• Published on

    Pretty Sure I Don't Deserve This

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    Note: video of these events will be posted in the near future.

    "Congratulations," a friend once told me, after I'd finally gotten a New York literary agent. "Let yourself feel it today, and breathe. You deserve this."

    The thing is, I don't know how to do that.

    Humility is one of the great human virtues, and maybe the final pit stop on the spectrum of goodness, of right action. I tend to think of kindness as the absolute end-all, but isn't humility what's needed first? The recognition that there are others, that we can learn, serve, listen... it is this frame of mind that allows us to feel joy, to live in a sense of wonder. You can't be excited if you think you know everything. Can't be pleased if you think the world owes you something. Humility. At the very least, it's key. I'm no expert, but I work at it.

    And because I work at it, doing my best to normalize it, I have a tendency to shut out compliments and accolades. I'm hugely grateful for every one, but I know that if I were ever to actually start believing all this stuff... well, you know what I mean. I have to turn them around in order to stay sane. 

    This praise from a passenger is actually just evidence of his own appreciation of kind personality. That award is really a tribute to all of us drivers, filmmakers, or artists– not just me. Or it's a celebration of those who've taught me. Things like that. I've even noticed when reconstructing conversations for blog posts, what I have the most difficulty remembering are the moments when someone's giving me compliments! You understand where I'm coming from here. You have to brush this stuff aside or you'll become intolerable.

    One effect of all this is that I'm not an entitled brat. But another effect is that when I receive truly meaningful, well-intentioned appreciation, I have the hardest time hearing it.

    The Wall of Fame is an internal award handed out at the State level. The public doesn't know about it, but it's a big deal in transit. Of the 3,000 operators at Metro, I was the single driver who received the honor. No individual operator here has won it before, in the 45 years since Metro's inception.

    There isn't a bone in my body that allows me to think, for one second, that I earned this accolade on merit. 

    We know the implication that I'm better than all those tens of thousands of operators is categorically absurd. But that isn't what the award means. Something hit me as I sat with my chiefs in the enormous conference room at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick, where the ceremony was taking place (how big was this room? There were a bunch of buses parked in the back corner. That's how big!). These experienced professionals, my bosses, treating me now as a peer, had somehow deemed, along with a multitude of other transit top brass at King County, that I was an appropriate representative of certain attitudes and skill levels seen throughout the operations workforce. That these attitudes were worth highlighting. 

    The Secretary of Transportation shook my hand, and excepting his own WSDOT staff, I was the only award winner that night he took a photo with. He briefly interrupted the proceedings to do so. Could it be? I stood under the high ceilings feeling weightless, daring myself to trust their judgment, allow myself to feel it, even if for a blink– letting the size of this hit me. Maybe, just maybe in the smallest way, perhaps. 

    Perhaps I was a half-decent embodiment of all the best operators who came before me, who work alongside me, the chiefs and teachers and parents and friends and passengers who've mentored me from day one of this strange adventure. It was a sensation of immensity I could hardly grasp– that maybe they were here tonight to support me, rather than the usual versa vice.

    What could be more humbling? I stood alone in the hotel room afterward, feeling small in a precious way. Had I really, actually brought something to the table? Not for me to say. There are such remarkable people in my life. I feel mainly like I've been a person gathering– observing their styles and absorbing them like a sponge, combining them into my own flavor. They may not know they're teaching me, but they are.

    Brian's prodigious but gentle wisdom, his utter lack of a need to assert himself over others. Paul's generosity of spirit, entirely genuine and without motive. Abiyu's quiet dignity; he and I talking quietly in a corner at the base about children, perspective, life. These guys have no idea how much they inspire me. My chiefs laughing at our table, they who negotiate the bureaucracy and hang on, easily, to their best selves, caring and vivacious and light. My friends and lovers of past and present, each a hive of radiant goodness, their very own, glowing.

    The way I've never heard my parents complain about anything. The way they've made certain modes of engagement like arguing, whining and bragging completely foreign to me.

    They, who help me think the world is a good place.

    Let's forget for a moment that it was me who got this. There were plenty of other ground-level employees celebrated that night– drivers from agencies besides Metro, trailblazers in planning, data, HR; our very own tunnel maintenance team, guys I wave at regularly, getting their due; and John Rochford, a true pioneer in Paratransit services and more than deserving of his recognition.

    Global western culture today is dense and loud, polemic. It has the space to swallow everything, and what doesn't get chewed up immediately seems mainly to be that which is most outrageous or extreme. It resists thought. Only in such a bite-sized and overloaded culture would we have the sociopolitical issues we now face, where things as basic as skill and truth get pushed aside.

    But these transit workers were not being noticed for being outrageous or sexy or extreme or loud. They were just a few women and men doing important and unglamorous work really, really well.

    Now that is worth celebrating.
  • Published on

    The Last Show: Why You Should Come, Part I

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    This is the nice post. For the no-holds-barred skinny on what really happened at Evergreen, click here.

    ---

    They're closing the last color darkroom. Evergreen College, famous worldwide (not an exaggeration) for its liberal arts programs and unique freeform educational structure, has new management. Uh-oh, you're thinking. 

    You would be right. 

    The new management has, in its wisdom, decided to permanently shutter many of their internationally renowned art departments– drama, motion picture film, and others... but most crucially, their color darkroom. Why such a fuss, you ask?

    It's basically the last one in the United States. Yes, three others remain on our continent, but they're all either smaller, less well run, harder to gain access to (try Googling them!)... in so many words, Evergreen was always the best, the last holdout of quality analogue color. 

    We forget that color film is (was?) one of the newest and shortest-lived of art mediums, one of the last invented before the glut of ones and zeros came along and jump-started society's obsession with speed over quality. 

    ---

    For a mere forty-odd years, you could throw a roll of 35mm Color in your inexpensive (and unbreakable) Pentax K1000 and capture light with a vibrance and organic richness digital media still can't compete with. Digital gives you thousands of colors. How adorable. Film gives you millions. Digital is a fine medium and looks lovely... as long as it's the only thing you're looking at. 

    Inkjet and laser prints give you black ink; again, how cute. Photo paper gives you silver halide crystals burned by light. Does anyone really think black ink has something over on burned silver crystals? Put the two next to each other, and you'll see what deep blacks are supposed to look like. 

    Or try scanning a cross-processed negative, and look at how the computer tries to grasp the subtle aberrations of the tone curve. You'll start to chuckle, realizing your high-end scanner doesn't have the faintest idea how many colors green is. The same with your $3,000 Canon, which can't get the range of skin tones your $50 film camera and $5 roll can in its sleep. 

    ---

    We know this isn't anomalous in materials manufacturing. Ask your grandpa what they used nylon for during the Great War. Ever notice how his shoes last forever too? How the zipper on your grandma's coat slides more smoothly than your three-year old Columbia jacket? The way your grade-school backpack lasted longer than the one you use now. We’ve grown to accept poor quality in most of the products we’re invited to repeatedly consume. Take your ancestors to the shelving section of IKEA, and try telling them any of the items are “sturdy bookcases.” You know they would dissolve in peals of laughter.

    This isn't nostalgia. It's common sense. Film yields a better image. Yes, you need skill. You need patience. Yes, it requires more infrastructure. But who would expect quality without such a price?

    ---

    You're probably thinking Evergreen is cutting their program for the same reason many other schools and art centers have over the years: money. Black and white darkroom is cheap and easy. It isn't going anywhere. Color is unique, toxic, requires a different skill set. You don't work under a red light; the prints have to made in pitch-black darkness. You can't touch the chemistry. The processor (above, center image) is the size of a small car.

    But Color isn’t a major expenditure when your processor, equipment, and other infrastructure are already in place. Evergreen’s lab is by far the best-running, most organized, most kept-up of any lab in the US (again, not an exaggeration– we’re discussing a pretty special place here). Compared to some of their other programs, it's not very expensive. The photo director just retired; find another. There are knowledgeable people out there who are willing to teach. They are having budget issues, but cutting Color isn’t a major savings at all. Plus, everyone knows what you do if you’re a school in need of money; cut your science, medical, and business programs, and watch new funding flow in a year later. No, money isn't the reason. They'll try to tell you it is, but it isn't. They have the money for this.

    It's laziness.

    Among the new management team is a woman who says "color photography is a joke." She's said that and similar remarks to artists. To students. To staff. The administration could expend the effort to hire staff to teach a practice that's been taught for decades, during a time when film is gradually regaining popularity, when a large and loyal majority of staff and students embrace these arts, when an entire community has grown out of the surrounding cities who use the darkroom... but they'd rather ignore these facts and kill their darlings. I don't believe I'm being unfair here. They could've consulted with the professors, or asked the students what was important to them. But they were lazy. (Click here for even more dirt on what went down.)

    ---

    I have friends who've traveled from Germany to study at Evergreen because of its unique offerings. I've traveled down there myself countless times because, well, it's the only color darkroom. Others come from Portland, Poulsbo, Vancouver and more for the same. I doubt the administration has a clue. In ditching the very golden geese that made their institution so praised in so many cultured circles, they reveal they've forgotten something fundamental:

    Art is the only profession that explores the act of what it means to be alive. 

    Everything else is secondary.

    Several years ago I was told that stewardship would be the new buzzword of our time, that young people would care about culture, about helping each other and bettering society through thoughtful expression. Actions like that of Evergreen's new administration are why this hasn't happened. When a culture doesn't have art, it stops being a culture.

    ---

    But: enough moping!

    What do you do when the end is near? Learn how to say goodbye. Through the good graces of several key players, I've been able to print like crazy this last week. This last color darkroom closes forever on the 30th, and I've been making every minute count. 

    My photography practice, ever since graduating UW a decade ago, has centered around analogue color photography. I've put black and white printing aside because I knew this day would come earlier. We would lose color first. Now it's happening. And I'm ready.

    They say it takes about an hour to test, print and finalize one picture in the color darkroom; I can make 100 prints in eight hours. I mention community above, and I do value the wonderful people I print with, but you won't catch me making much small talk. I keep my head down and churn out as much as I can. Time is short. It's like passing the bar and then learning the profession of lawyers is being eliminated. I got a degree centered on how to do something that won't exist next month. I don’t regret it.

    This is our time.

    We came in at the end, but we were still here. Very soon it will be impossible to make an analogue color image. People will forget what they look like. They'll lose the sensation of looking at an original– that feeling you get when viewing a painting– when they see a color picture. Paintings are precious because they can only be made once; shortly color photo won't even be able to be made at all. As though they disallowed paint and brushes.

    I have a solo show on the second Saturday in October, at ArtForma in Georgetown. It will last for only one evening, and given what I'll be showing there I find that fitting. The large-scale portraits you'll see on display will forever be the last, and therefore permanently the newest, analogue color prints you're likely to ever see. 

    The technical details briefly mentioned above are fun, but ultimately unimportant; it's about what we feel, looking at the images. The organic, handmade object, like ourselves; an original, slightly different from all the rest, ephemeral and delicate and sensitive; strong and vibrant, but most notable for its subtleties. 

    Doesn't that describe your favorite person, the best parts of life?

    It won't be the best show, nor the worst. But there'll never be another like it. You owe it to yourself to stop by.

    See you there.

    ---

    ArtForma Visual Art Space is located at:
    6007 12th Ave S, Fl Second
    Seattle, Washington 98108

    Saturday, October 13

    The show will last from approximately 5pm-9. Look for further details forthcoming.
  • Published on

    ​The Perspicacious Hairdresser

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    The accent. I knew him from before. The vowels drawled out in between clipped consonant edges, a straining against the upper mouth, little enthusiasms in every double vowel. Did he stem from a country of one? Who else sounds like this? Black hair spiked up, flaxen gold skin, leather, sunglasses that didn't frown, the sharp teeth grinning besides. He was a hairdresser, and there was no one else like him. 

    How could I forget his first words to me, years ago? The friendly and unknowable voice, loudly. The proclaiming voice. "You shoul' be driver of da yeeeeah, man! Not of duh month. Of duh yeeeeah!!"

    Today I watched him transform into sunshine upon seeing me, alignments of posture and expression reborn, the body coming together now, no longer a tired man after a long workday. Sure, it's just an acquaintance seeing an acquaintance, but that can be enough to rejuvenate you, your best self now without even trying. The power of a consistent smile.

    "My friend!" I exclaimed.
    "It's duh best number 7 bus driver ever!" Eb-buh.
    I laughed, appreciating his glow. "How's life?"
    "Life in 2018?"
    "Yeah man, tell me!"
    "Just another story," he replied. "Sad story, happy story, it doesn't matter. It's just another story."

    The thick accent, the sunglasses and spiky hair; the tilting roadway, dilapidated in the crossfade of light and gently turning time. How can a line be artless and artful in the same breath, too brief to be profound and yet too concise, too all-encompassing to be anything else? The best sages turn a book into a single sentence.

    I drift sometimes. We all do, especially these days. Despair is just around the corner, and it's addictive. When you've "been through some stuff," as they like to say out here, the reminder that life is a system of peaks and valleys carries with it particular comfort. His line put me back into perspective. To acknowledge the struggle as we comment on the intrinsically beautiful texture of existence allows us– allows me– all the more, to believe. Sometimes it's glorious, life is, and sometimes it's terrible.

    We take it in stride.

    Take things as they come, and make the best of them. "Yeah," I nodded. "Just another story!"
    "Jus' another story!"
  • Published on

    How I Live Now

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    UPDATE: the upcoming one-day solo show indicated below has been rescheduled for October 13th. Details anon!

    This post is in response to all the wonderful people I haven't been able to keep up with this past year. I really do adore you. Here's what my world consists of these days, and why your mother was right when she told you to never, ever marry an artist:

    Yes, I know time is a construct. It's something we can all agree on... until we can't. Death proves the existence of time, and we eventually learn that it doesn't matter if time is a construct or not. It is incontrovertibly how we process existence, and it is thus, for us, as real as the things that really are real. 

    My homeless friends living on the street face a dilemma I simply cannot relate to. Theirs is the problem of having too much time. For my adult life, my issue has been the opposite. It's beyond being unable to remember the last time I was bored; I have trouble recalling when I last relaxed. I don't know when I last came home, pulled a book off the shelf, and stared out the window with a bliss untarnished by the rumblings of impending obligation.

    I dreamt of graduating from school because I couldn't wait to have control over my own schedule. I waited twenty-odd years for the moment to come, and now, nearly a decade after walking out the University's art school doors for the last time, that control– that freedom– remains elusive, or at least feels like it does. Of course, all of us has all the time in the world (we just choose how we fill it up, as the saying goes); I've been careful to protect mine, but I've loaded it such that there's no room to breathe. I always feel like I'm getting close to breaking free, but I never get there. It feels like a prison, all the harder to escape because it is a claustrophobia not of space but of time. No matter which direction I reach, I can't find what I'm looking for, and it's my own passions that are in the way. Do you know what I mean?

    You might say I have two full-time jobs. The first eight hours of the day I spend on art.

    9 A.M. to 5 P.M.:

    Every day I attempt to progress at least incrementally on all of the following:

    • Film editing. Reviewing takes. Pulling selects. Experimenting with scene constructions. Revising. Consulting with colleagues. Backing up hard drives. Studying concepts from older films. Film theory. Getting pasty (and pastier). 
     
    • Photography. Scanning negatives. Archiving. Getting rolls processed and developed. Preparing for shows (two are underway; one, a permanent installation of pieces I'll never see in the residential floors of the Good Arts Building; the other, a solo show for Georgetown's October 13th Art Attack, a major undertaking with a twist– details await). Shooting, choosing, and making prints; deciding upon presentation and procuring materials for framing (usually a trip to three places: the lumber store, the hardware store, and the acrylic store) and executing on those decisions. 
     
    • This blog: reviewing notes and drafts. Writing and thinking, writing and reflecting, considering, stepping away... rinse and repeat. Staring at the screen for forty-five minutes, working on the last paragraph, searching for how best to translate my thoughts to words, what it is I really wish to say. Working on drafts for future posts. Alternating longer stories with shorter ones, contrasting themes and tone. Using Facebook Developer to scrape and post the stories; coordinating with The Urbanist, the wonderful policy and urban planning site where my stories are also posted. Mark Twain said that all art is trying to be music; I'm trying to do that with the least musical medium of them all, the finite ones and zeros of written language.
     
    • Korean. I'm on level 8 at City U now. This week it's the suffix that indicates the act of experiencing something (-은 적이 있어요; generally expressed with a verb), and another suffix (-어 본 적이 있어요) indicating the act of attempting to experience something. The latter is usually used to indicate positive or neutral experiences (have you tried going to Korea; have you attempted the act of eating Indian food), whereas the former, lacking the implication of willful attempt, can be used to describe negative experiences as well (I experienced the act of getting my TV stolen, rather than, I've tried out the experience of getting my TV stolen). We also learned 33 new words and phrases this week (I have a stomachache; the cost of living in Iowa is cheap) in addition, and completed a homework and did a reading assignment.
     
    • There's also a major surprise that myself and several co-conspirators are working on that I can't wait to share with you, and which is far too big to mention as an aside in this humble post; look for an announcement shortly! It involves an enormous amount of focus in reviewing, reorganizing, presentation and more. I think you're going to love it, honestly. But– as it should be– it's a lot of work. I like to get things right. (When this is done, there'll be time for more blog posts. When the film is done, even more. If the Korean class cycle concludes, even more! Apologies for intermittent posting of late. Know that I'm always working on something for you!)

    Don't get me wrong. I love all of it. I surround myself with the best artists I know, and then struggle to keep up. I'm aware there are worse life problems, believe me; I see them up close nightly. I'm thankful for these incredible opportunities. But that doesn't stop them from being exhausting. I love each so much that I can't cut anything out. The problem isn't that I hate what I'm doing; it's that I love everything I'm doing. 

    Somehow, amongst all this, are the chores we all do, like
    • Cooking.
    • Scrubbing kitchen counters (I have a tendency to start doing this in the middle of the night, before bed, for reasons beyond me).
    • Going for groceries– an activity I find oddly therapeutic, because it reminds me of childhood.
    • Washing my car– another activity I find oddly therapeutic, especially when done late at night.
    • Doing dishes while listening to music– another activity I find oddly therapeutic... actually, all menial tasks done alone that don't involve immersive, intensive creative consideration while under deadline... I find oddly (and okay, delightfully) therapeutic. Such as:
    • Brushing my teeth, often for longer than normal.
    • Compulsively sweeping the kitchen floor.
    • Rearranging the– but wait! There's a show to hang! A graphic designer to call! An audio engineer to get back to!

    Then I go to Metro-Land.

    5 P.M. to 1 A.M.:

    You can understand why I find driving buses relaxing. For eight hours, I only have to think about bus stuff. How fabulous. Who needs a therapist, when you can just putt-putt along to the rhythms of the road, practicing patience and listening to other people? The perspective, distraction, reorientation... all invaluable. It forces me to pay attention to my physical health, reminds me how much more there is than my little quibbles, and allows me to touch the glorious and irreplaceable feeling of reaching other people– reaching them without an agenda, and among all walks of life. 

    Art made by an artist who does not also live life is not interesting. Driving the bus forces me out of artmaking and back to where it all matters.

    Then I rush home and sleep, because I guess we're supposed to, before waking up to do it all over again.

    1 A.M. to... 1:05 A.M.??

    I haven't mentioned any space in the day where I might engage in some of my favorite activities: reading and watching films. When there's a break between Korean classes, reading becomes possible. Most recently was Tom Hardy's 1874 Far From the Madding Crowd. It's quite good. Example excerpt:

    Her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom thought practisable was she did not practise. She was the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indespensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.
    Now, I'm working on Kundera's 1984 ​The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It's even better. Example excerpt:
    What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated.

    Then there's the matter of finding time to watch films. It's important. Not enough young filmmakers know the canon, and when the oldest movie you've seen is Pulp Fiction, it shows in your work. Plus, I love the medium. So potent, watching someone else's dream....

    Most recently rewatched at home: Michael Mann's Heat (1995), a somber epic of interiority and self-awareness, and a favorite. Playtime (1974), Jacques Tati's near-silent comedy of modern motion; Antonioni's La Notte (1961), in which I particularly noted the hard lighting and intriguing staging of figures in space; and Bergman's Persona (1966), wherein I reflected on the effect of being shown the final monologue twice from two different angles.

    Most recently at the cinema: Eighth Grade, as bruising, intimate, personal and anxious as the grade itself. Magnificent. Blindspotting– not as engaging, tonally consistent or artistically daring as the other American independent film by a first-time director about black life in Oakland currently in theatres(!), Sorry to Bother You, but still worthwhile with its two hugely likable leads, several great dialogue exchanges and a strong third act. I have a soft spot for films about friendships; they're less common than you think.

    Other Actual Humans

    Speaking of friends. I generally don't get time to read or watch films. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is barely 300 pages, and I've been "reading" it for over two months. What about the humans I love even more than my beloved passengers? When there's a show to hang, another show to prep, a secret project to perfect, Korean to practice, a film to complete? 

    As a child I had a habit of starting projects– an illustrated bird book, a painting series– and abandoning them. I've since learned that artists who accomplish a lot of projects– the same ones you see giving speeches at parties and clowning at socials– spend most of their time sitting in rooms working their buns off. Now I finish my projects. But at what cost?

    ​Most of us love most what we cannot find; for me it is peace. Calm. I can almost touch it, it is so close. But it is not here. I really do love my friends, my family. I want to say yes to your every invite: to lunch, to films, to picnics, dinners, parties, plays, performances, hikes, walks, dates. An afternoon with friends; the beach at night. Of course I want to do those things, and with you.

    But there is an urgency that drives me. Various philosophical schools postulate that the motivating factor for all human action is loneliness; love; death. For me it is time. The urgent and pressing lack of it. 

    Milan Kundera wrote, in his book Immortality, that humans desire to assert their existence on earth in a way that will outlast them. The primal and psychological urge to defy time. Many people do that by having children. I do it by making art. It is not a desire for me. It is a need. I turned twenty-five and something clicked inside me; I turned thirty, and it clicked again. It was only a whisper, but I hear it every day:

    There is not a lot of time.

    My active life is half over. I've got work to do. I believe human connection is the most important treasure, and it may not seem like I value my friendships as much as I say; but I'm working on figuring it all out, learning how to balance what I feel urgency toward, and what is truly important. I'm thankful for every second of it. I will get there one day. The cacophonic fallacy of accomplishment will have died down, and you and I will be leaning back in our chairs– in a cafe, at home, at the base, under a tree, under an umbrella– and in the delicate silence between words we'll pause, and smile, gently. We will know its name without having to say it.

    Peace.
  • Published on

    Kindness In the Days of After

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    ​We knew each other once, intimately. The trim figure, the vivacious brown eyes and half-smile that just about screams vitality, even when silent. Many people merely repeat the headlines they've read; she was different. She could give a reason for every word she blurted, no matter how unconsidered they appeared. She had complete ownership of her thoughts.

    I'll refrain from describing her appearance further except to say the boys always had a word and a glance for her, and she knew exactly what to say to every last one. Street smart and book smart, spirit strong with a lot left over. 

    Here she is tonight, wrapping up her swing shift, a figure in the dark ready to go home. I tilt my head in a smile. Am I glad to see her? Of course. We've drifted apart in the intervening years, sure, but it's been amiable. That takes two, and I'm thankful for her graciousness. You take care of the people who were dear to you, never mind that they're no longer part of your life; they were once, and they're still kind, and that is enough. You give them a safe space, put in a good word; you let them down gently, because they are softer than before you came. 

    "Why is it every time I have a shitty day I'm visited by an angel?" she asks rhetorically, opening a smile for me. She's explaining her groan of a response to my pleasantries. Tough day for her. I extend my arms out for a hug, reminded of a night two Novembers ago:

    The 2016 presidential election had just been lost, and Seattle was devastated. People were hugging each other in the streets, sobbing in the arms of strangers, clusters of disbelief. We were hanging on to what we thought we knew about the innateness of human decency, despite the wake-up call on every news channel: there are people out there who just don't care. 

    Not even the most cynical depressive could have believably said in 2015 that we would have child concentration camps proposed in our American future. That citizens in the 21st century would fail to see an inconsistency between "pursuit of happiness," "liberty and justice for all," "all men are created equal..." and forcibly separating families who believe in those ideals, endorsing assault toward other Americans, implementing laws designed to disadvantage women and people of color, misinformation disseminated with impunity, and redistributing wealth with an eye toward reducing the living standards of the middle and working class. 

    The Trump win was most potently a win for apathy. With the possible exception of certain morally unjustifiable wars in the early and mid-2000s, it unequivocally represents the crowning low point in postmodern American consciousness, and reinforces the country's defining trait in a landscape where individuals feel ever more powerless to effect widespread change: complacency.

    By now we know that the Trump win was a minority opinion, a result of 77,000 voters in three swing states. That paltry figure was enough to decide a nationwide election due to an obviously flawed electoral system, and the fact that system hasn't been overhauled since is as compelling an example as any as to why complacency rules; complacency* is the opposite of hope, and it's what you do to survive in a system you believe you cannot change.

    But 77,000 isn't a majority. Nor is nineteen percent– the amount of the country's total population who voted for Trump (26% of the voter-eligible population). It isn't just that he lost the popular vote by a healthy 2.9 million, as we now know; that's borderline misleading in its suggestion of a close race. It was never a close race.

    My concern here is not who won, but whether or not Trump's prejudices represent the American consciousness, and 9.7 million against 231 million does not a majority make. The Trump win only felt like a win for apathy. It was a win for gerrymandering, swing states, and the electoral college. Remember this, when the night is dark:

    There is no actual American majority represented by Mr. Trump's views.

    We didn't know it at the time, though, and we felt worse than we needed to. On November 8, 2016 the lady above and I barely knew each other. I saw her walking home alone, crossing the street in front of me. Like many of us inside the bus and out that night, she was crying. Ours was the mood of the city, the country, the collective who'd become accustomed to tolerance, stunned that greed and selfishness could have such traction as virtues.

    I write above that our society is structured to minimize the ability for an individual to effect widespread change. That's not to say it isn't possible, but even more importantly: isn't the most potent impact we can have on others always and only ever the personal, the one on one? 

    I tapped the horn lightly, opening the doors where she was. We looked at each other. I'd never hugged her before.

    I said, "do you need a hug?"

    Red lights were made for this. 

    We embraced tightly, searching for words of comfort. Loss, failure, triumph; these are the things that make us one. "I'm so glad I ran into you tonight," she said, a wan smile beneath her mascara-streaked cheeks. 

    Tonight, lifetimes later, she has hardships once again, but of a more personal nature; family troubles. She's waiting for an important phone call, and fills me in during the interim. I've seen her only in passing for ages now. Somehow we've managed to bypass the awkward stage, the post-mortem of hurt and clawing insecurities. 

    There is just the easy comfort of a person who once cared and still does, in a healthier way. Let them down gently. Lord knows how many times I've failed to do so, but I learn from those with more patience, or less, than I. 

    Eventually her important phone call came, and she withdrew for the remainder of the ride, relaxed, safe in my space, the Nathan 49 Living Room.

    She rose to exit, still on her phone. Into it she said, 

    "Hang on. Lemme say bye to the bus driver. He's a good friend of mine."

    I sighed with gratitude and hugged her tightly, again. She'll never know how much those lines meant to me. Kindness after a relationship has already concluded has no agenda. It is simply kindness, genuine, given for its own sake, because it is consistent with who we are. Is there a bigger relief then being so accepted, after everything is over, by someone who knows your every weak point? 

    Love. We do what we can to help each other, and to get by. The answer to despair is never reason.

    ---

    Note: That's someone else in the photo. It's less an individual I wish to celebrate here than a sensibility.

    Sources and further reading–

    For Every 10 U.S. Adults, Six Vote and Four Don’t. What Separates Them? (The New York Times)
    What Affects Voter Turnout Rates (FairVote.org)
    Voter Turnout Infographic Shows Women, Older People Most Likely To Come Out On Election Day (The Huffington Post)
    Characteristics of the typical American voter (Angelo)

    26 Percent of Eligible Voters Voted for Trump (The Mises Institute)
    Who Were Donald Trump's Voters? Now We Know (Forbes)
    Trump was elected by a little more than a quarter of eligible voters (Vox)

    Poll: More than half of Americans strongly disapprove of Trump (NBC)
    Donald Trump will be president thanks to 80,000 people in three states (The Washington Post)
    The Election Came Down to 77,744 Votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan (Updated) (The Weekly Standard)

    Trump's Lies: The Definitive List (The New York Times)
    100 Ways the Trump Administration Is Harming Women and Families (AmericanProgress.org)
    Trump migrant separation policy: Children 'in cages' in Texas (BBC)
    Trump’s tax-cut scam will only deepen racism and inequality (The Washington Post)
    The Muslim ban ruling legitimates Trump's bigotry (The Guardian)
    The Day the Music Died (ruminations of my own on driving on election night)


    *Congressmen with consciences- we humble plebians can't do much, but you know you can. You don't get in the history books by passing legislation or making a lot of money; people haven't been eulogized for their wealth since the days of Carnegie and Vanderbilt. No one cares. You get eulogized for kicking out unprecedented presidents using unprecedented means.

    The guy has his qualities, I'm sure, but being president isn't one of them and we all know it. There's no reason for him to still be in office. Look to Section IV of the 25th Amendment for some pretty solid boilerplate language designed for just such circumstances. How convenient. Then guilt-trip your colleagues with a choice quote or two. Here's one from Ella Wheeler Cox for starters: "To sin by silence when we should protest doth make cowards out of men."
  • Published on

    The Principled Gesture

    Picture
    There's a lot of time to think when you're driving a bus. There shouldn't be, what with the incredible amount of mental multitasking involved; but you get into a rhythm, and no matter what task you're working on, there is room to daydream. I heard his voice and my mind took off, and by the time I landed I felt altogether better, able to see things from a healthier slant. The places you can go sitting in stopped traffic. It began with a few words from one of our grizzled street brethren, seated behind me on an evening 7:

    "I don't steal. That's why I panhandle. I prefer to ask people than steal from them. They know I could steal. But I'm not going to. It's like you ask the driver if you can ride the bus. They're required to say yes. It's not up to them to eject you, that's the job of transit police. But you still ask anyway."

    It was another day of vibrant, immediate life, lived moment to moment to moment. He'd been impressed with my attitude upon boarding, and mirrored it with his own, burgeoning forth. His voice was enthusiastic; compelled to share the above to the neighbor seated beside him, for reasons of bubbling well-being neither he, you, nor I could articulate. 

    This is the good work we do everyday, by being ourselves. Bringing out our better angels, together. We tend to define self-worth by accomplishments we can measure; awards won, income gained, status markers achieved. We forget the larger thing. Character. Who you were in the dark, when no one else knew. How we treated others. 

    That person is the center of their own life, and you were kind to them. That is the lasting and final act of being human. It isn't what we did, or made, but how we were. All else is secondary.


    ---
    This is a companion piece to this story, another brief moment of principled street gesture.

    P.S.– In response to the Comcast piece below– I've found a new home at CenturyLink! No contract, a locked-in lifetime price without random increases, a cheaper rate for faster internet, a friendly and knowledgeable face installing the goods... comparing favorably to Comcast isn't exactly difficult, but it sure is hugely appreciated!