This week the hapless schmuck who sometimes calls himself D the D (which is a way of marking the passage of time, the shifting of personality, and the ongoing, never-stopping flow of human evolution) offers little more than quotations by another writer (at the end).

This is NOT because the Dale Barrigar guy behind the Drifter persona (character) has nothing to say, but because this week he has decided that only Saint John the Divine can say it better.

When he wrote the 12,000-word book REVELATION, John was an exile on the island of Patmos. In other words (as with Ovid, Dante, Dostoevsky, and too many others too count), they kicked him out and sent him away. When they sent Dante away, they said to him: if we see your face around here again, we will chop off your head and burn you at the stake. And they definitely meant it.

No wonder he went away and imagined them all in hell for the rest of his life (until he started writing about heaven when he figured out he was about to go there soon). He loved his home city and his home region and never saw it again. He started loving Beatrice instead, who he had seen in the flesh exactly two times, nine years apart, for less than one minute total. She inspired the most beautiful, heavenly, memorable dream he ever had in his life.

Us folks in the USA often cast stones at Russia because they’re always sending everyone to Siberia and we should indeed do so if we value human freedom at all.

But in the meantime, us Americans should also look around us a little bit, since we have our own AMERICAN SIBERIA that is more invisible but no less (usually) PSYCHOLOGICALLY traumatizing.

Psychological trauma, or damage to one’s brain and personality, causes physical pain and illness, too. But many people also often forget that struggle and trauma also (often) cause IMPROVEMENT in the one who undergoes the trauma; very often, that is, they become, and continue to become, a better person because of it.

In 2014, there was a guy in Chicago who lost his job because of TEACHER BURNOUT (after twenty years), wicked bipolar depression, and contentious disagreements about technology usage in the classroom (he was very much against it, and they were very much for it, and trying to force him into it) with the “powers that be,” then couldn’t find another job because of current conditions.

Eventually he tried everything else, including manual labor and clerical work in a book-binding warehouse. Then it was slaving away twelve hours a day as a vastly underpaid (making the equivalent of less than minimum wage in Illinois while being responsible for seventeen students including during the covid pandemic since the Catholic schools went back right away, at least half of the students having behavioral problems and three of them having medical conditions so serious that they required near-constant monitoring; one undersized kid’s lips would turn blue from a heart condition, another obese one would have a diabetic emergency, and a third would have what appeared to be seizures from his autism; there were three girls in the class who were like brilliant angels and a few other students who he stayed for), Catholic elementary school teacher. He left all the other jobs he attempted, including this one, only after literal mental and physical collapse: manic depression again, but also the impossible circumstances.

Since he had never been on Facebook because he hated it and its creator the moment it came out, all of the people who used to know him back in the old days thought he was either dead, or most likely in jail, or even more likely, the madhouse.

He was aware that most of the people who used to know him thought this about him, and a few people seemed way too comfortable telling him to his face that they thought it.

A decade of internal exile occurred (time slips away so fast), but during that time he also continued working on something else very happily in secret.

And he quietly turned himself (almost without knowing it) into someone who could, quite simply, do all the things he’d ever wanted to do.

In the meantime, there was one half-assed suicide attempt caused by hypomanic insomnia (three Adderall, nicotine-patch, caffeine-fueled days of no sleep) leading to total, stumbling, falling-down, not-thinking-straight, delirious exhaustion.

He was saved when he looked over and saw his Siberian Husky puppy sitting there looking at him in deep concern, which immediately made him drop the suicide idea he was half-pondering and rush over to comfort the dog instead.

He also had several other bipolar nervous breakdowns that were not job-related (a few of which did indeed land him in the hospital for a little bit), an ongoing battle with more substances than can be listed here, a stroke that culminated it all, and a war against anonymity that he ended up winning so successfully that he now embraces his anonymity and seeks to extend it indefinitely and as long as he can.

The handful of other authentic, genuine literary artists (not just writers, who are cheaper than a dime a dozen, and not even just good writers, who are amazingly rare) he knows, or knows of, in America have all had their own equivalent battles and wars (in their own ways) with AMERICAN SIBERIA.

“BLESSED ARE THEY WHO READ, AND THEY WHO HEAR THE WORDS OF THIS PROPHECY, AND KEEP THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE WRITTEN IN THEIR HEARTS: FOR THE TIME IS AT HAND.”

“I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA, THE BEGINNING AND THE ENDING, SAITH THE LORD, WHICH IS, AND WHICH WAS, AND WHICH IS TO COME: THE ALMIGHTY.”

“AND HE SAID UNTO ME: THESE SAYINGS ARE FAITHFUL AND TRUE: AND THE LORD GOD OF THE HOLY PROPHETS SENT HIS ANGEL TO SHOW HIS SERVANTS THE THINGS WHICH MUST SHORTLY BE DONE.”

“AND HE CARRIED ME AWAY IN THE SPIRIT TO A GREAT AND HIGH MOUNTAIN.”

Dale the Drifter

(Images by Dale the Drifter)

The Drifter know his music!