Uncategorized

The Drifter: A New Definition of Lynchian

(All images provided by The Drifter)

“She is gone / But she was here / And her presence is still heavy in the air. / Oh what a taste / Of human love / But now she’s gone / And it don’t matter any more.” – Willie Nelson

David Lynch passed away exactly one year ago today as the Drifter writes this (January 16, 2026).

He was a man who combined two strains of the American artistic spirit within himself.

He could create a dreamlike sense of horror within his works that reaches straight back to none other than our wonderful world-genius Edgar Allan Poe.

And he also had another side to his personality that reaches back to our other artistic founding father, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson was an American Transcendentalist, and Lynch was a Transcendental Meditation teacher who spent the last twenty years of his life directly trying to bring peace to the world more than making movies. There is, except perhaps on the surface, very little difference between Transcendental Meditation and American Transcendentalism. And even on the surface, there is not that much difference.

Lynch was also a Hemingwayesque figure who could write dialogue like Ernest Hemingway. (Roger Ebert was for the most part drastically unfair to Lynch throughout Lynch’s career, but he got this part exactly right.)

And Lynch even looked a bit Hemingwayesque, especially in the film of him where he is painting – we can remember that Hemingway loved painting and always said that Van Gogh and Cezanne were two of his biggest, deepest, and longest-lasting influences, bar none.

David Lynch was born in Montana and lived in Idaho for some of his formative years. Hemingway died in Idaho and spent much time hiking and hunting in Montana.

David Lynch once said, “Big things become smaller when you talk about them – unless you’re a poet.” I could cry for gratitude when I ponder this quote. He meant that words destroy things that can’t be said or that are too big for words, and he also meant that poets have a special place in the human pantheon where they can get closer to the source than anyone else.

He did not consider himself a poet, and he was not a poet, and that’s another thing that makes me love this quote so much. All artists should love all the arts, no matter what their specific focus/es happen to be. They should also become aware (by degrees) of what they both can, and cannot, do. This is a life-long process. Roger Waters said he only discovered that he was able to write prose in his late 70s.

…

The Drifter had forgotten Lynch’s death date somehow when he recently became obsessed with Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive again over the holiday season.

I watched the film end to end at least three times and I watched certain parts of it, like the scene with The Cowboy and Adam Kesher or the scene where Rebekah Del Rio sings Roy Orbison’s “Crying” in Spanish while Betty and Camilla hold each other and weep, dozens of times (not quite literally). Rebekah died last year, just like Lynch, and she died two weeks after singing the song “Llorando” (“Crying”) at a Philosophical Research Society screening of the film.

Many critics have said that Mulholland Drive is the greatest film of the twenty-first century and it is also surely one of the greatest films ever made, even a candidate for THE greatest film ever made. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the only film I can think of that competes with it in the twenty-first century, and even there Mulholland Drive clearly triumphs, as much as I love and adore Eternal Sunshine. (Mulholland Drive is a faultless work of art and Eternal Sunshine is a truly great work of art with many faults to it.)

…

The friendship between Betty and Camilla is much more endearing and powerful than their erotic relationship, even though their erotic relationship is the most realistic and powerful depiction of an erotic relationship I have ever seen on screen. This fact alone makes this film so great there’s almost nothing more to say about it on that level. The paradox of art here bends the mind and changes the heart forever.

The Cowboy is a supernatural character. When angels appear in this mortal sphere, they often do so in a stern, or even a terrifying, guise (see the Bible, which has countless examples of this).

The terrifying homeless man turns into Jesus at the end of the film.

Diane Selwyn exists in ALL OF US.

This movie is about Hollywood, but it is not just about Hollywood. It is about the youth of every person and how youth fades and attitudes and beliefs change as this happens. We either adjust our great expectations, or we die a spiritual death we never recover from.

The crime-of-passion murder in this story is LITERAL in this story; and it is SYMBOLIC in the larger scheme of things (in many, many ways).

When someone breaks your heart and leaves you or forces you to leave them due to their possessive, controlling, jealous, and unhinged behavior, you either kill them off in your mind (NOT literally!) or you die yourself, literally or not. But you think you’ve symbolically killed them off, when you haven’t, really… (Listen to the lyrics of Roy Orbison’s song, “Crying.”)

…

Renee Good reminds me of a David Lynch character like Betty Elms.

Her last known words were, “It’s OK, dude, I’m not mad at you,” spoken with a deeply friendly and smiling sincerity that anyone with half a heart can understand if they’ve seen the video taken by the very man who murdered her seconds later.

I just don’t understand how anyone could have shot this person in the face, right after looking into her face.

She had a beautiful face.

…

We live in a time when the whole system appears to be breaking down. The current president is merely a symptom of that, not a cause, although he is surely hurrying it along, too. (We all need to remain aware, AND stop giving him so much attention.) A healthy society would never have let such a mentally challenged person of obvious bad faith ascend to the position of its “supreme leader” – not in a million years.

No one person is able to change this, or stop it.

There will be light at the end of the tunnel (as there was in Germany).

We don’t know how long the tunnel will be.

…

Drifter Notation Upon the Definition of SARGUN: The word “Sargun” (Sanskrit roots) looks very much like the word “Saragun.”

It’s a literary synchronicity.

If you don’t already know what the word, and name, Sargun means, and even if you do, you should look up the definition. And think about it! (And then think about the literary-synchronicity-connection to the word, and name, Saragun.)

And a repeat of the header for downloads that fail to show it

The Drifter

During My Semi-Annual Visit by R. Gerry Fabian

with the Romanian gypsy woman

whose waist length black hair

and black lustered eyes

mesmerizes my attention.

I breathe backward.

She, of the white flowing blouse,

which can barely contain

her ample breast girth

and the silk black skirt

all wrinkled and

dirt ridden at the bottom,

directs me to cleanse all

all elements of envy

from my stained spirit.

As she pours the jet black tea,

her emancipated eyes sparkle.

R. Gerry Fabian

(Lovely Bird image provided by Christopher J Ananias)

Given by Jeffrey Zable

Talking with a dead friend he informed me,

“You know. . . I never thought it would happen

the way it did. All of a sudden I couldn’t shit straight

and there was nothing they could do about it.

Even so, I kept thinking that they could right up

to the end. You can’t imagine how much I suffered—

suffered like I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy!”

“I understand!” I responded sympathetically,

wondering how it will be for me, given that

we just never know how life can turn on us

when we least expect it…

Jeffrey Zable

(Image of Ivy Green Cemetery, Charleston District, Bremerton, WA)

Lower and Lower Manhattan by William Doreski

As I cross the river on foot

a tower disgorges a cataract

of sun streaming down its windows.

This elaboration suggests hands

of a bronze clock striking noon,

but it’s only a skyscraper full

of dogged suits and ties straining

against tottering stocks and bonds

while looking forward to lunch.

I used to work on an upper floor

but grounded myself deliberately.

You stuck with the program and earned

a retirement in comforting pastels.

All day you shop for the perfect

handbag to tote the shrunken heads

of your lifetime of small enemies.

All night you listen to jazz greats

lilting saxophones into the sky.

I street-walk the city and sigh

the sighs of seismic old age while

you brush past in taxis, grinning

as they consume their fossil fuel.

I suspect from your silent pallor

that you’re thinking about the art

in museums that your patronage

props against the dissolution

that will announce itself like cymbals

striking a lone but fatal note.

William Doreski

(Image plucked from the files of The Drifter)

The Box by John Grey

no use

saying don’t

she climbs

the chair wobbles

but it is hers

the kitchen hers

the cabinet

also hers

as she reaches

for the dust-covered box –

getting down requires

all of her coordination

is a slow shake of bones

but none of my help –

on the table

she opens that box

with deliberation

reveals postcards creased letters

a photograph a medal or two –

no use saying

the past is past

it is hers not mine

and she is 83 still reaching –

and her base may tremble

but it also holds

John Grey

(Image of a future box if local slumlord gets its way)

Bukowski Blvd On The Eve Of Mid-Term Elections by Gerard Sarnat

— thanks to Joan Jobe Smith’s Moonglow Á Go-Go

Past tomorrow’s polling station and chili dog stand, this piss-poor perky protagonist, once a Sistine good girl Dorothy from next door made shitty living laboring over manual typewriters, flees her mean ex-old man who owes allegiance to Long Beach Hells Angels.

After dude broke both of my eardrums with chain-linked fists, passing stevedoreson the wharf, I wink at a Kansas sailor holding white linen crotch with humungous right hand while his other jabs an abscessed left thigh with a syringe size of Michelangelo’s javelin.

Thereafter slinking into some random transgressive but transformative titty bar named David’s, beneath banks of brilliant blacklight beacons, I try to metamorph into one belly-button sequined raw sixteen-year-old sexpot wearing soon to be beer-rotted ruby red shoes.

Gerard Sarnat

(Image is of “Puck”–a Hank fan in Bremerton, WA)

My Daughter’s Face; or, The Visitation by The Drifter

In the silence

in the nothingness

of the road

I could suddenly feel

the holiness

of my daughter’s face

of her spirit

and of her whole self

and I suddenly knew

while I was driving the car

in Illinois

down the road

with her sitting

silently

next to me

that I was sitting

next to an angel

a human angel

imperfect and stressed like the rest of us, yes,

and yet

angelic

nevertheless;

and it was only later

in a far field

when I was alone

that I allowed

the tears of gratitude

to fall

which are still tears.

And I can still

conjure up that feeling

at will

whenever I want to

wherever I am

and it’s worth

more

than all the empty

bank accounts

I ever owned.

And Someone

maybe the Stranger

is always hovering right

behind it all

in my mind.

– The Drifter, aka Dale Williams Barrigar, 12/31/2025

A New Photo Gallery by Christopher J Ananias

Editors’ note: Christopher (or as I like to call him “CJA”) has provided us with another fine collection of pictures. We believe that the beholders will agree to the excellence in and of CJA’s eye.

(On some services the header image is not included–for those of you who are unfortunate that way, I include the train a second time because it should not be missed–Leila)

Studio–London, 2014 by DS Maolalai

after he gave me the key

and had shaken my hand

he had run through the way

the electricity worked, the few

kitchen fittings. apparently he’d had

another offer from a young

polish couple. this was really,

he told me, a room for a man on his own.

I closed the door, locked it

and pushed the bed into the corner.

the place it had been

was distinct on the carpet

as a barrier and an open

manhole hatch. the table was plywood

and wood-effect plastic

and smelled strongly of antiseptic dusters.

the kitchenette was more

or less clean with some frost

in the fridge. I took time

to gather filters, flaking

like pills of asbestos,

from the previous tenant’s cigarettes

which the landlord had missed.

they had crawled between the carpet

and the tile of the bathroom.

into the divots where the castors

of the bed took his weight.

DS Maolalai

(Image provided by Dale Williams Barrigar)

Learning About Birds by Patricia Russo

In the new textbook, it read:

The males sing more loudly,

but the songs of the females are more complex

which made the girls in the class giggle

Infuriated, the teacher

slammed his hand on the desk

silencing everyone

and embarrassing the boys

then one boy in the back

began to laugh

deliberately, mockingly

and though the teacher bellowed so loud

his eyes nearly popped out of his face

more boys started laughing

and all the girls were grinning

and maybe

that is how

things change

Patricia Russo

(Image of a Box Pigeon flock in the Charleston district of Bremerton, WA. This “team” has been intact for over fifty generations; which is a whole lot of Box Pigeons)