Wednesday 19 February 2025
Cold clamminess gripped the city like freezing, wet sand from a riverbank in winter. The bus finally came for me to catch a ride home. Was the notorious E-Line, “E” for Express bus. Supposed to be a speedy beady bus, yes, but, alas, twas slow as mud. So many stops. So many agitated Humans in altered states jostling in the doorways like insects jerking in the mandibles of a wolf spider. The night felt scary dark beneath cloudy skies dropping cold rain. Typical hypothermic weather in Seattle. Give me clear, dry, crisp, subfreezing weather instead, but no, twas hypothermia time in the City of Cranes. Had gotten off work shortly after 21:00, walked about 0.8th of a mile or nearly 1.3 kilometers down and up hills to the bus stop over the Aurora Tunnel, and waited and waited. The beautiful Emerald City that sprawled in the narrow corridors between the Salish Sea and the Cascade Mountains felt grimy and gritty with metal forests of towering cranes. Felt like a syfy mining colony on some faraway alien planet. Seen too many movies, yeah. And now the bus. We Humans filed aboard anonymously. None of us paid a penny. It’s not enforced. So many homeless folks and drunken, drugged up addicts seek refuge on the bus, too. Who can blame them. I’d rather pay local taxes towards “free” mass public transit anyway. It’s after 22:00 on this Wednesday night in the Common Era.
Found a seat by a window in the center of the bus. Behind me a man, clearly homeless, was hunched over and unable to sit up straight. Drug paraphernalia was laid out on the seat next to him. Blackened, crumpled aluminum foil. A cigarette lighter. Dirty, little glass pipes, more like glass straws. A few other nameless items. Fentanyl. Damn. Hate the nasty stuff. Hate what it does to people. Hate fellow Humans who prey on the vulnerable and the sick to profit from mental illness and addiction and misery. Such greedy vampires hide way up the criminal food chain. Maybe they’re the ones who should be getting the death penalty. Yes? No? Is Human life any more sacred than any other living thing whether a great blue whale, an egg plant, or a bacteriophage? Only because we’ve psychologically isolated ourselves from our biosphere for so long we’ve forgotten we were ever part of Nature. When we most believe Earth is our world is when we most become the Aliens within this planet.
Felt the anger rise in me. I was about to turn around and tell him not to light it up. Like, hey! Put that damn fire out! Reached inside the small backpack in my lap and grabbed onto my metal water bottle as if it was a club. Kept my hand inside my daypack on the bottle, feeling the cool, dented metal, and didn’t pull it out, yet. The man lights a fire behind me in his seat. He holds the aluminum foil, shaped into a crude funnel, in one hand as he flicks the lighter beneath it. Flames blaze up quickly. A few inches high. He inhales fentanyl smoke directly above the flames, looks around, and waved the rest aside to disperse the smell. Thank goodness the top windows were cracked where we sat. For I have a keen sense of smell, but could barely smell anything. I relaxed my hand upon the bottle, and pulled my hand out of my pack. Before I knew it, the man slumped over asleep, lost in the euphoria of his fentanyl haze. This particular drug’s a synthetic opioid, not an amphetamine like meth that jacks users up into violent, scab-picking, rage zombies. This man wasn’t a violent threat to me. But his drugs were, and his toxic chemical mess certainly was. To himself and everyone else.
The stranger was a White man of around 45 to 50 years old with reddish brown hair. Had big hands, big dirty hands, much bigger than the Orange Man in the White House with the teeny tiny pecker hands. He was someone’s son. Maybe also a father or grandpa, a brother and cousin, an ex-lover, all alone, riding solo, lost in a druggy daze. Yuppers, had started to ask him to stop it, stop setting fires on the bus, but he fell asleep before I opened my mouth. God’s grace. Can’t make an addict stop nor fill in his void of pain and shame, so I shut up, turned back around, and prayed for him. Not much of a praying man, nope, for I identify as one of those “Spiritual but not religious” types. So was good for me to be humbled a bit, too, as I opened my shuttered heart to the tragedy, the sadness, and to the grief of life, to the rawness of life, to life as living death. Even now as I write this sirens and horns go off from police cars and fire trucks racing by my apartment complex in Shoreline, Washington. Life is messy. Sometimes bloody damn messy.
Well, damn, this bus is slam full of crazy mad screaming idiots. The man behind me who lit a fire to smoke some fentanyl is still passed out. I’m scared. I’m mad. I struggle to feel compassion and forgiveness. What is wrong with people? What is wrong with our society? I just wanna round them all up, our homeless brothers and sisters, and put them in a clean camp of tiny houses where they get professionals with volunteers to help them get clean and sober, to get treatment, and given menial jobs and training as they get back up on their feet. Funding must be generated, allocated, and properly managed. But what if they fail at all of that? Too broke, too sick, too ill, too polluted in body, mind, heart, and soul to be anything but toothless madness clamoring for impossible love?
In the darkness corners of my mind, I contemplate paramilitary death squads hunting down and murdering all of them. Especially under the new regime in DC. Horrors. Horrors! It’s what the Nazis and the Fascists would have done and would love to do again. The MAGA bully in the White House recently wanted to clean “them” out of Washington, D.C.
Ironically, for many years I advocated a Leftist-Libertarian-Anarchist approach to harmful recreational drugs: legalize ALL of them, then tax and regulate. I changed my mind eventually. The damage and destruction they cause, the supportive criminal activities required to live such a lifestyle of addictive disease, the ripple effects of illegal recreational drug use across our communities, the litter and the garbage and the smoke and the crime including criminal organizations and the toxic pollution … the list is long. The social responsibilities of regulating and criminalizing the individual possession, distribution, and use of these toxic substances far outweighs any individual liberty to do whatever one wants with them. One can jump down tangental, what-aboutist rabbit holes with the toxic and addictive effects and of pharmaceuticals, of refined sugar, unhealthy foods, etc., not to mention the economic and financial costs, and whatever is found down in those rabbit holes doesn’t change what’s happening above ground all around us. What-aboutism is the desperate whining and bleating of those making up excuses to do whatever the hell stupid and destructive actions they want to do. No, hell no to all that!
A young White woman is bleating “He bleeding! Hey! He bleeding! He bleeding!” I looked around. Everyone seems fine. No one is bleeding. People stare at her funny. Is she making it all up to get attention? She sits ramrod straight, stares directly into some hole in reality only she can see, probing the pulsating edges of her nightmare with wide open crazy eyes. “He bleeding in there!” she cries out looking straight thru the air into the invisible-to-the-rest-of-us portal to someone else bleeding somewhere on the other side in there. Oh my God.
Thursday early afternoon on 20 February 2025
Cruising on the crazy bus now again. Heading south back into Seattle from Shoreline to go to work. The storm has cleared. Now it’s sunny and freezing cold. I know “crazy” is nowadays a bad word, but it’s bedlam on this bus. Is bedlam also a bad word now? Those institutions in Old England where our fellow Humans suffering from neuropsychological diseases and injuries were often tortured, starved, abused, raped, and experimented upon? I’m all for being woke, all for people to wake the hell up and open their frozen, hard-ass hearts. Being woke means to acknowledge the suffering and the oppression and the injustice and the trauma so many disadvantaged ethnic, racial, religious, immigrant, sex/gender/orientation, disabled, and other groups of Earth Humans experienced and continue to experience. Being woke is especially for all those people living lives of intoxicating privilege to wake up from their long, hazy slumbers. Because people living without privilege have never been asleep in the first place as they’ve been woke all along.
Those people who insist on staying asleep are unable to feel any empathy or compassion. Worse, such hard-hearted people ridicule the mere idea of having any feelings except outrage. There’s terminology for such assholes: sociopaths and psychopaths. Cancel culture, however, is a misuse of wokeness and a violation of individual liberties. Woke people, tho, chose to take on a greater degree of social responsibility than those still asleep. As such they challenge people to wake up, yea, to wake the fuck up, aye, indeed, to wake the f.u.c.k. up, dammit!
As I stood there waiting to board, the doors open and an old, Black man with all his middle teeth gone hopped off with two little dogs on leashes. He stood on the curb, knees bent, holding onto those leashes like an African gladiator in a chariot from back in the Roman Empire. He smiled thru his scrubby grey beard with delight, eyes twinkling in the cold, and shouted, “EVERYBODY HAVE A GREAT DAY NOW!”
“You, too,” I responded, a little too quietly from my socio-culturally conditioned response to automatically be polite. But I did wish him well, this fellow gifted with transcendent joy regardless of hardships.
Then the E-Line bus drove past a major police action on and off Aurora Avenue with many, many squad cars, a paddy wagon, firetrucks, and a swat team. There have been shootings and fights between pimps and prostitutes with homeless druggies and regular folks caught up in the mix. I think I locked the door to the apartment. Yeah, pretty sure I locked the door.
Thursday night on 20 February 2025
Last night a middle-aged fentanyl woman asleep in a most atrocious pretzel shape fell out of her seat onto the floor and accidentally dumped a mountain of stuff out of her big, open pink purse. I started to go over to help, but she scrambled back up like a giant crab clambering up an invisible coconut tree. Her hands were massive, raw, and claw-like. Crab hands. Hunched and twisted, she gathered up her stuff and fell back asleep on the edge of her seat. Wasn’t able to stand up. There was another man, hood up, folded up on his side like a broken pretzel, asleep across the two seats in front of me.
Read online the fentanyl fold, as that’s what it’s called, makes it too painful to stand erect. But its deforms the body’s circulation and musculoskeletal system. Often they’re not truly asleep. More they’re semi-conscious in a state of euphoric bliss. The addicts claim smoking fentanyl makes them feel so good, yeah, oh, so good! A tiny little bit of fentanyl would kill an adult Human. Does it make dying feel any better? Euphoric? Apparently not. Death by fentanyl overdose is as fast as lightning bolts, but is messy, painful, and gurgly.
Fentanyl woman, asleep in her seat, didn’t see her cigarette lighter as it had slid beneath her seat from her dumped out purse. Anyone else could see it, tho.
Big, pink cigarette lighter looked like Hello Kitty and Little Pony met up and had a strawberry baby. On the floor. Of a bus. In the city. I wanted to nudge it over and say, ‘excuse me, your cigarette lighter fell out,’ but was afraid. Was scared she would wake up and instinctively lash out in primal self-defense from such a rough life. Her big, red, claw hands had finger nails as stout as bear claws.
The bus jerked to a hard jolt and bounced. Fentanyl woman rocked out of her seat, but caught herself this time. Those big, red white purple hands raw from living outside in Winter shot out to clutch those metal bars to steady herself. She decided to get off the bus. Was clear she didn’t even know where she was. No matter, tho, as twas also clear she didn’t care where she was, but she was gonna get the hell off this jerky ass bus! Spied her big, pink Hello Kitty Little Pony strawberry baby cigarette lighter and snatched it up off the floor as if it was a small, yellow bar of solid gold. Cold fentanyl ain’t no good, she reckoned. Gotta put a fire to it. Warm it up. Smoke it down. Fall asleep and dream. At the next stop she crawled off the bus into the night like a giant, human crab.
Friday afternoon 21 February 2025
Bus ride to work today was quite crowded with many standees and regular folks. Walking nearly a mile in the rain to work after finally getting off the bus way down in Seattle isn’t too bad; it’s just having dripping wet clothes to jam in my locker. Didn’t want any mold and mildew, nor did I wish to tempt any low-paid coworkers with expensive waterproof-breathable rain-wind shell jacket hung out in the open. So wiped my wet gear off with paper towels from the restroom and put it all inside my modest, metal locker.
Many years ago, when I was a bike commuter for awhile, biking downtown to where I work at the Seattle REI store, someone stole both of my rear view side mirrors and my handlebar headlight. Another coworker had someone steal their bicycle seat. Both bikes were locked up in the staff bike cage, so we knew twas most likely a fellow employee. Yeah, I do miss my car, but the CVT, the continuously variable transmission, went bad on our 2020 Subaru Forester, was gonna cost around $11,000 or more to replace, so we got rid of the car. Fentanyl, however, wasn’t an issue back then. But heroin was. And meth. And other dangerous drugs. We Americans have been in an opioid epidemic for a very long time, and in a meth epidemic even longer.
Back in late January of this year, on a Saturday night at Harry’s Bar in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, a large group of us gathered to celebrate the 60th Birthday of Syd, a dear friend beloved by many. I reconnected with middle-aged friends and acquaintances I haven’t seen in ages. Two of them, Colin and Liz, worked as bus drivers for King County Metro/City of Seattle. Some bus routes get heavier drug use than others. They both spoke of choosing to wear masks, often K9N95 masks made famous by Covid, “because of all the drug smoke.” I was aghast. They described passengers, obviously homeless addicts, firing up fentanyl and meth in the back. Sometimes the fumes were heavy and stunk up the whole bus. And there wasn’t anything much anyone could do about it. You cannot make addicts stop using or stop driving the bus to physically force dangerous, mentally unstable, or sound asleep people off onto the streets. Metro drivers must adhere to a tight, timed, schedule. Colin and Liz are as small in statue as I am. At my job coworkers who tried to stop shoplifters were fired, even managers. Wasn’t worth the risk. Doesn’t matter how outraged one is at all the thievery. One doesn’t know what’s in their pockets. Could be dirty syringes with contaminated needles, knives, razor blades, pistols, a shard of glass. Seen it all in the store.
“I cannot stop it or do anything,” Colin emphasized again. Both he and Liz felt compassion and empathy, too. Addiction is an ugly disease. Tho one can see the deterioration of our social fabric and our political, economic, and financial system to allow for rampant homelessness and untreated mental illness as the real underlying structural causes. We need a new 21st Century economic and financial system to replace the old, dueling, worn out, broken down 18th and 19th Century anachronisms of Capitalism and Socialism.
None of us Humans can agree on what such a long overdue system would look like or be named, although we all have opinions. Many efforts to reform and merge the best of both systems only go so far and never far enough to truly make a difference. We need transformation more than change. To succeed, however, such transformation must be on a transnational, planetary level. The economy must include the environment itself in ways mathematics usually fail. And we’re all too impatient for such a local-global shift and dismissive of utopias. Our species tends to pass thru more suffering before it ascends yet another apocalypse in the making. We don’t want any more violence.
My wife Faithlyn and I agreed with Colin and Liz when they look forward to having security guards aboard the bus. That’s a big deal after all the mass shootings, gun violence, Black Lives Matter, police shootings of people of color, war on immigrants, the backlash War on Cops, the oft-misunderstood police reform and defund the police movements followed by a massive increase in crime…yes, we all want more security now. Without sacrificing our freedoms and our health either.
Right now it’s Winter outside in the United States of America. Fellow Earth Humans are homeless, hungry, cold, and struggling with drug and alcohol addiction and other neuropsychological or mental illnesses. It’s a damn mess, and this damn mess is our mess.
William Dudley Bass
Wednesday 26 February 2025
Thursday 27 February 2025
Saturday 15 March 2025
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Copyright © 2025 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.