This is a Facebook post from June 4th, 2020. This was written during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. I wrote a lot on Facebook during that time, I like a lot of what was written here and wanted to save it here for posterity as Facebook slowly smothers the life out of it’s platform. -Damian June 2024
I can’t sleep. Who can these days, amiright?
I told the lady I was going to stay up and read, and sure…I did a little of that, but mostly I sat in the chair and thought about the future. I felt good about those thoughts, but then I sat down here and started reading Facebook and instantly regretted feeling good.
Because, let’s face it. We’re all doomed aren’t we?
I just finished the book Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. It was a gift from the lady, her favorite book. She was irritated that I didn’t read it right after Christmas, when she gave it to me. But books have a life and a mind of their own. They come to you when you least expect them, and when they open up to you…. When they truly open up to you… it’s magic. This book came to me and opened up at the right place and time.
Jitterbug Perfume is about an ancient king who finds his first white hair in his beard. It’s decreed by the law of his land that he is to die of “old age.” Old Alobar isn’t ready to die and decides to run from death. He continues to run from death and somehow discovers the secrets to an everlasting life. The secrets are wonderful, but lonely.
Towards the end of the book, I don’t think I’m spoiling this for anyone, but a random black character is murdered by police in New Orleans and there are violent protests and vigils for this character. But it’s a book about living forever and does this character really die? They don’t talk about him too much in the book. It’s a white book and made for liberal white people, but it has been on my mind for the last few days.
Reading the chapters about this character’s death, while simultaneously watching the news was…. I don’t have the words for those feelings. Incredible is not a large enough word. His character was just a token. Created by a white man to die after a few humble sentences or paragraphs.
I’m not a smart man. I’ve never been good at looking at the metaphors in novels. Maybe his death was represented in that way on purpose, and it’s the times we are living in that makes me evaluate what that character means. ya know?
But that’s not what sticks with me about the book. The book is about how Alobar decides to change his world. He does so by breaking the chains of his oppressors, which are DEATH and the rules.
It’s an interesting and fun book and I can’t wait to read more of Tom Robbins. But I keep thinking about how the book says Alobar learns to become immortal because he shirks his role in the greater scheme of life and rebirth. He decides not to be a part of the SYSTEM, but to be an individual.
AN INDIVIDUAL.
That’s his first step to immortality. Becoming an individual.
But isn’t that the problem we have in AMERICA right now? Isn’t’ that the virus we are spreading to the whole world?
ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.
instead of….
WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE.
They’re the same letters. Just upside down.
No longer do we live in the country of “We the People…” We live in a country of “ME!!!!!! The People!!!!”
We’re a country of people who want what’s best for US, but when we say us… we mean… “Me. ME! MEEEEEE!!!!!!!”
Me the people. Me the People. Me the People. Me the People.
Look, I know I’m telling almost all of you reading everything you already know. But we’ve been living “Me the people” our entire lives and it’s not really working is it?
The rich get richer, and the poor keep dying when they don’t have too. Who cares who can live forever, if the masses are dying in our streets.
I see the “All lives Matter” posts and comments, and hell, I thought the same thing at first. All lives do matter, but WHY IS MY LIFE WORTH MORE THAN OTHERS?
WHY?!?!
I struggled with these ideas when my sister died some ten/eleven years ago. Why her and not me? Why George Floyd and not me? Why? Why? Why?
Why?
What is a life worth? How much? How many tears? I wonder how many people have seen a dead body. I wonder how many people have watched a person die in-front of their own eyes. How would that change their world?
When I think of the “ALL LIVES MATTER!!!!” People I’ve been thinking of Jitterbug Perfume and the individualism it either taught or warned against. These are ignorant people, not bad people. Just fucking ignorant. They are just as much a product of the system as the dead black men laying in our streets.
It’s been hammered into our collective heads since birth that we should be looking out for number one. You know why? Because communism is EVIL. Caring for other people is EVIL.
I just know that we can not keep looking at the world and think that we belong as individuals. We have to start looking at the world from a place of WE.
Or, I dunno…. Here’s another half brained metaphor: The earth is a symbiotic organism. We have to work together, or cancer seeps into those cells and destroys it. Each of us carry that cancer inside us. So when we do not work to form a more cohesive unit, we die and we destroy others. And WE! AMERICANS! are doing it every day.
Dying.
America is dying and Americans are killing it.
It’s not just BLACK lives, it’s all lives. They have just taken the largest toil, for us. Man, They die every single fucking day for us. For what? FOR WHAT?!?!
Why are we taught from the day we are born that other people don’t fucking matter? Why is it okay for our culture to teach us and other cultures, because we influence the world… that no one matters except ourselves.
I mean, look at the god damned grocery store parking lot. Look at all those carts strewn across the parking lot. Some right next to the fucking cart corrals. Look at the tables of restaurants. Look at the grass in our parks. Look at the world. We can’t take care of what we’ve got. We can’t put on a fucking cloth mask to help save the world…..
We fucking destroy it every single day and think “I DESERVE BETTER.”
I dunno what to do.
I’m not a smart man.
I’m a 38, almost 39, year old man, who battles some weird depression he doesn’t understand. I struggle everyday to keep my head above water.
This little journal entry is my way of bloodletting my sickness out of me. I’ve got all this shit inside me, poisoning me and I have to let it out. I have to put it somewhere, so why not here…..
I don’t deserve to live on this planet any more than George Floyd and the lifetime of other people who have died unjustly. But here I am and I’m still here.
He entrusted us with this place. We should take care of it, and the only way we’re going to make this place better is if we work together.
However, there are things keeping that working together just out of reach and we have to destroy those things. We have to burn it all down. We have to set it all on fire. Then on those ashes, maybe… Just maybe instead of building a castle for ME, we can build a castle for US.
I have a message to myself I wrote on the back of a sticker sitting here on my desk and it says on it,
“How can I make the world a better place.”
It’s a thing I struggle with and struggle with often. Can I make the world a better place, no. But I think if i can get just a few other people to listen. Maybe if we can get a lot of people to listen… maybe…. just maybe…
And I think we are getting closer. We just need to keep asking the question WHY? Each and every day.
WHY? WHY? WHY?
And one last insomniatic thought from Jitterbug perfume by way of my brain:
We’re just soup. We’re born from soup. We live our lives. We go back to the soup. Why not make the best soup we can? Why not make everything the best for everyone?
