There's a figure crossing the street in front of me. We're stopped at Aurora and 155th southbound- I've just announced it as "the Safeway stop." To some, that might sound like I'm advertising a store. This would be incorrect. Out here, Safeway isn't a store. It's a cultural landmark on the order of the Jefferson Memorial or the Washington Momument. Places like Lowes and Grocery Outlet aren't stores that sell things. They hardly have interiors. They're Mount Rainier. They're the North Pole. You mark your geography by these towering monoliths, and negotiate your way through the city accordingly. Saars. Home Depot. It's how you get to the point where the word "McDonalds" actually means Third and Pine. 

Anyways, we're sitting here at the North Pole stop, and I'm zoned out with a half-smile on my face, my thoughts drifting fast in the 90-second light cycle. This dark figure brings me back, out there in front of the bus, waving his hand high toward me. Man on a bicycle, mid-thirties, and he's no dealer- it's not one of those child-size one-speeds. Ambling across the intersection. In his tow is a young girl in a pink jacket, struggling forward on a bike of her own. The father isn't dressed to look like most people's first idea of a caring, gentle human being, what with his massive gray hoodie (hood up today), tough-guy goatee, and pants that never heard of a belt line.

But I know this fellow. Like a lot of folks in the young/youngish African-American set, it's just his getup. He's a well-rounded badass. He's only masquerading as the unidimensional, proverbial "one tough mother." His eyes, far from flat, carry a depth and humility built out of the passing years. Empathy. Being a father brings out a certain side of you, making real what were only possibilities before. He's the fellow I once wrote about as follows- "there's a satisfaction in getting a regular rider on a new route, where you sense that they're in on your whole schtick, they know how you roll and they like it. I see him in the mirror, looking toward me with mild amusement as I do my thing."

He gets around, and I mostly know him from the 7 and other south-side work, so to see each other out here in the far northern hinterlands is a welcome surprise. Aurora is great, but it's not quite my turf in the way Rainier is (I grew up riding the 7), so seeing a familiar face is always nice. My face lights up with a look of half-mock, half-real surprise, and I return the wave with elated gusto. 

There is a world-weary kindness in him that washes into excitement when he sees me, and, I realize, in myself as well. It's his day, each one better than the last, and I'm nourished by the sight of it all, the richness of possibility I see in him, in his daughter, the new directions they'll pave that I can only guess at. You seem him and you think, he'll smile again before his time draws to a close. He gestures at his daughter, pointing me out to her: "it's that bus driver!" 

She's too busy trying to stay balanced on her bike to pay attention. We'll forgive her that. "Happy New Year," I yell out my open window. "You too, Happy New Year!"  

Green light.

There's been research which suggests that the sense of community in a neighborhood can be stronger if that neighborhood has a higher-than average crime rate. Why? 

In such places, people have to rely on each other. They can't hide from everyone all the time. Walking down Lake City Way at midnight last night, this was certainly the case; people nodded and smiled at each other, at me, as they walked by. I didn't know these people. Same thing in the alleys off East Cherry, those clumps of sidewalk obscured from light by glowering trees. I'd be walking past as the Barbeque place was shutting down, and the guy coming the opposite way would ask how my night was going. It's a sort of safety check: okay, here's someone who's not a threat. 

The most obvious place to observe such dynamics is on routes. Where a route happens to travel through determines how 90% of the people on board will behave. On the 7, everyone knows everyone. On the 358, it's similar. People talk. They're a little more accommodating and otherwise world-ready than the insular commuter folk I sometimes bemoan- like that 303 passenger I mentioned earlier (not to keep harping on the poor lady). I remark about this to a passenger, Donna, on a 358. 

"Oh. You had one of the 303 WeatherWhiners. Is what it sounds like."
They have a name for it!
"You bet we do," she says. "If they get to be fed from a silver spoon their whole life, we get to laugh about it a little."
"That sounds fair enough."
She nods decisively.

It's cold today- a lot of black ice- and we have no heat in the front half of the bus. The heat in the back half works- perfect for sleepers and freeloaders. "You're welcome to move to the back, or- you're welcome to freeze up here with me..." My driver heater works, but I leave it off- that just wouldn't be fair, to rub that in all their faces. "I'm doin' the best I can," I tell them- "I'm trying to round up as many people as I can here-"
"Body heat!" someone chants.
"Exactly, body heat! like Emperor Penguins!"
"Hell yeah!"

Doing a double shift is nice, because you see some of the same faces going to work, and then going home again ten, twelve hours later. No matter how long their day has been, it's implicit that your day is as long or longer, and there's a certain respect there. A friend in red and gray, a built black man in his thirties- "I saw you this morning!'
"That was such a long time ago," I say, having trouble remembering if that was indeed today. "We made it!"
"O yeah."
"Time to relax." 
The responding affirmation in his voice carries the hours, the weeks and months of hard stress.
"You gon' be here tomorrow?" he asks.
"You and me both!"
"It's on!"
"Same time same place!" 

There is meaning, dancing underneath the surface talk. The exchange ends coasting on the wave of something shared, a communal welcoming of hard work; it's been a long day, and tomorrow will be long too, but we're not complaining. These are the facts of life, and we can smile about it. Parallel lines. 

Red light. Flat shadows blending under the sodium lamps downtown. It's early, and dark. He's standing at the front, waiting to deboard, looking at me in the dim blue hue of the flourescents. He'd asked something practical, about transfers, and after a silence decides to speak: "How you doin' this mornin'?"
"Excellent! It's a beautiful morning so far."
"Iss right. You close to gettin' off?"
"Actually, I'll be out here till 7pm-"
"Whaaat?"
"But it's all good. The thing to do- is to stay in a good mood, for the entire time. That's the challenge."
"I know tha's right." He nods, his dark eyes crinkling into a smile.
"The whole day."
"Yeeeah."
"I'm gonna do it, my friend!" We start laughing. "I'm gonna do it!"
"You got dis!"
We laugh the laugh of shared souls. We talk about how it's not easy, that will power is involved, lots of it, but of course it is worth it, and yes, such things are possible. I keep smiling after he's long gone, spirits warmed up as he walks into the sheltering darkness.

"Pretty cool-lookin' vacuum cleaner, man," I tell this Belltown Buddy. He's dressed in rags, and is hauling around a primeval beast of a cleaner, a vacuum that has seen better days- an earlier time when it hadn't been battered by the elements.
"Thanks, dude."
"You gonna clean the bus for us? 'Cause you can, if you want. We'll just plug it into the, uh, plug it into the steering wheel here..."

Later on, as another passenger gets off, she marvels at how I like the 358. Even with all the crazies, she asks? I tell her, they're my buddies! 

Driver Nancy ("Queen of the 358"- she picks it and only it, and has an attitude to top most humans I've met in my life) once told me something similar, explaining that "oh, I love the people. They're fun. You're not going to have more fun on any other route. And plus," she said, leaning in confidentially, "these people are all my neighbors. I have to be nice to them." She enunciates her words with that smoky, gravelly voice of hers in a way that makes me smile. The attitude has origins in considering strangers in a way not too dissimilar from how one thinks of friends and family. 

Once I was at North Base, standing around the table in the bullpen area, holding a plate with a slice of pie. There were no forks. Nancy saw me. "Do you need a fork?"
"I need something, I guess."
"I don't have a fork, but I'm almost done with this spoon. Here, let me wash it." She gives it to me. "And when you're done with it, just put it in my locker."
"Which locker is it?"
"It's in the first aisle. The one that says 358 on it."

Nancy is not young and naive. She's been around for decades, and this trusting, level approach towards humanity works for her. With her, you can't pull the usual line- which everyone uses on me- "wait till you've driven xx, or been alive xx years," et cetera. No. The flaw in that thinking is that it ignores that everyone's different, and processes experiences differently. Sometimes I'm not sure what I believe. But-

When I started they told me, "you'll be burned out after six months." Six months later, when that hadn't happened, it was, "wait a couple years." "Wait three years." "Wait till you've driven the 7." "Wait till you do the 3 and the 4, all day." "And the 358, don't get me started..." I've done all of those things. I just got my five-year plaque, and for the past three years, nearly all my picked work, by choice, has only been the 3/4, 7, or 358. I've seen people do things I've never even thought of! And yet. And yet...

Real Change Willy is waving his papers in that special way he does, but today, for the first time I've ever seen, he flubs and drops the papers. I lean out the window and yell, "Willy! You're better than that!" He shrugs and says, "doesn't happen too often." He walks over the bus for the red light and we chat about how his school is going. If you haven't had a chance to talk to the guy, I recommend doing so. Talk about a good attitude. Three years clean and sober, cleaning up a rough life. He's by far the most visible and well-known Real Change seller, and is attending Bellevue College, taking classes far more difficult than the ones I coasted through at UW- and he has a smile for everyone. Resilient. There is much I can learn from the guy.  If he can stay in a good mood out there all day, well, I have no excuse!

It's 5:16 in the morning, and I'm in heaven. I have found an oasis. This 358 trip, which I've been doing all week, is unique. As people get on at Aurora Village, I realize that not only are they all stunningly, widely awake, but they all know each other's names, stories and lives. There are some commuter routes that resemble this- you've got the same set of ten, thirty, sixty people, who all take the same bus every morning of every day, year after year. They get to know each other. They smile at each other and ask after each other's well-being. It's a small-town village within the big city. I don't run into this very much because I try to avoid commuter routes. I like routes that have a different crowd each day- like the 358. And most of those commuter runs are very quiet and serve a limited range of people. 

This particular 358, however, is different. It's the 358. These are commuters, and they all know each other, but not in the staid and perfunctory way that they do on the 250 or the 76; no, here they take on the zany spirit of the route. 

They're happy in a heightened way, because of course it's this early, and here we all are hanging out together on Aurora Avenue, and it's kind of absurd, but we can laugh and smile about everything, as we have for the X years we've been here every morning. In other words, they're a group after my own heart. I pull in early to Aurora Village Transit Center, and then hop out of the driver's seat and go back and sit with them in the regular seats, and new passengers look at us somewhat confusedly as we joke around at full volume and bray with laughter at 5am. The atmosphere continues as we head down the street, building as more friends get on-

"Is that Bruce?" asks Nancy. "It's Bruce! Let's say hi to Bruce really loud! Hooray, Bruce is here!" He is welcomed on board as a conquering hero. 

A man leans in at 130th to say hi to everyone, and then apologize that he can't ride today because he forgot his wallet for work. "Awww," they all say in unison. "Ned forgot his wallet!" explains a lady to friends further back who didn't hear. "Awww, Ned!"

Fred gets off the bus. Nancy says, "Look, Fred's getting off! Everyone, let's wave at Fred!" They make exaggerated smiling waves in unison at Fred as he walks into the night.

"Here we go," I say as I often do, warning people that the bus is moving. "Yaayyy! Here we gooo!" They say in response. The lights inside the bus are all on- both rows of overhead fluorescent lights, plus my dome light- and we're a bright bulb of uncontrollable happiness in the dark and twisted night of Aurora. A streetwalker passes by outside, peering in at this strange celebration.

"Now, you enjoy this ride," a motherly passenger says in a mock-stern voice to the person next to her. "Or else!"
 
"Is Jim coming today? I think that's Jim. That's his dark shadow against the dark wall up there."
"That sounds ominous," I say.
"Yeah. You know you've been riding the bus a long time when you can recognize people by their shadows in the middle of the night."

Some new passengers who aren't regularly in on all this get on, and they're welcomed in as if old friends. Different conversations grow and mingle. A middle-aged woman and her elderly mother are all smiles, reacting with baffled joy as they look around them, clearly enjoying the only place that's this loud at this time. My regular announcements are in just the right key for such an environment- "How about a stop at 130th," I say, announcing 130th. "I think that's a terrible idea," someone says. I burst out laughing. "We're getting close to 125th." "Noooo, don't dooo it!"

A woman my mother's age gets on and says in a fake serious voice that absolutely kills me: "I'm glad you were able to get up early two days in a row."
"I might even show up tomorrow!"

"Hey, I remember you from the 13!" Says a man with a bicycle to me. He stays somewhere toward the front. We yell at each other about cod fishing in Alaska.

I first had this group a month or so ago, for one day only. After that I discover that they begged their regular driver to get me back on the route. They love her, but they loved me as well, and are overjoyed when I show up for this entire week- their regular driver took a vacation- and many of them board already knowing my name. "It's Nathan!!!" "Nathan, we're SOO happy that you came to hang out with us!" 
"I'll be here till Friday!"
"I know. We campaigned hard for that. We're not letting you go just yet!"

It's a dream, is what it is. They are the great walking contradiction of so many things- of the idea that going to work is sullen, that getting up that early is no fun, that taking the 358 is a drag, that commuters need to be silent... they handily defy the stereotype of the commuter as entitled or apathetic. They smile the smiles they have worn for years. Age makes a happy person beautiful. You see the lines around their eyes, the twinkle of their soul winking out at you, physical evidence of a life lived vivaciously, proof that their brand of mirth has a deep-seated quality to it, a staying power that's lasted across the turning years.

Strange vibrations are drifting in the air. The mood of the populace is on edge, and you feel a being struggling to define itself, pushing against the embryonic sac of complacency. Here is a full moon whose effects seem to have lasted a week, two weeks, with the moon itself having long since moved on. And yet there is a restlessness down here, where we humans live.

I hail Fred on the 7, and he tells me he's been called a bitch five times today. Since when did anyone call Fred a bitch? He's Fred, for Pete's sake. Guy's awesome. He's brave enough to give out his full first, middle and last name to people. I can't even do that. A Caucasian man on the street drapes upon me a blanket of racist remarks, which I shrug off; a well-to-do, educated commuter on the 303, first passenger on in the morning, her face and gestures a perplexing mask of anger; she's intensely repulsed by my good attitude, and asks me to stop. I'd driven the route the morning before and she "just couldn't stand it." Elsewhere, a dear friend of mine, in mourning because his dear friend died; I see people laughing at a disabled boy, setting off a verbal tic in him that he's unable to stop, and you can sense the pain he's experiencing, helpless to defend himself; a cop and a black man at Northgate, having the "because I'm black" argument. Everyone stands around, watching them, though they've all heard the conversation before. As for myself, typically the only people who are rude to me are (occasionally) the mentally unstable and the wealthy upper class; but today, we even have a bona fide street type asking me to cut down on the niceties. At least he asks kindly. 

I'm not complaining. In my book these are non-events, excepting of course the dead friend. The commonality the other incidents share is that they're all concerned with people's perception of others, and as we know, giving credence to such opinions- allowing them to affect our happiness and self-worth- is a debilitating, endless black hole. 

But- why are they all happening this week, right now? Am I simply hyper-attuned to them, creating a trend where there isn't one? I tend to place minimal importance on trends for this reason, and for the fact that most trends are transient..I just finished reading a massive book about people's preoccupations with perception of and by others, so maybe it's no surprise that I'm noticing all this. Typically the streets are always the same, and I tend to believe the themes we pull out of them reflect ourselves much more than any actual trend taking place. If I have a bad day on the road, it's almost always because I have something going on in my private life, and my mechanisms and strategies for dealing with the road are down; it isn't because of any actual incident on the part of someone else. 

Or maybe there really is a stirring of sorts taking place. I can't help but think so. There is the incident in Connecticut on the national consciousness. There is the newly intense cold here; there's the stress and madness of the holidays, the push-pull between a desire for good times and the reality of what holidays are for many people, conflated with the national mood. Who knows.

What do we do? We identify these periods for what they are, and we work to right ourselves. The human animal is vulnerable this week, perhaps. It is beset by woe, and it, the great collective, has manufactured a response in a great many infinitesimal ways.

By knowing the human beast is off-kilter, for whatever reason, we can accept such behavior with greater tolerance. Our friends are simply going through a phase, as it were. It isn't one's own fault.

We may not understand the reasons for these bouts of lashings and sharp edges, but we can understand them for what they are- a mere buck on the seismograph, ultimately indicating nothing. Certainly not a trend.

----

Let's top off all this serious talk with just what it needs-

I'm walking back to my 358. I've been hanging out at 5th and Jackson, reading my book, walking around and eating my apple. I shake hands with a 7 passenger who thought I didn't remember him from a year ago, and was flabbergasted when I recited his website. Strolling back to my bus, and- whaa? Who- what is that? 

It's a man, it's a man in a dirty green jacket, but what is he doing? He's climbing around on the front of my bus, clambering on the bike rack, and arching his body towards the glass, because he's attempting to enter the the bus by pushing slowly through the windshield.

I don't think it's going to work!

I'm unable to control myself from laughing. "How's it goin,'" I say smilingly. "Oh, pretty good," he responds, clearly not looking it; apparently he'd just been on my bus on its previous trip, and had left his wallet. I reach for the door release. Every teenager in King County knows how to open a parked bus, but this man's no teenager, and the poor guy steps down from his awkward perch on the bicycle tiedowns. "Come on in, let's take a look-see. I think the door works better for getting inside."

I love discussing such wild absurdities in regular, level tones of voice. We find his wallet. He's saved from trying to defy physics. He's good to go.

PS- What is that photograph? It's a still I took for a 48-Hour film shoot a few years ago. More stills here.