April 19: Ruining Things, Depressive, Robert Frost and P.O.E.T.S. Day

After I'd told her I had to meet somebody, I didn't have any goddam choice except to leave.  I couldn't even stick around to hear old Ernie play something halfway decent.  But I certainly wasn't going to sit down at a table with old Lillian Simmons and that Navy guy and be bored to death.  So I left.  It made me mad, though, when I was getting my coat.  People are always ruining things for you.

Holden could be labeled a depressive.  Through most of The Catcher in the Rye, he's saying things like "People are always ruining things for you."  As I've pointed out before, his tale is not a happy one.  Brother dead from leukemia.  Kicked out of school.  Afraid to go home.  Running out of money.  Holden has all the makings of a good Bob Dylan song, or Willie Nelson (minus the pickup truck, hound dog, and pot).  Holden simply isn't having a good time.

I'm reading a biography of Robert Frost at the moment.  Jay Parini, the author, uses one word more than any other to describe him:  "depressive."  Frost came to his dark nature naturally.  His father was an unstable figure, most likely suffering from at least depression, if not bipolar disorder.  Frost himself comes off as violently moody in the book, prone to bouts of severe depression.  He was not an easy person to be around.

This past week, I have not been an easy person to be around, either.  My recent blog posts are a testament to that.  I don't even want to be around myself right now.  I wonder if that's a writer's normal nature.  So many biographies I've read of famous authors involve some form of mental illness--depression or bipolar disorder at the very least.  That doesn't provide me much comfort.  Especially because so many of these writers ended up committing suicide.  Anne Sexton.  John Berryman.  Sylvia Plath.  Virginia Woolf.  Ernest Hemingway.  Emily Dickinson didn't commit suicide, but she certainly suffered from mental illness.  Robert Frost didn't commit suicide, either, but most of his best poems are grounded in very dark soil.

I have been treading the same Frostian ground for the last few days.  Bob felt trapped at points in his life, going down roads he didn't want to travel.  That's where I find myself right now.  I know where I want to go.  I can see the village in the distance.  But, on this P.O.E.T. Day, I have miles to go before I sleep, if you get my meaning.  Miles to go before I sleep. 

That line has always haunted Saint Marty.

I should tattoo it on my ass...