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!
Saragun Springs 
Dale the Drifter
Isolation in sight is the ultimate Siberia. Never before has it been so easy to not exist. Every place I enter, unless forced to engage, everyone is goosenecking their phones. And if you ain’t in there you ain’t at all. You have captured it, like Jimi, who did not bother with left handed guitars but played the righties upside down.
It’s “cool” to be banished but I see no genuine attempts at gentrification!
Leila
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Leila
Yes. There are billions of people living in a kind of psychological Siberia now (in many so-called “third world” countries, massive addiction to trash internet is even worse than in the USA). Some know it, and some do not. Some sense it and don’t know it, others know it and don’t care. Either way, it’s probably gonna get worse before it gets better.
But I also think some of the younger generations are really gonna get tired of this shit. I see some of them who already are, and they spend time wandering around with each other and talking a lot together – NOT just doing their phones. They’re in a very tiny minority now, but at least they’re keeping the flame alive, which is what original “Christianity” was all about (the original band of Christians after he passed on was around 150 folks, including women who were some of the most important members by far).
THANKS for finding the great Jimi Hendrix Experience video! (want to mention the whole band for sure).
To you personally (but everything is):
“BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO READ.”
D the Drifter
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Hi DD
Yes, reading and writing and conversing with the right people can save a persn’s soul.
Leila
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LA
To your latest comment I say, “Amen.”
D
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Hi Drifter
The incredible shadow sets the stage. I would love to get a pic like that!
The struggles you went through and the images of these three sick kids could fall into this shadow. Great writing!
American Siberia sticks in the mind. This isolation. I read Leila’s essay today about Katherine Mansfield and this isolation is overlapping, overwhelming, and over-lording, in different times, creating the profound art of Mansfield, Dickinson, Wolf, and others–before and after–ad infinitude.
I’ve struggled with isolation my whole life, since I got hooked on alcohol, drugs, social anxiety, and depression. lol. Something happened…I can relate to a half-assed suicide attempt (childrens’ aspirins and tears lol), and the not so half-assed one. Then the nut wards. Then the writing.
There is a haunting effect in your essay. Like we are all haunted somehow by social media. The electronic force that makes people judge you if you don’t join the circus. Then when you do join. They say as you said, and “too comfortably,” I thought you were fucking dead?
I had someone say that to me in a giant booming voice right in front of my wife. I wanted to knock his teeth out. A person from “up North” “where my life caved in” to quote Ray Carver’s story “Boxes.” I stopped at their junkyard house to buy some night crawlers to go fishing, lol. This sounds like a R. Carver story or I wish… What I hate is how much respect I gave to the old bat wife of this stupid mother fucker. Like she was some kind of righteous night crawlers’ queen. And I needed her approval and forgiveness for being my previous self in that town. But when you go back to your stomping grounds…This place ” where your life caved in,” and you walk on eggs. I learned–fuck it–take a detour. Now I don’t have any reason to go back, my parents, brother, aunts, uncs, and our poor dogs are long dead. It’s an empty fucking lot. That’s what my Mom’s place is or was…all of our memories are razed away and they even fucked up our dogs’ graves.
But I suppose the night crawler queen and her man had an ax to grind… I remember staggering out of the bar many years ago, about one o’clock in the morning with a belly full, and a full head… Right across the street, I saw the night crawler queen and him prowling around the bank in the black shifting darkness, flashing in and out of the streetlight–making trips. Unbeknownst to me, in my drunkenness, they were the cleaning crew. But I couldn’t see shit on a stick.
I accused them. Saying, “What the fuck are you doing in there robbing the bank? You thieving cock suckers!” I really thought they were, and I was going to stop them, and be a hero… Maybe even shirk the town drunk label for a minute. They mumbled something, showing me their sweeper in the streetlight. The man didn’t sound so confident back then. He didn’t say, “I THOUGH YOU WERE DEAD.” I chalked it up to another night of it, and staggered home.
I was braver back then and more afraid.
CJA
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CJA
WELCOME TO SARAGUN SPRINGS AS OUR NEW CO-EDITOR FOR 2027!!! Overjoyed, absolutely overjoyed, that you’ve signed on.
And: this is a brilliant epistolary micro-memoir in the form of an internet comment! True brilliance – real and true. And thought-provoking. And hilarious! The story about the folks in the bank is priceless. Also, I know what you mean about the places from the past being a graveyard now.
Know what you mean, also, about social anxiety. Among all the other things I’ve been diagnosed with in the past (which include, but are not limited to, besides bipolar disorder, both OCD and ADHD), one of the ones I know I really have for sure is Social Anxiety Disorder. In other words, certain people and social situations really give me the creeps in an intense way (or the fantods, as Huck Finn says), leading to a penchant for fleeing out the back door like Emily Dickinson.
Thanks again for signing on as Co-Editor in 2027! It will be a grand adventure and experiment. And it will be keeping the flame alive, which is the most important thing.
D
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Dale, just read your backstory of suffering. It was brave of you make it public. And brilliant of you to come back from your personal Siberia and be living a creative life. More power to your arm,
mick
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Mick
Thanks very much for highlighting the single most important motive in writing this essay.
I know for a fact that there are others out there “like me” (in their own way). Since I’m not, by nature, a political organizer or a literal activist, this is my little way of “doing what I can.”
For me, “WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW” is absolutely the most important piece of writing advice there is or ever could be.
Your ongoing support for Saragun Springs as one of our most prized writers and commentators is massively appreciated!
D
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