goin' well in your life." 
"Man, you need to run for president."

Devin beamed, looking at me with pleasant surprise.

This was during the Obama years. Today, the sentence would certainly be no great compliment, and pre-2008, telling my African-American friend in the 'hood to do so wouldn't have had the requisite sense of possibility. It would have sounded more hopeless than invigorating. But for that real and glorious moment in American history, on that night in Rainier Valley, the sentiment carried real weight.

​I was trying to tell him his perception was sharp, his opinions considered; that he had the motivation to go far and the deep broadness of perception to understand and sympathize with the needs of others. I could tell no one had ever said anything like that to him before. I was trying to tell him he was kind, and about having a reach that exceeds, then expands, your grasp.

He heard me.

That's no Instagram– it's 35mm Polaroid Film in a Holga! Photo by Daphne Chu.

Seattle Art Fair starts August 3rd, and Shift Gallery is part of it. If you haven't been to Shift Gallery, you've walked past it. It has that cute little entrance on Washington between Third and Fourth, north side. Liz Patterson, curator of the August show there, has a lot on her mind to share, and one of them is the idea of foregrounding the neighborhoods and textures of Seattle this blog revels in, and which generally never see the light of day in art galleries. The other side of Seattle, so these out-of-town fair people can get a more dimensional feel of all the city represents.

I'm excited to show you a few pieces of my own and share in taking in some really compelling work by others in Liz Patterson's group show Untitled, which opens Thursday, August 3rd from 5pm to 8. Stop by for a chat if you're in the neighborhood!

Details, location and more here.

These images are rather more important for me than many of the others I've shared here.

Click here for why, the galleries, and more! Enjoy!

I'd never smelled anything more horrible in my life– and I've driven the 358! I've walked through LA's skid row. I've strolled down the alleys of the wrong part (more like wrong half, let's be honest here) of Napoli. This took the cake. The Breda bus had a huge driver's side window, and I put every inch of it to use, barely able to keep from vomiting. I'm ashamed to say I described the smell as "poop death" in relaying the story to others, as I could come up with no more accurate adjective. 

How do you politely tell someone they smell awful?

He was a big man, twice my weight and a head taller. In one hand was a full-size plastic chair which he carried as though it were a paperback book. He might have been forty, dark-skinned American, clad in a large black top with a scarf of sorts wrapped about his neck. He had kind eyes. 

[The rest of this story is in my new book!]

Above: Plaza guard in the outskirts of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China.

"I really like the artwork in this building." 

Sitting on the late night bus headed home, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Our base is famous for how awful its artwork is. There are comments you hear not infrequently– how best to eject the art from the premises, whether or not to deface it on the eve of retirement… my driver friend continued. "Like the pictures that look like the old TVs, where they look staticky. I really like those."
"Are you being serious or sarcastic?"
"No I'm being serious! I feel like I shouldn't like them but I do like them."
"Okay. That's good to hear, I'll look at them with a new perspective." 
"No, I'm terrible at picking artwork."
"It's all good!"
"But I see those and I just think, my kids'll never see that."
"You know, that's a good point. They're not gonna know what white noise is, visually. Wow. Wow. Or fast-forward or rewind on the VCR." The first time I saw fast-forwarded video I almost died laughing.
"Yeah! Like the pain of finding the right spot!?"
"Exactly! Or the sound of a television bein' turned off. You know, the old tube TVs? That weird little high frequency noise you would hear when you turned the TV on or turned it off?"
"Yeah!"
"When it kind of zapped shut?"
"Yeah, exactly!"
"Or like, winding a cassette tape with a pencil!"
"Yeah, when it got all pulled out, hoping it still worked. And sometimes you didn't have a pencil and you had to uncomfortably wedge the tip of your finger in there."
"i know exactly what that feels like. Those little prongs."
"There was a time when my pinky was the perfect size for doing that. Yeah those little things that, you meet somebody that doesn't know how to read an analog watch!"
I was incredulous. "No way!"
"Sure. In schools, they're all digital now."
"Okay, I spent decades looking at that second hand and minute hand waiting for it to get to the hour mark! Trying to see how much the minute hand would move per second. Or the little pencil sharpener in the corner of the room, and you'd get up and go sharpen your pencil?"
"I think they still have those. 'Cause those were the industrial ones,"
"Dude. Those would annihilate a pencil, if you wanted it to. Shoot, I haven't thought about these things in years!"
"I'm happy to bring up quasi-bad art–"
"Please do! I will now appreciate that art in a way I never did."

What will be endearing to today's youth? What will be cute? Will they talk about the quaintness of going to the store to buy a movie on disc, or signing a legal document by hand? The fact that some cars required keys to ignite? That headphones once had wires, and people sent emails? Will the pervasiveness of selfies one day be more kitschy than fun? With the first signs of Facebook and Twitter losing relevance, how long before they're chuckled over the way MySpace and Napster are now? 

I was flipping through a copy of Dickens' 1853 Bleak House and came across a passage where two older gentlemen share sentiments almost exactly the same as those above; the elderly lamenting the passage of time and change. They also recite the familiar refrain of the mystery of youthful behavior they're convinced they themselves never engaged in. They're not talking about teens in 2016 or even 1968, but 1853! The words are interchangeable. The conversation will be had by every generation, has been had by every generation since the advent of agriculture.* 

I think a more crucial view is noting how generally minimal the effect these superficial shifts have on what doesn't change. Picture a Vietnamese rice farmer working a terraced paddy, before the war; an aging bank executive in Geneva, reflecting on lost family; a wayward girl in an American trailer park, forced to grow up quick. Never mind which one of them uses Twitter. Do they not all feel the same sting of a broken heart, of dashed hopes, the bent frustration of dreams unfulfilled? Are they not compelled by the same loneliness, thoughts of death and belonging, the ever-elusive vision of permanence in a world of constant flux? Love. Self-worth, accomplishment. 

Do those people not yearn for what you do too, in the solace of a warm embrace?

Everything changes, and everything stays the same. 

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*Human life really was quite different prior to this turning point. Permanently situated societies, the concept of property, subjugation of women, homogenous diets and resulting malnutrition, monogamy, hierarchies and city-states, populations large enough to contain strangers and the resulting shifts in relationships and decision-making, and much more all stem from the birth of agrarian societies. These changes occurred relatively rapidly in the last 11,000 years, when considered against the previous 6,000,000 years of bipedal humanoid development, which was largely static by comparison. Learn more here. 

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Most of this blog is conversations with passengers or between passengers. Conversations with operators on subjects far and wide here, here, and here.