She rides every Sunday night, on her way to church. Her love of God and music overtakes her body as she gives in to the rhythms of her headphones, her body shuddering as if in outright control of the beat. We might call it foolhardy for those of us with eyesight to plug ourselves into the voluntary deafness of earbuds, but for her, doing so is even more unwise. She nevertheless manages things every time, tapping out her environs with the red and white cane, gyrating to her music and simultaneously carrying on conversation with anyone who wants to listen and a few who don't. I imagine her sense of hearing dwarfs my own. Tonight she, a colorful cacophony of bright clothing and bags, her eyes permanently screwed shut and body forever dancing, came aboard with seconds to spare.

"I'm so glad I made your bus!"
"Oh, excellent!"
"I like taking your bus 'cause the one after you is driven by a foreigner!"

Such statements rub differently in our weaker moments. At the end of a shift, tired and hungry, being our best takes effort. It's easier to laze into reactionism. I flashed to my uncles, scrubbing restaurant floors for a pittance just so their children might have a future in this country. I thought of my Grandfather, opening a market in South Central LA, barely able to speak English, surrounded by strangers who knew nothing of his prior accomplishments, his significant past life and culture an invisible memory. My Mother, looking out at the new world. When all that was familiar is suddenly absent, and those around you don't notice or care, the words humility and perseverance gain traction as no one besides can understand.

"I bet he got you there just fine, with no problems at all," I said aloud.
"Well yeah, but I just don't trust them. What if he forgets where I'm going?"

Is there a word worse than 'them?' Her use of it grates. I'm still stuck on immigrants. An accent should be recognized by more people for what it is: a badge of honor. It means that person or their relatives, had the courage, the sheer gall, to drop everything and completely restart their entire life in a strange and different place where they would noticeably stick out, be hampered by significant handicaps like language and knowledge, and bizarrely, be expected to keep up to the standards met by those with lifetimes of experience in said country. 

Fifteenth and Campus Parkway, while the glowing red light gives time for these thoughts to pervade my vision. There's a 'foreigner' on the bus just now, a young olive-skinned man my generation. Wonder what he's thinking. I thought of dinners with my family.

I should not have said what said next. I turned around in my seat, a pointless gesture since she couldn't see me, and said, "okay. So if you say another word about foreigners I'm gonna ask you to leave this bus, alright? They're people just the same as you and me, and we're not gonna talk about other people in that way."

Wait a minute. I can't be kicking old blind ladies off the bus just because they have different opinions than me! In the middle of the night? Talk about ridiculous. But life has no undo button. What's done is done. I'm reminding myself that religion on the bus is always a terrible idea, and how it's probably not a bright concept to dig myself any deeper holes, like bringing up the obvious contradiction between her attitude and her destination….

"Well," she said, "it's just that I can't trust them, they can't hear me as good, they might not hear me when I want to get off!"
"Okay, so I'm a foreigner, and–"
"What? Are you Canadian?"
"–and because of the way you've been talking we're not gonna talk anymore about this, okay? I'm happy to talk about to you about all kinds of other things, but not this."
"Hey, I'm takin' my Mom to the Neil Diamond concert!"
"Oh, that sounds excellent! Where's he gonna be playing?"

And just like that, we were able to bring it back. She closed that door with ease and I followed suit, and we found ourselves as fellow humans once again. She waxed rapturous on The Jewish Elvis to myself and those around her as if they naturally loved The Diamond as much or more than she. I admired her utter lack of self-consciousness. Sometimes her brash self-absorption chafes on me, but the positives of such extrovertedness outweigh the negatives. Such bravery, going forth into the world as she does, into the crosswalks and into the silences, taking on the uncertainties of an ocean of noise and impatient voices, the multitude of beings quick to judge her, and those who may simply just not know her story. Like myself.

"Geezer program?! You're what, fifty? You're a young guy, man. Don't you know sixty's the new forty?"

John and I continue our conversation. We're passing the time by ribbing each other– I'm trying to convince him he'll be alive for a long time, despite the "geezer program" he's currently in, and he's ribbing me over the fact that I let myself get sweet-talked into working today, a Friday night last March, because I'd forgotten I actually had the day off. As someone constantly starved for spare time, I'm more than a little aggravated with myself, but his casual humor is just what I need.

"You'll have a lotta 'splainin' to do to your girlfriend," he says. "She's sittin' on the couch all by herself on Friday night while you're goin' up and down Third avenue all night, talkin' to a bum like me!"
"You're not a bum! And you're not a geezer, either. Eighty's the new forty."
"Hang on, I thought it was sixty! You tryin' to call me old?"
"I'm tryna call you young! And I don't have a girlfriend right now."
"Well, no freakin' wonder! Look at you, can't even remember what days off you have!"
"I know, what am I doing out here? What town is this? Okay, tell me about this geezer program."
"It's like a volunteer corps," he explains. John's a boatbuilder by trade. "It's through the same company that does Americorps, which does that thing all those college-age kids take, kids your age,"
"College kids! I only look ten! I'm gonna be thirty in what,"
"Okay okay. Well they all go through it and, you know it's a certificate program, they all get a certificate at the end. We, us geezers, they give us a mahogany casket."
"Get outta here mahogany casket! You're, I'm tellin' you, you're gonna be alive for a while...."
"Hope so! It pays pretty good, pays about the same as the kids get, six hundred a month, six fifty."
"Oh hey,"
"Yeah,"
"That's fantastic!"
"Well. Uh."
"Okay. Okay. I see your point."

He explains that he's "doin' the shelter thing now," staying up at St. Mary's, which he describes as one of the better shelters. That's fine, but my mind flashes to an earlier time when shelters were never part of a John conversation. I recall him with clean divisions, the sharp lines and confidence unsullied by the hangdog blues of homelessness. When his weathered 'n ready look seagoing men have was overlayed with an air of better straits. We would talk photography, printing, carpentry, boats, houseboats, ships, sails. Articulate, this guy. He's an artisan in several fields, but the job market favors the young. When did lack of life experience become attractive?

"Wait, what happened to the houseboat?"
"Too expensive, man," he explains. "Every time I turn around something was breaking down or needing replacing. Minute you get one thing fixed, another thing falls off,"
"That's a drag. Whole thing fallin' apart after you spend a fortune on the rudder,"
"Oh, it's crazy. I've got it dry-docked right now,"
"Okay,"
"'Cause it needs a new hull. But the crazy thing of it is, a new hull costs three thousand!"
"Oh, fuhgeeeett about it!"
"It takes six months to a year to save up three thousand,"
"Six months?! You're good!"

Bum is a word in desperate need of removal from circulation. I don't care for its blanket implication of laziness, which is not always applicable. Climbin' the ol' ladder can be quite the struggle. John, now, a friend like you and me, sharing how he's always lived on water. He's still got it, I think as I listen, the spark that makes him singular, a man who still comes with surprises, identifiable from all other the other Johns, Roberts, Michaels. People.

He hopes someday to get a fiberglass hull to avoid the recurring maintenance. He likes the "geezer program," as he calls it. "We're supposed to be be working on, have some project, like community-oriented. Basically we walk around…." I don't remember the details. His tone– sarcastically positive– was more captivating. Finding humor in hardship is a skill, and he's a craftsman at that as much as with woodworking. He expounded on his boss and colleagues, how they make the day turn by joking through it all. "'Put that bum to work!', they'll say!"
"I like bums!" I exclaimed, attempting to wrest the word out of its definition by overusing it. "I come from bum stock!" 
"Jumpin' on train cars?"
"Quite possibly!"

I wanted to somehow remind him of the qualities he had. I wanted to state with some kind of urgency not to lose the skill and humble pride of his better selves. That it was very important this vagabond phase doesn't beat him into anonymity. But how do you tell someone they're worth it? 

Maybe just by appreciating their presence. "Hey man, I'm glad I ran into you," I said. "You made my night."
"You're still on 7's?"
"Yeah, as long as I can remember what days I actually work!"
"Well, it is Friday the 13th and all,"
"Oh no wonder! This was bound to happen!"
"I'll see ya!"

I'm not too worried about John, despite his current circumstances. He puts in the effort. This is a guy who stays at homeless night shelters but still bothers to give himself a clean shave!

Longtime readers may recognize some of these images, but I want to share them with you anyway. The blog has built an absolutely enormous amount of new readership in the last year or so (keep spreading the word!), and while I'm in the process of scanning a bunch of new rolls, I thought you might like looking over these, scattered moments of life too rich to capture with only words. That's Watts, above, near the towers. Check out the rest here.

That's a nice-looking car by anyone's standards. We're in stop-and-go traffic, we, the communities of North Seattle and beyond, enjoying this particular stretch of I-5 in the Green Lake area and being given lots of extra time to do so. I see the situation as akin to a drive-in movie theatre: we're all alone but at once together, doing largely the same activity in our different little pods, facing the same direction in desperation, distraction, or bliss. Humourously, Interstate 5 southbound is an eight-mile parking lot from noon to 7pm, and I'm on it for the short section between 75th and 45th, debating whether to remain on the freeway or maybe try out the Eastlake corridor. 

I'm in lane one, which is strangely underutilized. Just because it receives a lot of merging traffic two miles from now doesn't mean it's a not a great piece of usable real estate right here. This afternoon, though, the great human organism is ambling at about the same pace in all lanes. In lane two, just to my left and a few cars ahead, is an entry-level Cadillac sedan, metallic philodendron green with the brake lights offering a complimentary red, slowing now to a stop and before there's time to think we're woken up a little as two young men spring out the back right door, straight into crawling traffic. Late teens early twenties, Latino, with loose fitting grays and blacks, long chain necklaces, and flat-billed caps with calligraphy on them. 

At such a bizarre action my first instinct is to spring to alertness, but there's no need. They're giggling. They grasp their sagging pants for locomotion and modesty, jogging one-handed toward the clustered trees and bushes on the embankment. The story comes together: they just both really, really, really needed to go. In unison they dive behind trees too small to hide them as they assuage themselves with obvious and tremendous relief.

Clever couple of cookies, I thought to myself, and bold! Traffic's going nowhere, and they jumped at the opportunity, even knowing they'd be on a stage. Everyone is indeed watching, but something's different: it is a benign and sympathetic audience. The girl in the car behind me is smiling with shocked glee, laughing richly once she understands the scene before her. It started when the boys leapt out of their car, their dress anachronistically contrasting with the luxury nature of their vehicle, their boyish giggles contradicting our assumptions of their gangster wear. The world has room for all kinds, and all of us kinds know what it feels like to desperately have to urinate.

Traffic began moving before they were done relieving themselves. I passed by the Cadillac slowly, looking over. The driver, young Latina with a Seahawks jersey and hoop earrings, a girlfriend perhaps, howling with gaiety and embarrassment as she watched the rear-view. She had to pick up the pace a little, and the boys were chasing after her. This is so absurd, their chortling faces said, necklaces swinging in the air, stepping up the tempo. The girlfriend rolled more slowly than the rest of us, attempting to please everyone while still allowing her charges to catch up.

Somehow, the drama unfolding received no wrath from the neighbors all around. It didn't make sense to be angry at this. For this stretch in space and time, we were a city of friends. No one honked. The whole thing was too funny, and the two boys knew this most of all. I saw the glowing white teeth of so many grins, laughing both at and with them, if such a thing is possible, rooting for them to make it. 

I beamed for a long time afterwards, basking in the sensation of that moment, when we knew how much we have in common.

There she is. I'm swaggering onto the 7 at Genessee, like so many youngsters have done on my own bus. Just a humble passenger today. There's almost always a familiar face on board when I step on the 7. As I fistbump with Gregory, the driver, I notice a hulking edifice seated nearby. 

Ah yes, there is someone here I know. 

A monolith with alienating vibes is just a few feet removed, with the same squinting eyes set behind round glasses we don't dare mock as being Harry Potter-like. She expands with territorial heft into her two seats, clad in her trademark XXXL pink t-shirt and fuschia tights. We're in the presence of a legend. There's only one Light-Skinned Black Woman (Learn more! Writeup here; video speech here).

The trick is to play it cool. "Hey, M–," I say, addressing her by name. "How are you?" 
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm takin' the bus!"

I settle in a few seats further back. Close enough to keep an eye on the situation. Don't sit too far away from a forest fire.

"It's that bus driver," I hear just within earshot. "He's so nice to everyone, knows how to talk to anybody." I'm in civvies, but they've found me out anyway.
"Hello," I say.
The voice is a passenger I've had before, Melanie, and she and her male companion are seated directly behind the great and hulking presence known as LSB-Dub. Melanie and I discuss our respective jobs and their similarities. She's in social work and appreciates the good moments despite the significant challenges. In our two professions we interact with many of the same people.

Her companion joins in the conversation, and he's a little frustrated. He's just been chewed out by you-know-who, and feels compelled to vent. He may think he's safe, because LSBW is currently berating other passengers. That would be incorrect. LSB-Dub hears everything. In her own way she's extremely intelligent. I can tell she's picking his words up, storing them to address later. For now she's too busy "speaking" (polite euphemism) to someone else.

"It takes all kinds," I tell the Melanie's friend. "She is a character."
"I guess so," he says. His guess is drawn out to include all the phlegm and chagrin of resentment.

Later on, the Lighthouse for the Blind (or LFTB, as it were, for the purpose of this narrative) crew is boarding, and fills up the front of the bus. They are a collection of kind-hearted souls and seeing-eye dogs, making real the stanchions and seats around them through touch. LSBW quickly realizes that demanding they not bump into her isn't going to work, and relocates to a seat in the middle of the coach, nearer to me. She stares perniciously at Melanie's friend for a while, gears churning, and then bellows,

"WHAT! You pity me because I can't get a man?"
"Yeah," he says. "Ah do!"
"Well, at least I don't have to get any ABORTIONS," she roars balefully, adding as an afterthought: "don't touch me!"
"You know what–"
"I know what you two are up to. You're gonna do it ten times and then have to get ten miscarriages!"

I'm happy to be here. I'd been in Columbia City on photo work, and had been debating whether to take the rail or the 7 back into town. It would only be appropriate for me, of all people, to take the 7. Who am I kidding? The 7 is many things, and boring isn't one of them. 

When I got on the bus and immediately noticed her, I felt glad about my choice. Because this way, I can hold hopefully hold her attention and try to keep things at bay so poor Gregory can actually do some driving. It really helps to have another operator there when things are barely holding together. We're packed, late, and abuzz with an energy teetering at the intersection between awful and calamity. Good. I'm feeling useful.

Though she is strangely quiet for today's ride, she'll periodically offer an interlude from the silence, such as: "STOP TOUCHING ME, PROSTITUTE! Are you a prostitute? How many guys have you slept with with today?"
"That's not very nice to say," I reply, in a pleasant singsong voice. She answers with silence. 
"Yeeeah," somebody says, I think in response to me speaking up.

It's turning into a ticking time bomb in here. We're overloaded. The LFTB have overtaken the front of the coach, LSBW is alternating between silence and wreaking havoc in the middle of the bus, where I am, and in the back, well, who knows what the guys are up to back there. Here's a few more people with walkers, and a man with a huge box of lettuce, which he plants in the middle of the aisle. There isn't anywhere else to go. Thank goodness Bredas have three doors instead of just two, or this would've imploded a long time ago.

I decide to engage LSB-Dub a little more proactively, in the name of preemptive damage control. Goin' into battle here, I think to myself. Everyone's watching. I don't care what she says to me, but I want to draw her energy toward me instead of onto other people. 

She's ready.

"So how are you doin," I ask.
"Don't talk to me. I heard what you said. TWO FACE. 'It takes all kinds.' Backstabber."
"Oh, now there ain't nothin' negative about that."
"I heard you say that, 'it takes all kinds.'"
"There's nothing nega–"
"Bein' all nice to my face and then stabbing me behind my back."
"Don't turn that around on me now, there's nothing negative– nothing negative about that at all, there's more than one kind a good people." It's important to me to resolve this, because I need to stay on what little good terms I've established with her in the past, because she doesn't go away, and she remembers everything. 

"You don't like me 'cause I'm black."

One of the worst forms of racism is the innocuous kind, the kind where the offender doesn't even realize (s)he's compartmentalizing, where a hierarchical attitude toward ethnic groups is so ingrained it becomes invisible in the mind of the thinker. I'm reminded of the great director D. W. Griffith having to be sat down so colleagues could point out to him which parts of his 1915 KKK-starring film Birth of a Nation were intolerant. One of the reasons I value LSBW is that she's good at calling this out. Although, that may be by pure accident– she just calls everyone racist!

"Hey, that's a good thing in my book," I reply, immediately regretting my words because of how they could be taken prejudicially, in the reverse-racist sense. Is she going to pick up on that?
Not today. "You probably hate me 'cause I'm light-skinned."
"Oh, I don't hate you at all."
Sighing theatrically, she stares ahead, saying, "I'm always going to be a light-skinned."
"That's alright with me."
"You probably hate black people."
"I actually don't hate black people, M–. I like everybody."
"Even Satan?"
"Uh, we're gonna leave that where it is."
Gregory smiles. Somebody behind me says, "Word! Right on, brotha."
"Well, I don't wanna talk to you," she continues to me.
"Okay."
Pause. "And you don't have to STARE AT ME FOR THE ENTIRE RIDE."
"Actually I was lookin' out that window, just like you."

A minute goes by. The neurons are firing. Something gets connected in there and she turns to face me directly, saying, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude." Her tone is heartfelt, that of an apologizing mother who belatedly learns the child she was hounding was innocent all along.

"Oh, that's okay," I reply. "I'm sorry for sounding negative."
"I'm sorry. My mom just died."
"Oh, I'm sorry! When was this?"
"In November. And my sister is going in for a colonoscopy tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? Oh wow." She elaborates on the details. On paper it might sound like she's lying, but she appeared honest. I took her words as truth. Whether or not they were isn't really the point, though: what was clearly genuine was her desire to smooth out our interaction. "Hope it goes well. Lemme know next time I see ya!"

I see her and I as neutralizing equals. She screams at people; I smile at them. I glide over differences, seeking what I have in common with others, while she blows up over things which don't even qualify as conflicts. And visually, you can't deny we'd make a pretty good Laurel and Hardy of sorts. I want somebody to photograph us in the manner of this Annie Leibovitz portrait of Rick Rubin and Jay-Z, who I think look so good together precisely because they appear to have come from entirely opposite galaxies, and yet clearly respect each other's company. That's true for LSB-Dub and myself. Sometimes. Right?

Later on she would return to the sway of her demons. Her last words to me were a more characteristic, "get away from me!" 

But for a moment the clouds parted, and a bit of blue sky shone through. 

--

One of my favorite, if less bombastic, moments with LSBW here.

You're way out at the end of the route, just you and the bus, doing the turnaround in a residential setting. It's a different headspace now, miles removed from the clamor and heat of the city's vortex, out here where the stories echo only in your memory and you're more preoccupied with the mechanics of driving, how to wrap the forty-foot vehicle around this hairpin turn, trying not to daydream. 

Cremona is a narrow neighborhood street, the sort just barely wide enough for two cars. You have street parking on one side only, and if a vehicle of any size is parked or stalled on the other side, well, a bus certainly won't fit through the remaining space. At least, that's what I thought. 

As I come around the corner from Nickerson onto Cremona, a scene presents itself. On the left is the ordinary row of street-parked cars, which we expect, and on the right are parked two huge green garbage trucks, partly on the sidewalk and mostly in the roadway. 

That's different. 

I've always thought it was a marketing masterstroke for Waste Management to repaint their vehicles fluorescent green. They were a much less environmentally suggestive rasin purple when I was growing up. I can see the truck drivers standing in the street nearby relaxing, cigarettes in hand, one with his teeth smiling out as he joshes with a street regular. 

Initially I park the bus in the middle of the street in front of them, throwing on the four-ways, all set to sit until they move out of the way. That would be the smart thing to do. But… loafing around and staring holds interest for only so long. I decide instead to drift up to where the guys are, to engage.

Leaning out my window: "Sorry to interrupt the smoke break! Ah apologize!"

Garbage Man lets loose a big smile. How often in a given day must he have to deal with irate motorists who think they're the first to ever be blocked by him? I think he appreciates my genial approach.
"Heey," he says. "Can you get through?"
"Um, no. I don't think so. I could try…."
"Want me to pull the mirrors back?"
That would be much better. "Yeah!" 

He runs back to his truck and starts folding the exterior mirrors in, giving me more space. It's a question of inches, in scenarios like this. While he's doing that, I turn to the slightly tipsy street man standing near the sidewalk, who's been watching. "How's it goin'?"
"I DUNNO!" he yells, at boisterous volume but with an expression that looks like it's speaking quietly. "WE'RE ABOUT TO FIND OUT! I DON'T WANT YOUR JOB RIGHT NOW!"
We guffaw together.
I begin what Bob Dylan calls the midnight creep. This is fun, but it's also pretty serious, and my brain straddles both headspaces. If the bus touches any fixed object (like a garbage truck, or tree), it's a preventable accident and my fault. On the other hand, it's a game, a game of professionals helping each other, a game whose rules any bystander can understand, the simple pleasure of seeing if we can make the squeeze. 

Don't try this at home.

I move slowly through this game of inches, with an audience who's participating. Garbage Man has folded aside all the mirrors of not just the trucks but also the cars, scurrying to and fro, addressing the situation. The tipsy guy takes a swig from his paper bag and leans his weight to one side, a beggar-philosopher contemplating the angles.

Here's a young woman in her Civic, approaching from ahead, pulling over to allow me through, and she attends the proceedings from her front-row seat with a certain interest. Would you really want to be watching anything else right now? We smile brightly at each other. The second garbage truck driver– nod and a grin from his weathered face– appears and observes as well. Garbage Man One is up in front, guiding me. Just a little further this way, he says with his body, practically dancing. 

It's a warm sensation, to be reminded of that very natural part of ourselves, the part we all have that just wants to get along. This little quintet of fellow beings, who will never reunite, all took a shared pleasure in the simple delight of yes, the bus driver was able to make it through. People smiled, at themselves and each other, and with that little experience in hand went on about their daily lives.

"Thank you!" I hollered out the window, before it was too late.
"Come work for us!" he yelled back, those pearly teeth still gleaming. "Come work for us! Get paid more!"
"No way man, come work for us! Have a good one!"
"You too!" he said, with a smile you can still hear, its memory manifesting on your own face, even after you've gone around the corner.