Facebook Archives: I can’t sleep. Who can these days, amiright?

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?

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An ode to Alissa Rogers (1982 – 2016) Shreveport / Denver

November 12, 2022 No Comments

From Alissa: “sorry you are in that, its retardation not blooming. think about birth and also how much the sun hates us, and how fucking special it is to be able to feel a past. smell it. converse with it. have it. but to have the benefit of a future, its our internal health plan. chew on bits of ice as well, very uplifting and constructive-but socially annoying. i enjoy it during large group meetings, and dealing with the homeless. i miss our high school car rides.” -Alissa Rogers Today would have been my friend Alissa’s 40th birthday. I’m sitting in Hawaii looking at the water and my face is wet as I think about Alissa and my thoughts drift to my sister Brittany, gone now 13 years herself. I think about my friends who recently lost siblings. I think about how I wouldn’t be sitting here in fucking Hawaii had it not been for these folks who helped shape me into the pear shaped individual I am today. Here’s something I wrote when Alissa passed some years back. I miss her and think of her often. This was written in grief, and a first draft was posted. It desperately needs to be edited, but I just can’t stop crying when I read this to make the fixes…. So please forgive all the grammatical errors and such… —– Alissa Rogers was the first woman who let me touch her boobs. She was wearing these fake silicon pads you put into your bra and wanted me to feel them too see if they were real. Years later she told me that was the night she wanted to take my virginity, but I was too dumb to make a move. Alissa Rogers is the reason I am the man I am today. Alissa Rogers passed away today. I’m sitting here trying to figure out what to write about that wild, wonderful and obnoxious woman. I’ve been sitting here in silence for the last 15 minutes trying to find the right words when it dawns on me, had she been here she would have said something wildly inappropriate to break the tension. She would have made me and every one else laugh. She was fierce. She was hilarious. She was my friend. I went to Byrd High school in Shreveport, Louisiana with Alissa and I fucking hated her. She was everything I wasn’t. She was loud, obnoxious and loved attention. Of course I would fall in love with her. It happened in a dream. I had seen her out and about at places like the Karma Cup coffee house or St Vincent Mall, but I didn’t know her. Then she showed up in a dream of mine. More like invaded it. That was more her style. It wasn’t a sexual dream, it was just a dream where this larger than life girl played a part in. Somewhere a switch in my head turned my hatred into adoration. I was shy and awkward. I didn’t know how to approach her or become her friend, but fate intervened as during those late nights loitering at the Karma Cup, my best friend Michael Burnley ended up dating Alissa’s friend Jessica. As Michael and Jessica grew closer, so did Alissa and I. All these years later, I’m pretty sure the only reason we hung out in High School was because I had a car. She knew I loved her, and I would drive her anywhere. I did it gladly, just to be next to and a part of that thing that she was. She became my partner in Crime. I’d drive her to school everyday. I’d drive her around Shreveport. We’d drive to Dallas, Houston, Longview, or Tyler, Texas to see Punk Rock bands play. It was one of those days where I was driving Alissa around. We were going to go hang out with her new boyfriend Joe. I was jealous, but I was blindly in love and would do anything for her. It was on this day, my life changed for the better. We drove across the bridge into Bossier City, to a magical place called Books A Millions. It was big box book store with a gigantic parking lot, just blocks away from the mall. All the cool kids hung out in that parking lot of weekend nights. There at Books a Million, on that faithful day, We sat down at a patio table and I met Joe Upton and his friends. I remember sitting down at the table not knowing a single person at the table. I was shy. I was quiet. I was nervous and scared. Normally I would not have said a god damned thing, but something happened that day, because I reached out my hand to the person sitting on my right. I introduced myself to the guy sitting next to me. That person was Matt Crowson. Matt has become someone I’ll never be able to get rid of. Also sitting at that table were two other very important people in my adolescence, Joe & Ivy Woods It was through that group of Alissa, Matt, Joe, Ivy and later on Jason Gay; that I would find my courage. I would find my inspiration. I would find the beginnings of the path that has led me here. I had always wanted to start an underground fanzine, and guess what? Joe and Jason had one. I started interviewing bands for Joe and Jason’s KGB magazine. Alissa was a big part of pushing me to becoming more comfortable with myself. She used her powers of persuasiveness to help push me down the road I needed to be on. Fast forward a few years later and it was New Years Eve of 2001. Alissa had just returned to Shreveport after living in Denver for years. It was the first time in my entire life that it had snowed in Shreveport. I spent that evening hanging out with Alissa driving in the ice and

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