I still have (many!) more thoughts on the National Tragedy, but wanted to take a moment regarding today's holiday. I haven't forgotten that we now have a US President who's endorsed by the KKK, but I don't want to let Trump overwhelm the contributions ordinary folks have made for eons. Whether the wars they fought in were misguided, just, or otherwise... the sacrifices were real. 

To wit:

This was back when American Sniper came out. I have a bunch of reservations about that movie, which you can read here. Regardless, I was sitting in the theatre, Cinerama, left of center, toward the front, where I like to be when I go to films alone. To my right was a boy in his twenties and his companion, a woman who looked to be in her early eighties. As the end credits played, I could hear them speaking to each other.

"What'd you think?" The boy.
"It was good."
"Yeah. I couldn't help but tearing up a few times."
"Yeah."
He elaborated. "I couldn't help thinking about him, the fact that he was actually over there, and he went back over there… it just kinda blew me away how many times he went over there and came back. Made it back."
In a quiet, scraggly voice, the elderly woman said, "yeah, you know, it really was like that, with the kids carrying the bombs. You had to be careful, 'cause often they would train children to do that. Sometimes we just didn't know, and we had to make decisions like that."

I had misheard the young man. He wasn't saying he, in the above sentence. He was saying you. How many times you went over there, and made it back. 

"Well," he replied, "I just didn't realize how close I was to losing you. I was too busy thinking about dad trying to get me to eat spinach for six hours!"

They stood slowly. He waited for her to get situated, gave her time to rise at her own pace. After they were both standing I approached them. She was a diminutive, decrepit shadow of a woman whose presence you might not even notice out in the world. But she was a powerhouse, had suffered, lived large, known the tortures of conscience, been placed in situations and sacrificed to a degree she didn't know possible when she started out. She was at the center of it all, once, and painfully. I don't often say "thank you for serving," but I needed to now. 

"Hey," I said, almost whispering in the great big dark room. "Could I shake your hand? I'm sorry to interrupt, I couldn't help but overhear. Thank you for serving."
"Oh. Thank you," she said, in her aged voice. 
"It means a lot," I said. "Have a good day, you guys."

They walked out together, slowly.

--

A vet in his early sixties came aboard my bus a short while later. He mentioned a toe injury he's had since Vietnam. He'd finally gotten some surgery for it, and was feeling better. The movie theatre incident was still prominent in my mind, and I said it again:

"Thank you for serving."
He lit up. He thanked me. Then he said,

"You're the sixth person to say that since 1979!"

This is the first in a series of five posts. I resolutely avoid politics here on the blog, but the Trump win isn't political. It's more than that.

I saw the brightest lights of my city in mourning. There was a stone in my chest, and everyone else's. Could I really say "good evening," with a clean conscience? 

In stark contrast to 2008, when you couldn't go anywhere on the Hill because of how many people were dancing in the streets, last night was a city emptied out, devastated. There were people about, but they stood off by themselves, pulling on a cigarette gazing nowhere, wiping their eyes as they crossed the street. Here was a man and a woman standing facing each other on the sidewalk, their foreheads touching, the woman heaving with grief, the man with nothing to say, sharing her desolation in crushed silence. We were all alone, together.

I was reminded of 9/11. The streets felt shattered then, too, but today is different. Today's disillusionment is a sobering realization, the disillusionment not of learning about others but of ourselves: there are monsters afoot, and they are near, in our backyards and in our blood. I speak not of other voters, you understand, but rather of attitudes.

The world will remember when the United States of America elected a man who condones the rape of women. 

Can you believe that sentence is not an exaggeration? A man who speaks of it casually, who boasts about sexual assault, who sneers with hate and ignorance at blacks, latinos, all minorities, the impoverished, and more. There was a time when Americans got worked up over Reagan having a second wife, or Clinton having affairs with interns. How quaint. At least those presidents regularly made comments that were consistent with the values this country was formed on. Up til now US presidents were career politicians who started out with ideals, who at least had a desire to better their country. They didn't host Wrestlemanias or spend their energies building casinos and golf courses, and they definitely didn't keep a collection of Hitler speeches by their bed.

Now, the lead American figure in the "art of compromise" is someone who sues comedians when they make fun of him, urges his supporters to beat up protestors at rallies, defended the Japanese internment camps, doesn't know how many articles there are in the Constitution, praised North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and said of women:*

"You have to treat 'em like shit." 

Jimmy Carter this is not. 

What will we tell our children?

The fact of Trump's presidency normalizes and legitimizes abuse. We used to be able to tell young people that rape and assault allegations would ruin their careers. That lying, cheating and stealing won't get you anywhere in the long run. We can no longer teach children they shouldn't harass others, sexually assault others, brand folks who don't look like us as criminals.... You can now do all those things, loudly, and become President of the United States. Will victims of harm and hate feel comfortable coming forward now? Will men who think women's sole purpose is to serve and please them feel that much more empowered?

Maybe they'll grow up knowing better, despite our grave error. They'll wonder how their parents and grandparents got so backward all over again, after decades of real progress. How did they let this monster in, they'll ask. How will the children of future generations regard us? What will we look like? Will we look like Germany in 1932? I don't think so.

I believe we will look worse. The difference is we, today, knew everything going in. 

People will speak of the day when America elected a reality-TV host with no political experience, who bragged his ignorance, who made Napoleon look humble. Do you imagine this man sitting down for peace talks with dignitaries from other countries? Do you see a man who's had his way for his whole life– whose catchphrase for decades was "you're fired"– listening to advisors on foreign policy? Caring about foreign policy? Let's not pretend there's a shrewd businessmen under that spray tan, either. His key assets are inherited, his current wealth comes from celebrity, and despite his business education he's still filed for bankruptcy multiple times. If business isn't his area of expertise, well, what is?

He was the punchline of the world, and now the globe looks on with disappointment, and confusion. Surely America must have known he's a joke. His election is a message to the world: "we think this man a capable and viable representative." Trump isn't the punchline of the world anymore. America is. He is a mirror for certain prevalent tendencies now, of ignorance, chauvinism, and insular, apathetic narcissism. We wish to elect not ourselves, but someone better than ourselves. Mr. Trump is not that.

Play me no music today, no false consolation, no empty words of how this is all fine. Let me sit here, and watch the rain. I'm not ready for the bright side yet.

To be continued. Stay tuned.

--

*Slate: 230 Things Trump Has Said That Make Him Unfit to be President.

Is it so silly, when we really think about it, to mourn the passing of a coach type? Think back to your childhood haunts. The wind chimes on Grandma's porch. The smells of your home, wherever it was, during the best years of your life. They form the texture of our existence, these spaces. The building blocks, how we make it personal. 

Even if you never rode them, it's likely Metro's sixty-foot Breda bus made an impression. They were ancient. They were massive. They looked so big and so heavy you'd think they should be illegal, and they were. At 64,350 pounds with a full load of passengers, they destroyed roads and violated weight limits all across the county, forcing Metro to pay fines every single service day for a couple decades. They were unstoppable tanks that could barely get started; they employed a different sort of transmission than what we ordinarily know, which is why you'd get all the way up to fifth gear and the bus would still only be going twenty-five. You needed to pack a lunch for some of those steep hills. The manufacturer's top speed was set at fifty-five, which in real life meant something like fifty-one or fifty-two. Forget schedule. "They were stinkers from day one," a senior operator not-so-wistfully told me. They predated ergonomics and have destroyed countless drivers' shoulders, knees, lower backs….

And oh, how I love them so. They live now only in our thoughts: the last Breda coach, ever, ran its final trip last Thursday on an inbound 36, sometime around 1pm. The photos you see here were taken by me between 1998 and last month.

As an operator, my body certainly won't miss them, but I will. I'll miss the fact of their colossal size. Twelve feet tall rather than ten, four steps instead of three, the high center of gravity that felt like a streetcar in prewar Europe; I'll miss the stained and paint-stripped floors, panels gouged with twenty-six years of peeling and knifepoint graffiti, lint and litter becoming one with the bus, fusing together in the dusty nether corners. A biologist's dream, I'm sure. 

Only the Seattle coaches had a rear axle connected to a diesel drive train and a center axle another power source: an electric motor, which came to life when the poles on top of the bus were raised up to trolley wire. They were a custom order designed for Metro's downtown transit tunnel, which opened in 1990, and featured trolley wire running its length to allow coaches to whisk through without emitting exhaust fumes. The process of raising the poles to the wire at either end of the tunnel wasn't always flawless, but wasn't that part of the charm? As a child, it was a treat to feel the bus shift into electric. You were sitting in the same vehicle, but all the sounds changed. No more rumbling, shifting, or engine vibrations; now the steady hum of current, accelerated torque, and clicks of poles switching tracks. Out-of-towners marveled, trying to figure out what was going on. 

The initial order was for 235 buses. From 1990 to 2005 they traversed all over the county, breaking down, giving millions (not an exaggeration) of rides, raising the poles and lowering the poles as they went in and out of the tunnel, tearing apart drivers' shoulders, and proving the bane of every automobile who ever got stuck behind one, wondering why the bus in front of them was taking more than a mile to get up to fifty (again, not an exaggeration: on the 267 from the West Lake Sammamish onramp to SR-520 & 51st, there was no way the bus was getting over twenty mph, despite the 60 mph speed limit).

Part of the issue was weight. In the analogue days, dual-mode meant, quite literally, doubling everything: there weren't just two engines, but two of everything: brake systems, transmissions (as much as an electric motor could have one), all the connective assembly for each, and more. In 2005 the vehicles were replaced by new Hybrid diesels which you still see in service today. At a downright puny (well, comparatively) 44,935 pounds, these are veritable jackrabbits. They're little sports cars. They number 2600-2812, and are identifiable by their roof-mounted battery, instead of poles.

Yes, they make more sense, but they're not as endearing. Though they do have an electric assist that allows them better acceleration when operating under forty mph… admit it, friend.

They lack character.

There's something about design from the pre-digital period I enjoy: look at the knobs and dials on cameras from back then, or the unfussy current collection boxes atop the bus. The sharp edges and corners, so un-aerodynamic. And so hot. The person who isn't trying so hard to look good ends up being the most dazzling; you know what I mean. And so it is with bus design.

Listen to that "ding" of the bell chime: that's a real bell. Not everything needed to look like a slick sci-fi movie. The dashboard was drenched in toggle switches and buttons, in a triumph of function over form; today's dash is sleek but limiting by comparison. The driver could engage the differential lock, disable the dynamic brake, cutout the retarder, and more– no longer options today. ​

Upon being replaced in 2005, 59 of the 235 Bredas were selected to continue service as electric-only trolleys, replacing the aging fleet of 46 German MAN trolleys from 1986, pictured below. I'm even more attached to those than I am to the Bredas; good thing you don't have to listen to me rapturously proclaim my love for them here.... 

The 59 remaining Bredas would now be used on trolley routes rather than tunnel routes, and drive only while on the wire– the diesel engines, transmission and radiator were removed, making them 14,000 pounds lighter. Great. The buses were retrofitted with new signage, seat upholstering, Kiepe fiberglass poles (more flexible than steel, better at staying on the wire), updated driver's area, and reduced seating to allow for more leg room (people don't squeeze in quite like they used to!). The haphazard, in-house nature of this refurbishment led to the moniker "FrankenBreda." Say it with love.

With 59 buses, you'd think maybe 55 or so of those would always be in working order and ready to hit the road. Wouldn't that be nice. But being that these are Bredas, no amount of cute new upholstered seats could alter the fact that they were king of breakdowns, and always would be. A standard bus fleet requires a ten or fifteen percent "spare ratio–" an extra quantity of buses on the lot to mitigate breakdowns. Ten or twelve buses for a fleet of a hundred, for instance. Bredas broke down so much Metro needed a thirty percent spare ratio– to address the constant breakdowns but also to have available for scrap parts.

Spare parts for a bus made by an Italian train company while the the Berlin Wall was still standing are hard to come by. When you step into the bus to start your shift and notice that the odometer reads over 600,000 miles, you're not really expecting this thing to work anyway. No need, for instance, to write up the damage to the cracked bumper below; you would be more surprised if everything actually looked good.

As much as we loved complaining about them ("why do they smell so much" being a query I heard with unusual frequency), what made them so incredible was how often they did run without incident. What an ace crew those mechanics are. Metro loves getting every inch of life out of their coaches, and with trolleys it's possible. Trolley bus motors last forever because they contain almost no moving parts, relatively speaking. The new fiberglass poles worked like a charm, and if you lost your poles it was likely due to driver error, rather than mechanical failure: too fast through a switch perhaps, or a forgotten turn signal (turn signals send radio signals up to the wire to switch the tracks). They were notoriously difficult to give a smooth ride, but it was possible. No other articulated bus in the fleet is driven by the center axle, and these were thus tanks in the snow; having the added dashboard controls mentioned above helped as well.

​Sometimes the dash lights would be burned out, or the tires bald, or you just got tired of the drafty interior, the dented and cracked facades, turn signals you had to stand on to activate, eight hours of the scent of a chemistry experiment gone horribly awry, baking in the summer without air conditioning, sweltering in the glass box behind those enormous windows…

Ah, but when was anything easy truly worthwhile? The challenge of the untamed beast made you a better driver. 

They made tighter turns than any other coach, had better visibility both inside and out, doors that didn't take forever to close, a back window, a heater that worked, and, as trolleys, tremendous torque– it hardly made sense that such a lumbering behemoth could get up and go so fast.  

But the real jump they had on all other buses was history. There's something larger here than gearhead nostalgia. Unlike most countries, ours is eager to turn away from its past, to subsume it with glossy new facades. The West Coast cities in particular seem eager to erase the evidence of time, and it isn't just because they're newer. There was life here more than fifty years ago, but you'd be hard pressed to find it now. Where are the actualizations of the lives of our local forefathers, the Dennys, Yeslers, Sealths, aside from the pithy plaque or statue? Where are the deep shades of faded brick, the echo of trees and buildings which predate the lives of our families, when homes and shoes and toys and clothes were built to last? In a world that starts and spurts through change without pausing to take stock of itself, any sign of constancy is a deep comfort to me.

That is what that whisper is, that subtle reassurance we feel when confronted with trees standing tall against the horizon, the home you grew up in which is still standing, and yes, this strange and glorious Breda monster, old and weathered enough to be a father figure in its own right, gently reminding us that the we and the world will, as ever, continue.

Have you noticed how when people run for the bus, they're nearly always smiling? Most especially when they make it onboard, but often before that becomes a certainty, too. It's the element of the chase, perhaps, muscle memories from childhood; swatting the branches and leaves aside, during the time when laughter and sunshine ruled the world.

It's dark tonight, southbound 15th in the U District, and they're facing away from me, but you can somehow tell those two runners are smiling. They're giggling with their bodies, racing my bus to the next stop. 

If it was rush hour, I wouldn't wait for them, but it isn't rush hour. It's 12:11 in the morning. Am I going to pull over in between stops and save them the extra block of running, speeding things up for everyone? Of course I am.

I want to see the smiles on their faces. 

They're a young couple, likely undergraduates, each bumbling into the other now in an effort to stop. They finish each other's sentences, flowing in and out, a sprightly African-American student and his bubbly east Asian girlfriend. There is an ability among millenials to overlook race and gender differences, take them in stride, with an ease no generation prior has been able to accomplish. It's one of my favorite things about being alive right now. 

"Tight!" says one, as other finishes: "he's stopping!"
"It's not the bus!" the boyfriend exclaims. 
I echo his statement as a question– "is it not the bus?"
"No, it's a 49," he yells back, seemingly for the benefit of both myself and his lady, "and we want the 48! But thank you so much for stoppin'!"
"No worries," I holler in return with a grin in my voice, catching the rhythms of their excitement by proximity. "Have a good night!"
"My nigga! You too!"

There was an exhale of almost surprised relief somewhere in there, an effervescence in the timbre of his cry. I shook my head as I drove away, smiling too wide for a stationary face. Replaying the moment, figuring out why I loved it so. You heard the realization in his tone: that guy's like me, another unjudging young person, who didn't think twice about pulling over for us, more than happy to do so. There are folks like that.

When we see the best parts of ourselves reflected in the person before us, we come alive all over again. When I see how this goodness lives so easily in anyone, so utterly ignorant of race and class and preferential differences, I shiver with delight at the possibilities. Let the youngsters lead the way, where we have not tread before. I love moments like this in part because they don't happen all the time. We are not yet living in a post-racial world. 

Except when we are.

It's a system of peaks and valleys, life is. At this moment, somewhere last year, I was in a valley. You know the feeling, I'm sure, where you drift through the days and nights at half-speed, troubled, knowing you should probably talk about it, but stymied by the sensation that doing so would be pointless. Who, after all, knows the full situation besides you? The bus is a welcome distraction. It demands so much present concentration, focus, and consideration of others that there's no time leftover to think about one's own problems. But sometimes the thoughts sneak back in, especially as the night wears on and the city begins to clear out. 

"Heeey, man!" exclaimed this vaguely familiar face, all smiles, thrilled to see me, with no idea how low I felt, how little I felt like talking. I almost verbalized something along those lines, but I can't do that. Life is bigger than my little woes. He asked, with exuberance and terrific speed, nearly talking over himself: "hey I haven't seen you in ages, how you been?" 

He could have been forty, or fifty, bald but with a baseball cap tonight, dark olive skin and almond eyes like mine, wearing your dad's sweater and faded tennis shoes. 

"Oh, pretty well," I replied. "How 'bout you?"
"Man, I got broken into!" It was the funniest thing to hear, that sentence, voiced as it was with the timbre of his excitement at seeing me. "I was jus' taken a shower, they came in and took my wallet, took my–"
"No way, up on Capitol Hill?"
"No, I live over here. Busted right in middle a the day,"

I'm really listening now. "Wait. You were at home?"
"Took my wallet, loose cash,"
"You were at home? They came in while you was at the house?"
"Yeah, I was in the shower. I came out ready to go to work." Readygotowork. So fast! This guy should do the voices for audiobooks. He could get you through The Brothers Karamazov in an hour. And yet, unlike many fast-talkin' folk, it was easy to detect the very real sincerity in his voice. 
"Oh, no," I said. "Oh, no! That's terrible!"
"Yeah. Well. I'm okay at least. Tell me 'bout you, how are holdin' up? You look even younger now! I want your genes, man!" 
"Ha!"
"But you look more mature somehow."
"Hmm. I hope so. Maybe I learned one or two things in the interim!" 
"You been doin' okay, everything good?"
"Yeah, I can't complain. Things are good. Things are fine." Somewhere in the middle of that I remembered my father, speaking on how important truthfulness is. Amazing, the speed at which the brain dashes from thought to thought. I decided to just tell him. It was the middle of the barren night, a weeknight. There was room for conversations like this. 

I said, "actually, I just got dumped."
"Awww, that's, hell, that's worse than gettin' broke into!"
"Oh man, it kills me. It just kills me."
"Wait. Somebody broke up with you? Do they know what they're missing?"
I laughed. "Aw naw,"
"It's a done deal or she just you know,"
"I think it's a done deal, yeah,"
"What happened? I can't imagine."
"Oh, it's, uh. Um. well, okay. We were trying to resolve an issue, but before I could come to a decision on how to resolve it, she just said hey, I'm done, this is done."
"Awwww. How many years you were together?"
​"Oh not long at all. Three months, something." Could it really have been that short? "So it's not all that you know, but it was so intense! You know how sometimes it's a short time but it's so concentrated, and it figgers larger in your head?"
"Yeah yeah."
"So that's kinda what's been on my mind."
"That's funny, I thought you were gay."
"Ha!" It was the loudest I'd laughed in two weeks. What a ridiculous sentence, and so perfect, sublime, really. Just the leveling needed in that moment.
"I mean no offense,"
"No no,"
"Nothing wrong of course I just always thought okay, I thought you were gay the whole time,"
"I know, everyone does. I don't know why. Because I'm friendly? Or I like art? I can't help myself!"
We laughed and laughed, climbing the ladder together. 

"Man. Yeah, I split up with my wife after [unintelligible] years, we were livin' in Santa [Clara], one' most expensive neighborhoods in the world, we were just arguing all the," 
"It's no good if you're just makin' each other unhappy,"
"Yeah. You know something like eighty percent a relationships fall apart cause of–"
"–Money, man!"
"–Financial issues? Yeah!"
"Yeah, I seen the ad that mentions that. I mean, if you guys are always arguin' about the rent,"
"Exactly, and she was workin' all the time trying t'cover for stuff,"
"No time,"
"Yeah."
"But it's not a failure because it ends. Everything ends. It's never a failure just cause it ends." I often tell that to people. I need to voice it, just in case they don't know. I think he knew, though; he was way too happy not to. "Okay so what did they take when they broke in?"
"My wallet, my keys, cash. My bus card,"
"Oh man, especially the wallet, that's a bummer. Take forever to replace."

"Yeah." Listen to the effervescent bounce in his voice, infectious: "It'll work out though." Practically bubbly. "I'm stayin' at this guy's house right now, landlord's house but it's no good, he's ninety and he always has all these women comin' over. He's ninety and bunch a women half his age be comin' over to the house,"
"Hold up wait, he be ninety years old? Did you say ninet–"
"Yeah, and he has all these lovers!"
"He has lovers at ninety! I wanna know about his genes!"
"I don't wanna be no player, 'specially at that age–"
"Yeah that sounds painful. Ninety? I wanna be reading books."
"Exactly. Should be lookin' at birds and stuff. Talkin' about bowel movements!"
"Ha!" I laugh so hard the only other passenger looks up from his headphonic din, confused.
"Well, I'm sorry we both had bummer times goin' on."
"Me too, but it's good to talk. Talking's good."

They don't have classes on how to live life. They'll teach you everything else–everything else, as long as its quantifiable, binary, literal– but they won't teach you how to break up or when, to question how you define your self-worth, how to feel when your wares are stolen, how to move on from the death of a loved one. When it comes to matters of actual consequence, we're all beginners in this racket. The singsong rhythms of his resilient ebullience were the lesson I needed then, the gentle confidence of guidance offered unknowingly. No better way to teach someone. 

He wasn't doing anything besides being himself.