​Tuesday, January 15, 7pm. Elliott Bay Bookstore. Free. Details and directions here.

​You've been to these sorts of things before. You go see someone whose work you like, but they're jet-lagged and tired, and you can sniff the obligation suffusing the fringes, the homework assignment of it all. How they're maybe wishing they didn't have to go through with it: the part of you that enjoys complaining about a luxury.

The thing is, I'm just not that famous.

That's part of it. But moreso, I have a tendency to default to wonder. Joy. What does this really mean? Being able to get excited  necessarily means being able to admit you don't know everything. Wonder contains curiosity, and a know-it-all cannot be curious, cannot be excited. Do I want that? No. 

I want to feel the joy that comes in the gratitude of ordinary things. This is what I've learned from the people closest to me. It's how they operate. "I will find joy in all I see," a character says in Terrence Malick's The New World. It's a decision, and it pays dividends. "I still like hotels but I think that'll change," wrote Lorde, just before hitting the cusp of superstardom. I like to think I'll never be of the position nor the inclination to dislike hotels, openings, publicity events and the like, or that if I do, I'll do something about it. 

I've listened to a lot of people throughout life tell me "just you wait," "you'll change your tune when this happens," "when you get to be my age..." I appreciate their concern, but in nearly every case time has revealed they just didn't know me well enough.

All of which is to say: I'm really excited to be doing this author event for you. I love this kind of stuff. Not from pride, no, nor thirst for attention– I just really enjoy sharing. I love the pleasant anachronism of sharing this lowbrow, odd-angled and rough-hewn landscape of my bus driving friends, my world, with the cultured, erudite highbrow milieu of art, film and literature– also my world. 

Aren't they both great?

I love finding ways of sucking the pretension out of art events. I enjoy the thrill of public speaking because it's an opportunity to share enthusiasms, and we know how contagious those are. There are more wonderful author events than otherwise, but we've all been to the type of thing you know I'm referring to: where you can't tell if the guy took sleeping pills, and the only questions that get asked are 'what inspires you' and 'do you ever get writer's block.'

This won't be that. I'm having too much fun here. I mentioned a surprise in an earlier post. This is it. Maybe you saw it coming. I didn't. I naively thought nobody would want the book!!

Forgive my spareness on the blog this week and next, as I prepare for this. I like to get things right– whether it's the book, these blog posts, the photos, or the film I'm still in post-production on. I want to make them worth your while. One day I'll know how to relax. Right now all I really know how to do is bend over backwards making the best possible book, art, bus ride, experience... for others. People I care about. You.

I hope to see you there.

The lil' surprise I was talking about here is this: I'll be doing an author event at Elliott Bay Books on January 15 (a Tuesday), at 7pm!

​Did you miss my book launch? Probably not, since there were a million people there... But if you did– or if you want an event more focused around discussion on the book itself, since that show was really largely more about the photographs, or if you want to stop by and just hang out again, or bring your friends, or if you maybe just want to pummel me with bus questions (please!), please come.

I'd be thrilled to see you. 

The book is now on sale at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. It continues to be for sale at Phinney Books and Madison Books, and, of course, Elliott Bay (link to purchase online!).

​Happy Holidays!

​She's become a good friend of mine. Wavy black hair down to here; a youthful spirit with attitude to burn, at once streetsmart and as well-read and detail-oriented as they come. 

What were we talking about? We were being silly. The Seahawks game was letting out, and south downtown was turning into a used car lot. We really weren't going anywhere. Our mostly empty bus didn't mind; my companion stood up front with me, a wheelchair-bound passenger along with several others scattered behind us. Plenty of time and space to chatter away. 

She and I were talking about railroad crossings, me jokingly going through every step of the process. "Here we are safely coming to a stop between fifteen and fifty feet away from the tracks while feeling great about it. Here we are putting on our emergency four-way flashers to indicate to cars behind us that we're interested in stopping at these tracks. Now we're looking around and listening to see if there's all kinds of trains going by. I'm noticing an alarming lack of trains crossing in front of us."
"Oh my God."
"So I'm going to carefully,"
"Mm hmm,"
"Proceed forward over the tracks while continuing to look and listen for trains to the left of me and also, actually, trains to the right of me..."

I was being sarcastic and serious at the same time. No bus driver actually likes stopping at railroad tracks. But we all do it. Because if you don't, it's a three-day suspension without pay plus discipline, and if you do it again, you're looking at termination. So we find a way to get through it and have a nice time. Holgate has endless sets of railroad tracks, and it was time to stop at another cluster. "Here we are having a fantastic time stopping between fifteen and fifty feet in front of yet another set of what appear to be some railroad tracks..."

There were jokes made about the ungodly hordes exiting the stadium, and how the traffic cop on duty seemed to be letting all 50,000 people cross first. We survive somehow. A friend who knows your sense of humor is as good a salve as any for stuck traffic and the swarming blue-green throng. We made it to downtown without incident.

The fellow in the wheelchair got off at Jackson. He'd been there the whole time, overhearing our banter, momentarily taking part when I'd explained a reroute. Older fellow not yet old, dark-skinned American, with the bedraggled markers of being down and out: a missing tooth or two, spot of debris here, crumbly textures and faded color there. Signifiers one has no choice in displaying. I wondered if he was a vet.

"Thanks for stoppin' in, man," I said, as he wheeled his way forward to exit, awkwardly, pushing with powerful shoulders. My friend of the wavy hair had stepped outside to let him pass, and he and I had a moment alone.

"Hey," he said. "I was listening a little to you two talkin', I din't mean to eavesdrop."
"Oh that's fine."
"I just wanted to say that you are generous and kind. And every time I'm on your bus it makes my day." Pause. "But listening to you two tonight, made my month."

Somewhere in that last sentence his voice cracked, and cracked again. Tears, unbidden, from a man my father's age; what few things are more beautiful, more gently pure in their uncontrived truth? The way the face stops caring what it looks like when sorrow takes over, the mouth expanding in a painful flat line, eyes going away. 

I cry less when faced with great cruelty or anger than when people are enormously good to each other. When I'm reminded of the intense loneliness that being human requires. He was cut from the same cloth, he and I, and his tears spoke a language I know well. Acts of goodness always to some degree involve the act of giving, and the giving of intangibles– kindness, respect, love– is the tool we humans have for staving off the crushing loneliness of a mortal life.

"What's your name," I asked.
"Corey," he replied, shaking my proferred hand. The way he said it, you'd spell with an E; don't know why I thought that. Maybe it was the echo of his faint down-home southern accent, a lifetime of histories and secrets nestled in a half-extended syllable.
"Corey, my guy, I'm happy to meet you. You can ride my bus any time, any day. I'm on this route every night."

I accept you for who you are, and we'll keep doing that thing we do, taking life as it comes and making the best of it, never mind how many railroad tracks we have to stop at, or worse. With the reminder that lives in a smile, we'll get by.

This sort of thing makes me blush. It feels surreal. Did we really just sell out our entire first print run in a under three weeks? There have been lots of runs to the post office, as I personally mailed copies to you while we scrambled to get a second run printed. It's here now, and everything's good in the neighborhood.

Purchase the book online here, through Elliott Bay Books. Find it in local bookstores like Elliott Bay or Phinney Books– Tom, the owner at Phinney, is wonderful. He's setting up shop with a new store (Madison Books) in Madison Park as well. It also lives at Third Place Books (at Lake Forest Park, my favorite branch).

Ask your other local booksellers about getting a copy; we're continuing to reach out and develop relationships. Where you won't find the book is on Amazon; I think they have enough money! We want to keep the little people alive too.

In case you missed it, here I am

• on KING 5 talking up the book;
• being interviewed on KUOW about the job;
• and in Seattle Magazine, who somehow think I'm one of Seattle's 35 most influential people. (That's got to be a typo. Did they mean one of Seattle's 800,000 most influential people? Ah, yes, now it makes sense...)

This book idea got rejected by countless publishers in New York. Countless. The reasons were varied, but centered around the fact that there's no other book like it on the market; the author isn't popular enough; the stories are too confusing(!); the subject matter won't resonate; it's too unlike other bestsellers.

Which is why we did it from the ground up ourselves. As I've said earlier, this is a home-cooked meal. The success it's already had floors me. I was just happy to get the book out. But things are happening. I have a lil' surprise to announce shortly– stay tuned!

But for now, tell your friends about the book! Poke around on the blog (good places to start here), and if you like what you find, give the book a try.

Let's show those naysayers that there are those of us who actually do want to focus on compassion and empathy to all people. That kindness really can sell.

Thank you for reading! More anon!

​"How's it goin', old school," said one man to another. 

They shared in the brotherhood of being tall, a slow-hipped swagger from the American past, two dark-skinned street denizens born before the microwave. They were the generation that saw Vietnam come home and remembered the days before computers. I wondered if they might have been– like me– more at home amongst the earthy grit of Aurora than marooned out here on Greenwood. 

But here we were.

I like listening to other people talk. It goes without saying that I learn more from listening than talking, but I definitely learn more when I'm not even part of the conversation, and have the luxury of eavesdropping. The one with the fedora and ear piercings spoke to the fellow with the stylish cane, giving a soliloquy I found poignant. Mr. Stylin' Cane had just commented on another of the many new apartment buildings lately sprouting* out of the ground, unaffordable to most and eyesores to architects the world over. Mr. Fedora sighed wistfully.

"It's fa sho changin', you got that right. Like our parents used to say, cain't even recognize this place. But hey. We's the old folks now, talkin' 'bout the old days. You know back in the day, the old Seattle, how it used to be? The way stuff looked, how it was? And you'd see people around, but you was never really friends wit' 'em? But you see 'em now and it feels like they are?" 

The storytelling pause. He continued.

"'Cause you and them both know how it used to be. It's so different now. But man, you see their face and it feels like everything's A-okay, maybe jus' fo' a minute. 'Cause they understand you. They got memories you also got."

I realized then that this was his way of naming his listener as one of these very folks, someone never really a friend but a friend now, because here we were tonight, marooned not just on Greenwood but more potently in the future. Here we were, together.

"I know just what choo mean," the listener replied. "Ah get that feelin' all the time."

Which meant, of course, the same in return. They say women always mean more than they say, while men say exactly what they mean. But when it comes to emotions, anything sensitive, men, raised as they are to suppress feelings, to pretend against delicacy and matters of the heart... Well, they speak in code as much as anyone else. The bald and unvarnished truth of the listener's response might really be something more like this:

Thank you for being you, and being here. Because it makes me feel like myself.

Which he definitely didn't say. But that doesn't mean he didn't mean it.

---

*Like everything to do with housing, this is more complicated than it sounds. An interesting comparison with Vienna's housing solutions here, courtesy of Mike Eliason at The Urbanist.

Update to the update: the second print run has now arrived! Head on over to Elliot Bay Books to grab a copy!

Just a quick update here– I've added a page on the site with info about my book and how to order it. We're currently anticipating a second printing (!) arriving within the week. After it arrives the bookstores we have agreements with will start stocking again. Thanks so much for your support and enthusiasm in buying this little baby of mine! I never imagined it could be this popular! How I love being proven wrong on these sorts of things...

Thanks to all of you who have already reserved copies!