I'm still busy wading through the murky waters of post-production on my latest film (which, upon completion, will be viewable for a short time on this site!). 

Meanwhile, I thought you might be interested in this article by Martha Kang, Online Managing Editor at KPLU~

Bus Driver Finds Beauty in Even the Toughest of Routes

Enjoy!

Bus Driver Earl drives by on Martin Luther King Way, honk-honk-honking at me from his gleaming off-white lexus. Big smile. Oddly enough, a moment before another bus driver had appeared in a car passing by Center Park, and for no reason I had looked at the car's driver- it was one of those millisecond recognitions, where they go by too fast to acknowledge, but afterwards you know both of you are grinning.

There's a group of PNB dancers who sometimes get on at Mercer Street inbound. They're finishing up practice, and are always full of wonderful energy. As I cross Mercer, I always check to see if they're running for the bus. They never have- they're always either already at the stop, or not there at all. But you form habits, just in case- there's a porch on 23rd I always look at, because sometimes, just sometimes, Michael is sitting there, and I want to be able to honk and wave if he is. It's like checking your blind spot- you turn your head over your shoulder a million times in your life, all so you can avoid that one fatal accident. It is worth it.

Today, once again, I check down Mercer out of habit, just a quick glance, and for the first time they really are there, running for the bus. Renata, with the wavy brown hair, is full of lively vigor. She has a zeal and presence that makes the most out of a moment. She won't be riding this route next season, which is a relief in a way that would take too long for me to explain: of course I prefer her and the others being there. But growing up I was always the one who stuck around, while friends moved away. As time passed, the tables turned and I was always the person doing the leaving. Neither is ideal. I'm about to leave the route for the summer too; it feels nice when someone else is leaving when you are.

She and I talk about stress, art, school, dance. The energy is building. Recognizable faces. They all smile- is it me glowing, from the energy of the Renata conversation, or are they? Columbia Starbucks Guy, African Man, Purple 8th Walker Lady, Fishes Wheelchair Fellow... smiles all around. Big guys say thanks, sauntering out the back door. Where is this great, expanding energy coming from? It's getting on toward evening, but the air hums with a gentle sense of new beginnings. 

Third and Union. We drive past a collage of police cars. There's so many of them, and of so many different models, I wonder if it's actually an impromptu cop car show. A row of teens now, on the cement, sitting on their hands. Here's a classic cop car, with admiring guys taking photos. A jaywalker; a crowd going to the concert hall; someone releases a balloon. 

The mixture of positive and negative, swirling in and around each other, events both comprehendible and not... it's as if this street represents a microcosm of decades, multitudes past and present. Late evening sun peeks through tall buildings.

The Earth could turn in only this way. 

I see faces of all colors raised to the sky, happy, tired, angry; you feel the heady rush of the sublime, the awareness of totality. Everything is encapsulated here, glorious, close, and terrible, and it's magic hour. I feel euphoric, and strangely outside of time.

Sometimes you see success stories. A year ago a quiet, mild-mannered Latino man would ride my last trip on the 7. Goatee and jailhouse tats, always polite. He'd put his bike on, and we'd talk in the dark out there, winter evenings on Rainier Avenue. It was dark at the front of the bus, and cold, but it didn't feel that way, no; this was your porch on a Sunday evening, and you were getting to know your new neighbor. 

He would tell me about his background as a tattoo artist. The sodium lamps passed by overhead as we took the curves, momentarily lighting up our faces. He talked of stencils and apprenticeships, portfolios, lining and coloring.... Well-spoken. I never tire of hearing people discuss their passion; you see their potential becoming whole, their eyes glazing over as they remember the ideal they have it in themselves to be.

He was Armando, and he homeless at the time. I would see him intermittently as the months passed on; always on the move, popping up in different locations with that battered blue bike of his. Never really more than a moment for a quick hello; he always seemed to be in the middle of something. 

It is no mean feat to rise out of homelessness. When you have the least energy, and are the most poorly equipped to continue- that's when you have to summon forth new reserves. You've got to manufacture that energy yourself, out of thin air. No one will do it for you. To lesser and greater degrees, we've all been backed into an at least vaguely analogous corner; it's the corner where you just can't go any further- but you have to keep going. Sometimes your life doesn't depend on it, and sometimes it does. 

Recently I saw an Armando lookalike while riding the bus home. Close to a year had passed- more than a year, now. Was that him? Standing at the front of a crowded 41, black t-shirt and backpack, hair tied into a ponytail; I had to know. I got out of my seat and worked my way through the crowd.

"Hey, man," I said.

Yes, it was him. Armando's face lit of a fuse of delight upon recognizing me. He'd finally pierced through the great bottomless corner- driving a forklift now, at one of the warehouses in SoDo, for not just minimum wage, but a living wage. He'd put in the long hours at places like Labor Systems, Labor Works, WorkSource, Millionair Club, Parker, Western Avenue, ULMS... it was his unflagging drive which had earned the notice of a shift boss, who'd recognized him as a cut above the rest.

Armando. Now he was telling me what kind of car he wanted to save up for. A far cry from the lonely nights on Rainier. I wanted to hear all the details, but of course he, giving respect, asked how I'd been as well; I told him which bus he could find me on, and we shook hands into the night. 

"Where you goin' now?"
"Home," he said.

You'll have to forgive my subdued presence on the blog this week; I'm neck-deep in editing a film for Real Change. It's a celebration of their Vendors of the Year (that's Willy Jones above, whom you know from Third & Columbia; alongside is the incomparable Tricia Sullivan).

But I wanted to take a moment to share with you a new set of Photographs, as well as this brief anecdote:

I'm driving the 4 through the Central District, buried somewhere out there in the Judkins neighborhood. Narrow, tree-lined streets, barely squeeze a bus through here, with old homes and yards on both sides; some have barred windows, and some don't. It's a neighborhood in the traditional, communal sense; people know each other. They sit on their porches. Kids leave their toys on the lawn.

I've formed a habit of waving at people. It seems silly, after all, to drive past every day and not make any sort of contact with these familiar faces. I've spoken before of the Grandmother at 24th & Dearborn; we had a routine going whereupon, if she was at her window, we'd wave at each other with great excitement. She got to know the times I'd drive past, and though we never once spoke, we waved and smiled together about every day for a couple of years. 

Today she's not there, but further down is the house with all the pink tricycles and barbies scattered about. The two preschool-age African-American girls there have gotten used to my utterly random waves at them. At first they simply stared; then they stared in a friendly way; soon after they began smiling, and subsequently waving in return. Today, they're hidden behind a tree, until I drive past- and here they are, waiting for me, standing in exaggerated matching poses, blowing kisses! I see their Mother behind them on the porch, laughing. We all join in.

He's in construction gear, three horizontal stripes and a flourescent vest. You imagine him kicking the dirty boots off and flopping down in front of the tube after a long twelve hours.
I ask, "all done with work?"
"Oh, yeah." He's exhausted. His vowels hang in the air  little longer than usual; not from around here.
"Always a good feeling. Indoor or outdoor?"
"A bit a both. Mostly turnin' the Slow and Stop sign." 
"I wish I had one of those things sometimes. Stick it out the window."
He chuckles. "Whip it out like a school bus."
"Exactly. Well, a job is a good thing to have these days."
"Oh, yeah. Anything at this point. Anything's better than holdin' the sign." He means panhandling.
"Holding the sign is tough. Mentally, I mean. Getting to that headspace."
"Yeah, people don't realize."
He watches me greet the passengers. "This one's for you," I say to somebody, handing them a transfer.

"Where you from?" 
He listens while I mention LA and its differences from Seattle. I ask the same of him. Our conversation about work has been fairly routine, but a wistful tone emerges as he says,
"Virginia. Tha's my home."
"What brought you up here?"
"J. O. B., man. No wife, no kids, my cousin was up here..."
"You're free then. That's rare."
"It's not for me though," he says, gesturing at an ambulance blaring past. 
"Gets kinda crazy sometimes."
"Not used to all this. Give me dirt roads, grass fields..."

It is a mistake to consider the uneducated as somehow lacking in depth of perception. There's a melancholy, plaintive air to his words, less disconsolate than meditative. His face and stance are an actualization of his years past, his gaze invested with a sea of memories, enriching the soul, weighing it down, making it whole. He wipes dirt off his fingernails. 
"Oh, I know what you mean. Wide open space,"
"The air, the feel of it all, man. Give me nature. Seeing the stars at nighttime,"
We rhapsodize the countryside a little further, and arrive at his stop.
"Well, welcome to Seattle. I hope you make it back home one day."
"Thanks, man," he says, energized by our short talk. "I will. You got a good attitude."

He leaves us and rejoins the fray at 3rd and Pike, seeking out the next leg of his trip home; there's a little more vigor in his step now than when he came aboard. He was exhausted then, but in the space of a mere five minutes... where does our vitality continue to spring from, even after we think we've used it all up?

I'm putting up my leader's poles at 21st & Jefferson (trolley drivers look out for each other!); a call comes over the radio as I step back in, warning of an African-American woman wandering around the train tracks at Martin Luther King Way.

"Can't beat that light rail, nigga," says a teenager behind me to his girl, in funereal tones, the two of them in dour agreement over the unequal odds in a rail accident. They're discussing a recent collision, blood everywhere and so on. Something about them makes me smile; perhaps it's the the colloquial nature of their discourse being paired with such severe subject matter. "That's how fool's be gettin' cooked," says the young lady, with an expression so austere it'd be right at home in a Fra Angelico painting.

The description of the woman comes over the airwaves: "Please don't let this individual on your bus. She's African-American, late thirties early forties, very belligerent..."

Oh, no; is it her? Are they talking about you-know-who?

"...around 180 pounds..."

Good. Not heavy enough. Not enough poundage to be the great LSB-Dub. She may indeed be belligerent, but I wouldn't want her to get hurt; she fills a void that is indeed part of the world. Where else will I encounter such completely non-sensical statements such as what she once told a bearded friend of mine: "Wanna make out? You look like Osama Bin Laden. Let's make out so I can check off Osama Bin Laden off my make-out list!" 

Recently a fellow bus driver friend called me, leaving a message that left me smiling for days. "Ooohh Nathan, somebody you know...was on my bus," she said in a singsong voice. "I'll call you again. Oh, man. You're gonna love this," she chuckled into the voicemail. She was referring to the passenger in question. 

There wasn't a hint of malice or fear in my friend's voice, just the high-energy joy of a perception enlightened, one that doesn't seek to control, but simply to coexist, to vivaciously continue alongside all our human brethren. I was thrilled.