Dale Williams Barrigar

The Lonely Voice: The Short Story in 2026 by The Drifter

“The mighty moral growth of the author, during his literary activity, is written in indelible characters in these exquisite short stories.” – Leo Tolstoy on Guy de Maupassant

I recently heard an admirably fired-up You Tuber say that almost all fiction writers do their best work in the short form.

Then he said he didn’t know why short fiction, i.e. short stories, are not more popular right now, in the modern world, since most fiction writers do their best work in this form.

I instantly knew I agree/d with the first thing he’d said (since I’ve said it myself many times before, in many different formats; there are no “original” ideas: period).

I also know that short stories, while they are making a small resurgence, are not money-makers in the mainstream publishing world today and far from it.

I started wondering more about why that is, because of what the You Tuber had said.

And I came to the conclusion that it’s because short stories are where fiction writers do their best work.

In other words, short stories are very often the deepest work out there and readers today (in the mainstream, that is) are not looking for depth or challenging material; they are looking for cheesy reassurance, easy affirmations, boring normalness (because it’s comforting) dressed up as something exciting.

There was a moment in American fiction when short stories were where the money was at.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Kurt Vonnegut both made boatloads of money writing short stories in the early to middle twentieth century. Fitzgerald made far more money from short stories than he ever did from his novels, including Gatsby, which was a financial and critical failure and flop during his lifetime (like Melville’s Moby Dick, or the paintings of Vincent).

But Scott and Kurt both quickly found out that, in order to make that dough, the stories needed to be romantic (unrealistic) tales, easy to digest, and written with contrived (formulaic, used-before, tried-and-true, but not true-to-life) plots. And no ragged, Chekhovian, ambiguous, challenging, thought-provoking, open endings allowed; nor any Dostoevskyean extremity of atmosphere; nor any out-of-this-world Borgesian thought experiments, either.

The best short stories right now are not hugely popular because they are not hugely easy to read.

The first thing they require is pausing from your daily life, concentrating, thinking, feeling, sympathizing, empathizing, decoding, interpreting, imagining, understanding, challenging your own assumptions, stepping away from it all, meditating, reaching out toward characters who might make you uncomfortable, and being comfortable with uncertainty (which ability John Keats called “Negative Capability”). “Beach read” novels and various kinds of thrillers now dominate the fiction best-seller lists, almost literally without exception, and almost all of them (NOT all, but almost) are, by definition, easy, stereotypical, non-challenging, seen-it-before (many times), simplistic, and unrealistic works.

And yet, short stories are, literally, everywhere in our world. School, the internet, and television all overflow with short stories, and almost all movies are far more like short stories than like long novels. Nightly and daily news broadcasts are now presented as dramatic (and, unbelievably, unrealistic, since it’s supposed to be “the news”) short short stories, one piled on top of another in an endless, ridiculous stream.

The relationship between television programs and short stories is a fruitful study for anyone interested in modern fiction writing for any reason and goes back to the very roots of the TV medium.

The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents are all classic television programs with very close connections to short stories in many ways.

The works in the Arabian Nights, the Canterbury Tales, and the Decameron are all early short stories.

Short stories are so closely tied to religion that they ARE religion.

The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son, Dives and Lazarus, Buddha and the Flower Sermon, Lao Tzu disappearing into the mountains after he (for free) penned the 5,000-word Tao Te Ching and handed it to the guard who’d asked him to write it, are all short stories in their (eternal) way.

This short little essay now concludes with a short little list of passed-on (but still here) fiction writers who’ve all done their best work in the short story (plus a few crucial after-thoughts afterward).

Arthur Conan Doyle. Franz Kafka. Clarice Lispector. Ernest Hemingway. James Joyce. Flannery O’Connor. Hans Christian Andersen. William S. Burroughs. James Baldwin. Grace Paley. Raymond Carver. John Cheever. D.H. Lawrence. Thomas Mann. Joseph Conrad. Dorothy Parker. Shirley Jackson. Ambrose Bierce. O. Henry. Harlan Ellison. Ralph Ellison. Frank O’Connor. William Gay. Larry Brown. Barry Hannah. Rick DeMarinis. Washington Irving. Jorge Luis Borges. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Denis Johnson. Thom Jones. H.P. Lovecraft. Nelson Algren. Cyrus Colter. Donald Barthelme. Ivan Turgenev. Nikolai Gogol. Isaac Babel. Isaac Bashevis Singer. Katherine Mansfield. Eudora Welty. William Saroyan. E.T.A. Hoffman. Ray Bradbury. Rudyard Kipling. Guy de Maupassant.

Poe and Chekhov are sort-of left off the official list because their greatest works might be poem/s and play/s; but The Raven is a kind of short story for sure, as is The Cherry Orchard.

Many modern fiction writers who did not do their best work in the short story did their best work in the novella, instead (not the novel), but that is a subject for another (annoyingly opinionated) exploration by THE DRIFTER (sometimes known by local canines and felines, ’coons, squirrels and birds as “Dale the Drifter”).

Almost all of the great nineteenth century novels were published in serial form, that is, as separate magazine or journal installments over an extended period, one chapter at a time.

As just one example, War and Peace, that episodic behemoth, originally appeared as a serial over two years (1865 to 1867) in the journal The Russian Messenger before being, heavily, revised and expanded over the next two years after that, then finally published as a stand-alone volume in 1869.

Frank O’Connor called the short story The Lonely Voice. (Just exactly why he did so is also another subject for a future exploration from: The Drifter.)

The Drifter (Images by The Drifter)

The Eyes Have It by Dale Williams Barrigar

This here shaggy dog is headed to Jensens Island in the middle of Big Bearskin Lake in far northern Wisconsin.

I am not aware of whether he knows the details of all that, but he isn’t used to being on boats and one thing is certain from looking at these photos: even though he isn’t used to them, he isn’t scared, either.

That’s because he has a fearless and bold nature that makes him plunge into situations such as these almost (not quite) without thinking twice.

He’s also jumpy and paranoid in certain ways, hyper-aware of what’s going on around him and the best guard dog, when it comes to people, you could ever hope to meet.

He doesn’t care about material objects or possessions or probably even money, near as I can tell, as long as he usually has a full belly when needed and somewhere to lay his head, also when needed.

But the people in his life – he would die for them if he had to, without thinking twice.

There are many people in this world who would say, and do say, that a Dog is just a dog.

Anyone who attributes spiritual properties to their animals, like I do to mine, and like the Chippewa of northern Wisconsin used to do (and some still do) to theirs, will think that such people as that are lacking something in their nature. Not that they aren’t fully human, but yes that they are humans with cold (or at least colder than they should be) hearts.

For me, one look in his eyes tells you instantly that there is a lot more going on in there than some people give him credit for.

In some ways I even believe that he’s much smarter than your average, run-of-the-mill, boring, materialistic human – and very much so, at a level that cannot be scientifically tested or verified at all – and is even more true for all of that.

Words and pictures by Dale Williams Barrigar and, of course, Boo

I Finally Said Goodbye to All Those Years by Dale Williams Barrigar

(Images by DWB)

You’ve been there since then

since when

the last time I saw you

and you were

standing

there

in out of the rain

under the eaves

with the dead flowers

in your arms

waiting for a train.

It’s been

seven years

since then

and today

was the first day I

finally said goodbye

inside my mind.

You were the start of it all

and I owe you for that

but I looked up today and saw

that time has now flown.

And now I’m going to have to

forget you and now you’re

going to have to

make it

like I always knew you could

all on your own.

Dale Williams Barrigar

(Bonus Image by DWB, Boo on Vacation is Wisconsin)

The Trauma of Money by Dale Williams Barrigar

(I am pleased to inform the readership that DWB will be presenting new works for the next several days!-Leila)

If you’re not good at

getting money

and keeping

money

or if you

don’t have money

or if you’re

out of it

right now, or

hard up today you are

pushed to the side

way to the side

almost off the side

or maybe right off the side

of everyone’s mind

and you are thought

way, way, way,

WAY

less of

by

almost everybody,

indeed…

In fact, if you

are not good at

getting money,

or keeping money,

or don’t have money

right now

or if you just cannot hold

onto it very well

once you do

finally

get it

(and, sometimes, you do

finally get it

out of the blue)

because you

gave it all away

to someone else

who told you they needed

it more –

you are

pushed

way, way, way,

way

off to the side

marginalized and alienated

and looked down

upon

spat upon even

thought less of for sure

and frowned upon

by almost everyone

in the good old

USA, today

(or,

almost

everywhere

(but not

everywhere),

globally).

Dale Williams Barrigar

(Images courtesy of DWB)

The Ritz by The Drifter

She really wanted to come over and see him and he really didn’t know quite why that was, but he said okay and hung up the phone.

The year was 2003 and the time of year was midsummer and he didn’t have a cell phone yet (on purpose) and wouldn’t (on purpose) for a long time.

The landline wasn’t his either.

He was house-sitting for a friend while the friend and his wife were in France for the summer.

The house was in the northside Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, just off Lawrence Avenue. This was before Lincoln Square became horrifically, and ridiculously, gentrified but at a time when it was already on its way, fast, on the downward slope.

The house he was house-sitting in for the summer was ridiculously large by his standards, a person who was used to living in many different, small, cheap apartments all across the city over the last however-many years.

Only two people usually lived in the house but it had five upstairs bedrooms, four bathrooms, a gigantic kitchen, a massive dining room, a huge living room with a massive fireplace, a really big family room with an incredibly large TV, a gargantuan basement with at least six separate rooms and lots more TVs, several rooms on the ground floor that were used for things like libraries and studies that were never used, etc. etc. etc. (“Sleeping” alone in this large of a house gave him waking nightmares which usually led to him crashing on one of the first-floor couches near a window by a tree.)

His friend, the husband, wasn’t that loaded, but his friend’s wife came from a family in Oklahoma that was so rich with oil money it wasn’t really funny except it also was kind of funny – in a perhaps sick way.

When the main character of this story’s friend arrived she looked beautiful because she was beautiful. She was, somehow, much more beautiful than the last time he’d seen her, about three or four months ago at the university where they were both lecturers in the English Department.

Her long, fresh-smelling brown hair came down to the middle of her back and had blonde streaks in it that looked natural and golden when she moved her head. Her perfect face was cat-shaped and insomniac-pale, looking for something, and her large, gray, long-lashed eyes sparkled with satirical humor and a wild, one-of-a-kind, literary intelligence. She wore a dark red lipstick and had sexy crooked teeth.

She immediately bummed a cigarette off him and asked for a beer because she knew he would have some of both.

They went out into the backyard, on the beautiful green grass (that kind of grass can often be beautiful even though it literally is an environmental catastrophe for Planet Earth) which was very long and thick because, while he was supposed to keep it mowed to the neighbors’ standards while he was house-sitting, he did not do so. (The neighbors often gave him dirty looks. When the summer was over it would take him a long time to get that grass mowed before his friend and his wife returned from France.) The temperature was at a perfect eighty-three degrees F, the sun was out, the Chicago sky was blue and clear, she was in a really great mood, he was in a very great mood too, he was lighting her cigarettes for her (she kept on bumming more from him but he had a carton in the house), the beer tasted wonderful, and the two of them, both writers who made their livings as lecturers and not lecturers who made their livings as writers, were “writing in air.” In other words, they were doing it purely for the love of it (not only aiming for the $ by following trends and corporate style books).

“Writing in air” is a phrase that was used by the great American writer James Agee, author of the classic text Let Us Now Praise Famous Men which accompanied the famous Walker Evans photographs of the poor folks down in Alabama.

Like many writers then and now, too, Agee became an alcoholic and spent a great deal of time as a younger writer “writing in air,” which is to say, spending more time talking about writing with other aspiring writers than actually writing.

Such behavior looks like a waste of time to a lot of the world but it is not a waste of time. It only becomes a waste of time later. When the writer is fairly young, as these two were then (early thirties or so), “writing in air” can be extremely beneficial for the writer as she or he tries out ideas, becomes fluent in the use of verbal flow and tricks, talks about stories, poems, essays, and books, and listens (the deep, active listening is key) to the opinions and ideas of others as well.

These two were having a great time writing in air in the backyard, such a great time that day became evening became nighttime became them in the bar that was just across from the house on Lawrence Avenue.

The bar was called The Ritz and it was run by a guy who called himself Alfred.

That wasn’t his name. It was what he called himself.

The Ritz was one of the most dangerous dive bars the main character of this story had ever been in, and he had been in a million of them all across the USA, from coast to coast and from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Key West, Florida, and in at least forty-five or forty-six other different states too, as well as several in Canada, Mexico, and Jamaica, where he’d almost been killed in one of them (but that is a different story).

The Ritz is there no more. The place where The Ritz was is now a phone store.

Back then, as soon as you walked in the door, you could smell the menace and danger oozing from every single corner of the room.

The place was a garish nightmare from the mind of Poe or Dostoevsky. It had blood-red walls, a deep, sickening green ceiling, very low, yellowish lighting, very dark, hidden corners with very shady people lurking in them, and a gigantic man (as in six and a half feet tall and built like a freight truck) with a vicious scar all the way across his face and nose standing at the door glaring at everyone who walked in the place. Don’t say hello to him because he won’t answer.

The clock was upside down, the only bathroom was dirtier than the one pictured on the Rolling Stones album cover for Let It Bleed, the clientele contained gang bangers, mafiosos, hookers, prostitutes, street walkers (none of these three are always the same thing), drug dealers, thieves, hit men. Yes, “Alfred” had once told the main character of this story that several regulars in this bar sometimes made their livings taking out people for money. But don’t worry, said Alfred. They only kill who they are paid to kill and they don’t enjoy it. They don’t mind it, but they don’t enjoy it, either.

Alfred looked like an emaciated, cadaverous, half-Asian, needle-hiding version of Alfred Hitchcock who’d been resurrected from the grave and presented with a set of gold teeth which he was always flashing then hiding behind dry, cracked, pursed lips. When he gave you a drink he acted like you’d won the lottery.

It may sound half mad that the main character of this story, who wasn’t really (much of) a criminal himself after all, would’ve spent so much time in a place like this, back in the old days. No one knows why, but the facts are the facts.

And the amazing thing was that she understood the danger and the shadiness of the place very well, and wasn’t afraid of it at all.

The two of them entered the Ritz just before midnight and began drinking even though they’d already been drinking (and chain smoking) since way earlier in the day.

They started doing shots of tequila.

Lots of shots of tequila.

In The Ritz you were allowed to do whatever the hell (and whatever the F) you wanted to do, even if it brought you to hell. You might end up dead, injured, crippled, wounded, tied up, kidnapped, maimed, scarred, sick, ill, brain-dead, missing, or otherwise unaccounted for, but no one was going to stop you here. When you stepped in the door, all bets were off, and you had now entered underground Chicago, Land of the Gangsters, at its lowest, or its highest (depending on your perspective) levels.

The two of them retreated to a corner, commandeered a nasty little booth and started making out in the almost-dark, while still drinking and smoking.

After closing time (because even The Ritz had to close at some time) they made it back across the street (somehow) wrapped in one another’s arms.

She had accidentally, somehow, burned his hand with one of their cigarettes. Later tomorrow he would realize how badly and deeply the top of his hand was burned, but right now, he didn’t even notice, or feel, it.

Both of them were married (to other people). Neither of them lived with their spouses, nor had they for a long time.

She reminded him of his wife. But she was not his wife.

That fact, or those facts, made her dangerously attractive to him. She tasted like honeydew. Her flesh was manna.

They both fell down trying to make it upstairs to the bedroom. That is, while holding each other and trying to drag each other up the stairs to the bedroom, they both took a tumble, all tangled together, and somehow ended up at the bottom of the stairs, wrapped in each other’s arms, on the floor, instead of at the top of the stairs, in the bedroom.

They continued making out, there on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, before they both passed out, in each other’s arms, on the floor, at the bottom of the stairs, with the front door wide open, the summer air blowing in.

In the morning the hangover was so bad it was worse than hell. Much, much worse. Whatever hell is and however bad hell can be, this was worse! (It was so bad that this kind of thing would cause him to completely quit drinking forever in two years or so, which was almost impossible at first and also felt like freedom beyond belief – but that is another story.)

The hangover had a million different things about it that made it especially horrible, horrific, harrowing. After staggering around for a while with the splitting, near-blinding headache, he saw and reached for an almost-empty vodka bottle that was located on one of the tables in the house and took a swig to kill the pain. But it didn’t kill the pain (not yet). He retched. The cigarette which he then located and lit after finding a lighter under one of the couches made his heart pound like an old-fashioned steam engine about to permanently explode. He noticed that the top of his left hand had a deep red cigarette burn upon it (that would turn into a permanent scar weirdly almost in the shape of a heart, like a token of this story, and if it wasn’t a cigarette burn it was some other kind of burn, but he’d had cigarette burns before (a few self-administered in front of other people to impress them) and this looked like one) and that his fingers were all yellow from smoking. Three of his fingernails were bruised, and bleeding, a little; he had no idea why. His knee was killing him, probably from toppling down the stairs which he, vaguely, remembered. He located one of the three remaining Vicodin pills he’d gotten off a friend last week and gulped it down without water, then chugged a ton of water, straight out of the sink, while bending over it.

No one on Planet Earth knew how many cig’s he’d had yesterday but a good estimate was five packs of twenty (just like John Wayne). He was guessing that the number of drinks sat at around thirty – minimum. Actual solid food all day, and all night, long – zero. Cups of strong black coffee with cigarettes before she’d arrived – seven or eight. He saw a Chicago hit man loading a pistol with a blank look on his face then reaching out the other hand to take the wad of cash from Alfred. And he knew this was the truth.

One of the worst things about the hangover was that, when he woke up, she was already gone.

The Drifter (Images by The Drifter)

Life in Academia Today by the Drifter

There was a bigshot “Educator” fellow

standing in front of me

once upon a time.

Large white bow tie strapped proudly

on with blue spot in middle.

Proud bald head a-gleaming above

the pouring pot belly, and the proud,

well-trimmed, not-so-delicately perfumed

beard, and he was going on, and on, then on,

and more on, about the super, utter importance

of “Comparative Learning Data,” whatever

the fuck that is.

And turning students into ants in the

colony, into complete and total

automatons, if possible.

And he was professing, and professing

again, his personal, private love

of the data that did this.

(He must’ve uttered it a trillion times

followed by the slickest, lip-licking

lizard grin.)

Here in the crowded conference room

(attendance required)

on another brutal Tuesday afternoon.

My brain wasn’t there, except when

he rudely yanked on it

sending it straight back down

into this deadly quagmire

of mental slavery

and spiritual dearth

not unlike

one of Dante’s worst purgatorial nightmares.

I wanted Mary Magdalene and Bob Marley,

but hell, I did my best

to block it all out and simply observe

the dying orange leaves of trees

blowing gracefully outside

open windows

in the west

of the city

with the glorious blue

of Chicago sky behind.

I thought I saw, I was, for a single second,

almost sure I espied

a squirrel

give him the finger

before disappearing into the nest

with complete disdain.

Then I was thinking

of Shelley,

the Poet, not Mary, the Novelist,

I don’t know how or why.

Shelley, on a lecture platform

(he must’ve been on one before at some point

and he was now)

trying to read his latest radical papers

to a nasty audience

who were all

bouncing

rotten fruit

in their hands

so accurate,

terrible

and true.

They were confounded by

his strongest passages,

they were bored, torn,

they wanted to take it out

on him, some started

leaving while the others began

a booing and hissing routine.

But his intense green eyes, they stared

straight down

at his papers

and his messy, unshaved, handsome face,

and his hanging brown hair

were

burning

like Joan of Arc,

contorted, embarrassed,

shocked, humiliated

by the noise

of the terrible crowd.

By the silent noise of these

“happy,” satisfied, orderly, materialistic,

secular,

ladder-climbing,

cowardly,

passive

peoples

who were now stirred up

into a murderous rage

at his merely conceiving

to be different

for even

a second at all.

The Drifter (Images provided by The Drifter)

Ophelia Invisible by The Drifter

“Who is now reading this?” – Walt Whitman

It was just one block away from my apartment, on the corner; but I suddenly felt like I’d traveled thousands of miles, or gone to a different level of something that was on a whole other level.

The utter humbleness of it all was what struck me most. Whoever did this took the time, with, obviously, very limited resources.

It was the early AM of a midsummer morning just outside Chicago at the time when the birds are going insane in the good way, having a party before settling down into the branches above us and hiding out for the rest of the day.

Then, suddenly, they were there, these simple signs that were honoring the dead.

And I saw that at the top of one of the lists of names, the name was Ophelia.

First it made me think of the Taylor Swift video (not just the song), “The Fate of Ophelia.”

Next it made me think of Good Will’s, and Hamlet’s, Ophelia (the lover of both for sure).

Then I noticed that, within the same list, there was (is) someone with the same first name as one of my daughters.

And THAT made me think of invisible connection/s that spread throughout the world (and what is called the universe).

And then I thought of how Ophelia is invisible to me.

The Drifter (All Images by The Drifter)

When They Start Writing About You by The Drifter

“You know something is happening here/ But you don’t know what it is /

Do you, Mr. Jones?” – Bob Dylan

Last week, one of my adoring fans wrote a story about me, then sent it to me. He informed me, directly, that this story was not just inspired by me, it was (and is) about me. In other words, I am one of two main characters in the tale. My last name, in real life, is Barrigar, and my credentials are MFA, PhD, which I sometimes use, since I earned them.

This author changed my name, in his tale about me, to Bannister, MFA, PhD.

In the opening scene of this story, I am presented as a drug addict who bursts into a woman’s room, beats her into submission, and steals all her money so he can buy drugs. While I admit to having been forced into borrowing money from a few lovely, generous, and wealthy ladies in the deep past (mostly for food), the scene of physical violence that was (and is) portrayed in this story about me is so far from anything I would ever do in life (or have ever done in life) that its effect upon me, the reader of the tale that is directly about me, was (and remains) disturbing.

(I have never struck anyone in my entire life, even when struck first, although I have had to take a few people out in other ways, like tripping them or throwing them down onto the ground before swooping away like a ghost and disappearing around the corner. The message is, and has always been, Don’t tread on me.)

Next, in this story about me of which I speak, I am portrayed as if I were some sort of Ivy League, bicoastal elite because I spent over twenty years teaching (in various forms) in academia.

But I was a college dropout until I was twenty-five years old. I’ve lived in the Midwest (Michigan, Illinois, and Kansas) for 97% of my life. I attended humble state universities (the University of Illinois, Wichita State University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago). I took out an enormous (and even ungodly) amount of loans to finance my own education. I worked as a pizza delivery driver for a large portion of my twenty-somethings, and was mugged more than once while doing so. At one point I was teaching at three different colleges in the city of Chicago and spent four or more hours, four or five days a week, commuting, by car, train, and feet. And I only stayed in academia so long because I couldn’t find a job that would pay me for writing (even though I also do come from a family of teachers, so a lot of the work felt fairly natural in that sense; and on the other hand, I was often teaching so much to keep my head above water that I had no time for my own writing, postponing my development as a writer without any doubt whatsoever at all).

Finally, in the story about me, I am simplified, distorted, turned into an unrecognizable cartoon villain, and presented entirely as someone I am not, even though it’s obvious that the writer of this tale about me (which, again, he himself directly said is about me in no uncertain terms) has read a lot of my autobiographical writings to write something about me that almost, in just a few places, weirdly resembles who I almost am (but only almost, and only in a very few places).

The story about me is very poorly written and obviously tossed off in a fit of rage and pique after I verbally warred with this person online about the nasty things he was saying about my writing, and also about the writing and art of other people, on the independent literary site I am an editor for. And yes, when the vitriol and hard feelings become intense enough, it is a form of psychological warfare; and I will continue to defend my own work and the work of other artists we choose to publish on this blog until my dying day or until the site closes its doors. I consider it very much a part of the wider war against philistinism and closed-mindedness in this nation and world.

It is a weird thing to know that someone out there hates you so much that he or she is willing to sit there for hours writing a story about you that obviously shows some sort of weird obsession with you even though it also makes its disdain for you as clear as it could possibly be, and then sends it straight to you the next day, even after a cool-down period. (This sort of thing also happened to me a few times back in the old days, when I was a member of writing workshops, etc.)

None of us can understand any of the others of us in this world, not even when we think we do (or especially not when we think we do).

But sometimes, when the writer has done her or his work after long hours (and years, or decades) of patient toil and joyful, painful labor, that writer is able to start producing material that transcends the self, at least some of the time.

Almost no writers ever get to this point, and definitely almost all best-selling writers these days never get to this point. Just cast your eyes over all the best-seller lists these days, and see how all the material is: all the same, all the same, all the same (all the same, with only the names changed). Formulaic writing is not transcendent writing; and one could also say that it’s not even “writing” at all, in the sense I mean here.

After decades of toil, often-unrelenting pressure, danger, and more toil, you finally find your voice in prose. And then someone who doesn’t understand you, or your project, at all, casually happens by and pisses all over it; like a dog trying to mark a territory that was never meant for him at all.

END NOTE: Thank you to Bob Dylan for the song “Ballad of a Thin Man” which gives the epigraph to this (all-too-true) essay. There is nothing new under the sun.

In the title, “thin” means, among other things, of no real substance, insignificant, pointless; Dylan is brilliant at reinventing words (not using them in a sloppy, imprecise way).

END NOTE: The great poet Matthew Arnold first used the term “philistinism” in the nineteenth century, to describe a middle- or upper-class hatred of high culture, which is consequently a hatred of artists and art: due to the love of comfort, possessions, and money, to the exclusion of all else (hello, Mr. El Presidente and billions more).

The Drifter

The Drifter Presents Grandmother

(All images by The Drifter)

When he was five years old, his mother got down on his level, as she often did. But this time, she told him something different, something he’d never heard before.

She told him he was going to spend the summer with his Grandmother.

And that she herself, his mother, would come to visit him a lot, with his father; but they also wouldn’t be seeing him for a while.

And she immediately informed him, before he panicked, that this was a good thing – NOT a bad thing, and certainly not a punishment of any kind.

She reassured him about how much both she and his father loved him (and he already knew that very well, since they had showered him with love and attention since day one).

Then she told him that he was going to stay with his grandmother for the summer because his grandmother had things to teach him that only she, his grandmother, could teach him.

He couldn’t wait to get going.

…

He wasn’t scared or nervous at all as his mother drove him north from their very modest Detroit suburb to the thumb area of Michigan, where his grandmother lived in a trailer park on the edge of a small town.

It was a town that was made up mostly of German American and French American people who almost all claimed Indian blood of some kind, usually Chippewa or Iroquois. All the small merchants of the town were former farmers who served all the many farmers who lived spread way out all around the town. It was, and is, some of the most fertile land not just in the USA, but in the world. The town was (and is) fifteen miles away from Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes.

His grandmother was what can only be called a kind of German mystic, although no one called her that.

But they all came to her when they needed something.

Not when they needed money, because she didn’t have any of that.

But when they needed consolation, needed healing, needed advice, needed a friend, needed someone to listen to them without passing judgement, they came to her.

His mother dropped him off in front of his grandmother’s trailer with his little suitcase. She didn’t make sure he was safely inside or anything. She just picked him up, hugged him, kissed him, said goodbye, then gently put him down and shoved him toward the door of the trailer, where his grandmother was waiting inside.

And then she drove away.

…

At first he and his grandmother didn’t do anything special.

And he almost never got bored, because whenever he started getting too bored, he retreated, and entered a world that no one else around him could see. They thought he was in a trance, but he knew he was somewhere special.

It was a world of the imagination, filled with wild characters, wonderful animals, amazing adventures, the ability to literally fly wherever and whenever he wanted, and also to turn invisible and roam around, wherever and whenever he wanted to.

And they watched a lot of TV.

And she sometimes told him stories about the family, in her quiet voice, what it was like on the ship coming over from Germany, accidents or good things that had happened to people on the farm, wild and crazy things the farm animals had done, stories about weather and storms and harvests, stories about sickness and healing.

And sometimes she read to him, especially about Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh, and even more often than that, from the Bible, stories about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark and the animals and the rainbow, Moses, David and Goliath, Joseph and the coat of many colors, Job and the Whirlwind, Jeremiah and the well, Jonah and the whale, Jesus and his mother, Mary, and the adventures of Paul while he was spreading the Gospel, like Johnny Appleseed in America, who she also told him all about, many times. There was only one picture on the walls of the trailer, and it was a picture of Jesus’ face. He wasn’t being crucified in the picture. In the picture, he was quietly smiling upward with mysterious eyes and a weird kind of halo light falling down behind his head onto his shoulders out of the clear blue sky.

And then one day they started planting things.

Some of the things were flowers, and other things were other, small, green plants.

And she showed him how to plant, how to dig in the soil, how to treat the plants tenderly, how to place them where they now belonged, how to put the dirt back on top, how to pack it all down snugly, but not too snugly, how to water the earth.

And they planted things all in and around the trailer park on the edge of the town.

Then one day when he was sitting on the couch looking at a Bible picture book with all the grown men with their long hair and beards, and the beautiful women in their flowing robes with their flowing, long, beautiful hair, he smelled something wonderful. It was a loaf of bread she was baking.

A little later she showed him the loaf of bread under a kitchen towel. His mouth watered and it looked wonderful.

She told him they needed to go take the bread to a man she wanted him to meet.

…

She drove slowly, cautiously, patiently, calmly, and fearlessly.

She had strong, gnarled hands, a simple bracelet on one wrist, and her long, graying, pretty hair was pulled back with a simple blue ribbon around it.

They drove for a long time.

They didn’t talk, and they were completely comfortable around one another not talking.

They both enjoyed just going, the wheels flying over the road, the farm fields all around them always with trees in the distance.

The man they were going to meet was called Old Joe.

That wasn’t his name, but it was what they called him.

Old Joe was a local legend.

He was such a local legend that stories about him had appeared in the local newspaper a few times, and even on the local TV news station one time.

He lived way out in the middle of nowhere, alone, in a shack, in the middle of a huge, vast field with trees and a river in the distance, and a few huge trees that loomed over and sheltered his shack with their leaf-filled arms.

Except he didn’t live alone.

As the boy’s grandmother pulled the car over to the side of the road by the field where the shack was way over there, she pointed, and he saw that there was a whole, huge pack of gigantic dogs lounging around on the ground around the shack.

She told him that there were at least twelve dogs.

And then he saw the goats.

The little goats were all leaping and jumping and playing and shivering with joy in the tall grass of the field. They were bumping into each other and munching and chomping on grass and little scrub trees in the field. A goat shot away from the rest of them and one of the dogs leapt up and shot after the goat and circled around it, bringing it back, and they looked like they were playing a game on the way back.

His grandmother and himself got out of the car, and started walking across the field toward the shack and the dogs and the goats on a little trail. They held hands as they went and his grandmother held the loaf of bread under her other arm, wrapped in the towel.

The dogs all came over in a pack wagging their huge tails and greeting them. The goats kept to themselves but seemed to start jumping around even more, almost like they were excited by the visitors.

But Old Joe was nowhere around.

They sat down in a couple of old, broken-down chairs that were sitting outside the shack and they waited for him in the warm sunlight as they petted the shaggy dogs and talked to the shaggy, friendly, wagging-tail dogs, and laughed and waved at the goats, some of whom started approaching them and looking at them with curious eyes before bounding away again.

And before very long they saw a man approaching them across the field from the direction of the river.

He walked slowly and steadily and when he was about half way toward where they were he raised his hand and waved at them one simple time.

When the man got to where they were, the boy was shocked, and almost terrified for a few seconds, but then just fascinated.

Old Joe wore a beat-up old black hat that came down very low almost covering his eyes. His eyes beneath the brim of the hat were the darkest, most intense eyes the boy had ever seen. The man’s nose was large and he had a gigantic mustache covering his mouth and a huge, dark, graying, tangled beard that came down to the middle of his chest. He wore a suit of old, black, tattered clothes that was dusty and filled with patches. He had old, battered boots on his feet.

And he never said a word, not even hello.

He just came over to the boy’s grandmother who handed him the loaf of bread. As Old Joe went over to take the bread into the shack, a bird swooped down out of one of the trees over the shack and landed on his shoulder. It rode his shoulder into the shack, and when Old Joe came back out of the shack, the bird flew back up into the tree again and landed in the leafy green branches.

Old Joe pulled over another old, broken-down chair from over behind the shack, and then he sat down right next to the boy. Old Joe leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and just sat there, very close to the boy, while his grandmother continued to pet the dogs and talk to them. Old Joe never said a word. Not one word.

Pretty soon the boy’s grandmother and Old Joe just looked at each other. They both had tiny, small smiles in and around their eyes. No one ever said a word.

Then the boy’s grandmother said it was time to get going. Old Joe just sat there, elbows on knees. The dogs surrounded him, like they were protecting him.

The boy and his grandmother held hands again as they walked back to the car on the little trail through the beautiful, glowing green field that was now popping with harmless grasshoppers hopping all around them.

As they drove away, she told him that Old Joe was her brother; his great-uncle.

…

There was one more thing from that summer that the boy would never forget.

He didn’t remember his grandfather, who’d died right before (right before) he was born.

She told him that his grandfather visited her almost every night (but not every night), just for a few moments.

She would know when he was about to appear because she could suddenly feel it; and then he would sit gently on the other side of her bed, the bed they had shared together, only for a few, dreamlike moments that only seemed half-real.

And he came to tell her that, though it was hard to believe, everything was (even when it wasn’t) okay: now, yesterday, tomorrow, forever, and always.

There were no fences anywhere.

The Drifter

Report from a Burning Planet: Chicagoland, USA, July, 2026; or Cabin Fever by Dr. Dale W. Barrigar

“Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing…” – Jack London, The Call of the Wild

I realized recently how much I love going outside when I couldn’t go outside.

I couldn’t go outside because I live in Chicagoland, and the other day we had, by far, the worst air quality in the world. The AQI was at nine hundred million billion zillion or some such number.

The air was truly toxic and as soon as you stepped outside, as soon as you stepped outside, you knew it.

It was like a yellow and grayish toxic fog of smudge filling the air everywhere that made your lungs burn. The dogs, too, started coughing. You literally could not stay outside unless wearing a mask, and last time I checked, dogs can’t wear masks, thus, you had to take them out quickly to do their business (if you have dog/s) and then right back inside.

It was wildfires from Canada, hundreds of miles away, that were causing this dystopian, toxic situation.

The smoke blew down from there to here, mixed with the city air and the 105-degree F “real feel” temperature, and created the toxic air.

Even the professional baseball games were canceled. All the Lake Michigan beaches (28 straight miles of free public beaches in the city of Chicago alone) were closed.

I am not a person who needs a mountaintop, a seashore, or a desert on a daily basis, although I have been known to travel to those kinds of places frequently in the past, and I go down to visit Lake Michigan pretty frequently. (Lake Michigan is 307 miles long and 118 miles wide at its widest, with a maximum depth of over 900 feet: i.e., an inland sea, connected to four other inland seas and forming the Earth’s largest fresh water system, or 20% of the world’s surface fresh water. There will be a lot of people trying to move to this area by the end of the century.)

But all I need on a daily basis is some trees (or even one tree), some flowers, some grass (or snow in winter), a few parks, or the local, humble forest preserves, which look modest and are actually filled to overflowing with such creatures as: frogs, toads, snakes, turtles, bees, beetles, butterflies, dragonflies, praying mantises, other insects, hawks, herons, ducks, geese, song birds, other birds, deer, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, skunks, rabbits, river otters, muskrats, and even some beavers. And even the fish in the river must’ve been coughing during the latest Toxic-Sludge-Air Event. (Hemingway roamed this area as a teenager and John Wayne Gacy dumped bodies into this river 25 miles upstream which, to me, shows the best and the worst of humanity all coming together at the river.)

And when you can’t go outside, you start to get cabin fever. (Or: when I can’t go outside, I start to get cabin fever.)

Cabin fever usually denotes not being able to go outside because it’s too cold and there’s too much wind and snow; but now it also means not being able to go outside because when you do, it makes your eyes and your lungs burn, your hair and clothes smell like smoke, your healthy adult dogs cough, and the fact that it’s hard to breathe out there starts giving you the fantods (and the heebie-jeebies) because there’s an onslaught of toxic particles infesting your lungs and eyes – literally, seriously; like something out of an H.P. Lovecraft horror story (not exaggerating here) and that self-admitted weird guy could really make up some creepy stuff. Weird Tales, indeed.

If you start feeling like you’re in the middle of an H.P. Lovecraft short story and it’s real life, do something!

I suggest putting your mind above it all, like Jesus on the cross (even though there’s also a time to shout out, “Why have you forsaken me!?”).

Sitting Bull used to sit down in the middle of bullets whizzing all around his head, pack his pipe calmly, and sit there smoking his pipe, calmly, while all the bullets continued whizzing around his head.

No one knows why, but all the bullets missed, all of the times, except once when he was younger, and at the end.

And I realized that when I can’t go outside, I start to go insane.

Then we had a Noah’s Ark and the Rainbow moment here.

I woke up today and the sky was blue and clear, and the air was okay again, just like that: and the temperature was perfect enough at a “real feel” of just 90 degrees F.

When I was a little kid, about fifty years ago (I’m 59 now), 90 degrees F was VERY HOT and very rare.

Now it’s normal for a midsummer day here in the middle of the American Midwest in the middle of North America. Just like tornadoes and floods are much more common here in Illinois now, and in the wintertime we sometimes get a thing called “thundersnow” (thunder storms and snow simultaneously) which is a thing that did not even exist around here at all when I was a kid. The first time I saw it I was so flabbergasted and amazed that I felt like Moses on a mountaintop being shown the Burning Bush almost.

And I still love, as do my dogs, going outside.

Crucial Dog Notes: I have the dogs for a literal multitude of reasons, one of them being that I don’t get along with the vast majority of herd humanity very well on a face-to-face basis most of the time because they give me the fantods and the heebie-jeebies (the people I do get along with I get along with fine, and very well, usually) which is why I always appear to be running away from people or hiding and lurking behind doors, like Emily Dickinson; or faithfully wearing my sunglasses, like Lightnin’ Hopkins or Jeffrey Lebowski; and another of those huge, crucial reasons is that we all love going outside together so much.

END NOTE: The wildfire smoke is back today (but not as bad).

Dr. Dale W. Barrigar

(Images by DWB)