Houston, we have a problem...Life on Mars looks eerily familiar.

When this little blogging experiment began I promised myself two things: (1) This would never become a chat-room therapy session, it would remain anecdotal.  (2) I would only post when I had a really good story.  Yes, well....instead it has occasionally digressed into pseudo-philosophical musings of the superficial type or bitter diatribes against such sickeningly prevalent celebrations as Valentine's Day.......(Sorry, still trying to suppress the gag reflex on that one......)  Hopefully, however, I have heretofore refrained from complaining (too much).  Yep, well, never too late to try something new, is it?  Only being facetious (somewhat.....).  Although I earnestly (and there is an importance to being earnest, is there not? Sorry, I've been reading Oscar Wilde to cheer myself up) hope this post will not be misconstrued as complaining, there does need to be some explanation for the remainder to be in any way slightly coherent.  (And hopefully it actually will be coherent; this whole thing is a bit extemporaneous, we'll see how it turns out.)  Here's the story-I recently graduated from college.  Good job, right?  Nope, no job, actually.  Anywhere.  So much for being of Irish descent.  I got the temper and pale skin but none of the luck.  I pick an economy nearly comparable to that during the Great Depression in which to graduate from college.  My timing has always been impeccable.  The idea of grad-school has always hovered around the fringes of possibilities considered; yet, the GRE still must be surmounted.  Grad-school costs more money.  Then there is always the question of, "Can I really do this?  Could I hack it, or would it hack me?"  Should I concentrate on getting into grad-school or spend that time looking for a non-existent job?  Stay here or leave?  If I leave, go where?  How little can a human being really live on without starving?  Etc., etc. The carnival of frustration has arrived and is setting up its pretty tri-colored tent in my backyard; incidentally, there seems to be a plethora of booths set up devoted to the art of defeatism (minus the acceptance of defeat), skepticism, and self-doubt.


     So, as always, books have become the life-boats on the doomed Titanic.  I've returned to my favorites, books and authors, and, although I've read them all before, they somehow still offer solace and a few minutes worth of sanity.  For instance, in Norman Maclean's A  River Runs Through It, there was one line in particular which offered a bit of respite from my mental version of an old LP.  Maclean says, "That's how you know when you have thought too much-when you become a dialogue between You'll probably lose and You're sure to lose."  The circumstance to which he was directly referring was a fishing trip, but it still has quite a nice ring to it, don't you think?  I've suddenly become like Rain Man when he would start quoting "Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third" every time his delicate internal balance became upset.  (Except mine is the much less amusing Norman Maclean version.)  Next was, of course, the venerable C.S. Lewis.  In Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis delves into many philosophical debates through the character of Ransom, all of which are thoroughly interesting. One of my new favorite lines, though is a statement that was spoken to Ransom just before he was being sent back to his own world.  Ransom spent the entire novel trying to outrun something which he eventually realized, after it occurred, was both inevitable and in his best interest.  As he was departing, he was told, "You are guilty of no evil, Ransom, except a little fearfulness.  For that, the journey you go on is your pain, and perhaps your cure: for you must be either mad or brave before it is ended." 


       Add that to my Rain Man mantra.  It's a good reminder-circumstances only dictate circumstances, not an individual's reaction within the circumstances.  The interesting thing?  My Rain Man mantra comes from authors whose works often resulted from rather unhappy circumstances of their own.  Maclean lost a beloved brother, Lewis had a rather unhappy childhood-he lost his mother at a young age, resulting in a rather difficult relationship between he and his father. His brief time in the trenches in the Great War remained with him throughout his life, he never gained the position he wished in the academic world, he lost the wife he married late in life after only a short marriage, his brother required some attention as he had a problem with alcohol, etc. Life wasn't Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It to Beaver.  It seems that this is the case with many of my favorite authors and artists.  Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, lost his mother at five years old, and his father abandoned the family, dying an alcoholic in France.  The uncle into whose family he and his siblings were adopted refused to send Grahame to Oxford, which was the desire of his heart.  Instead he was exiled to the Bank of England.  His wife did not supply conditions in which a happy marriage could thrive and their one son was partially blind; the son was killed by a train, some say in an act of suicide.  J.M. Barrie led a life which vacillated between imaginative euphoria and depression.  Charles Dickens led a very unfortunate childhood and adulthood did not improve; he and his wife, long estranged eventually separated.  Louisa May Alcott began to write in earnest to support a destitute family.  Samuel Clemens' father died, leaving the family rather struggling financially.  Later in life his beloved wife died of heart failure, a genetic failing which also claimed the life of his daughter only days after her return from a mental institution.  Another daughter died of meningitis, while he and his wife early in their marriage lost an infant son. 


    Okay, if you've been able to drudge through all of that depressing list of authors and events, let me explain my reasons for asking you to endure.  Here's the thing-these people took very unhappy circumstances and used them to their advantage.  Pain became a source and incentive for creativity.  Instead of sinking beneath the weight of circumstances they used those circumstances to instead create.  To improve a world in which they had not exactly experienced total bliss, they offered their suffering in the form of improved imagination and creativity.  I suppose my point is this: I could cry and complain (which I have done, sorry for that), allow a great 'weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth,' but what good would that do me or anyone else?  None, that's how much.  In other words, suck it up, get over it, and use the opportunity of wanting to get away from your own reality by trying to improve someone else's.  Okay, the free therapy is finally all done.  Thanks to all those who made it this far!  Now, what to do where?