In My Mind's Eye

After my 41^st birthday bash at Fandom Café with friends from the New Worlds Alliance and the BigSkyMind family (more details in my next blog),got home at 4AM after dropping off a friend home.Woke up at 9AM and was pondering the meaning of this crossroad in my mid life.Four decades and I’m still struggling in real life.

So as a pick me up,I decided to watch St.Elmo’s Fire-the first movie that introduced the Brat Pack. Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy (one of my fave actresses and crushes in the early 80s),Emilio Estevez, Andrew McCarthy, Robe Lowe, Mare Winningham and a very young Demi Moore.

The story is about a group of seven friends four months after graduating from college and were hit by the realization that all the education they got is never enough to prepare them for the reality of  life out in the world. Kirby Keger (Emilio Estevez) is a waiter at St. Elmo's Bar with hopes of becoming a lawyer and lives with his former college friend Kevin Dolenz. He has developed an obsession with a woman doctor named Dale Biberman(Andie Mcdowell) he met in college after a recent encounter with her, and is willing to do anything to impress her, including changing his career. Billy Hicks (Rob Lowe) is the frat boy of the group. Billy has a problem in keeping his jobs but has a great talent for playing the saxophone. He is also a reluctant husband and father but rarely goes home to sleep. He misses college days and feels lost in the after-college work life. Along with the problems in his marriage, he's a wild guy and a ladies' man. Kevin Dolenz (Andrew McCarthy)  is a writer with emotional issues whom hasn’t had a relationship in years and is secretly in love with Alec’s girlfiend, Leslie, for years. His writing job only allows him to write obituaries, but he's searching for the meaning of life and is working hard towards writing an article about it. He rooms with his pal Kirby. Jules Jacoby (Demi Moore) is the party girl of the group, who lives an extravagant and wild lifestyle even if it’s beyond her means. Jules used to be Leslie’s roommate and is still her best friend. She has a very fancy, highly decorated apartment and works in banking. She loves a good time, but she's also looking for the love she struggled to find growing up; her father is emotionally distant and he's had many wives. She's also feeling a lot of pressures to take care of a family financial issue (her "stepmonster" as she calls her, who was cruel to her as a child, is terminally ill) and to handle her own finances after a crisis happens in her life. Alec Newbury (Judd Nelson) is the success story of the gang. A ruthless, ambitious yuppie and young Democrat, Alec is pursuing a career in politics and desperate to marry Leslie, saying to Kevin that marriage is the only thing he needs to stop his philandering ways. Everyone's surprised when he starts working for a Republican senator. He and Leslie just moved in together and is still fixing their place up. He sees Leslie as someone who can help him get where he wants to go.Leslie Hunter (Ally Sheedy) is Alec's girlfriend who wanted to pursue a career as an architect before marrying and having children. She's a romantic, and also seems to be trying to get more of a sense of who she is before sharing her life completely with a man; possibly in order to not lose her sense of self later. She lives with Alec, but is starting to feel doubts about her relationship with him.Wendy Beamish (Mare Winningham) is a Jewish girl from a wealthy family who owns a greeting card empire. The innocent in the group, Wendy’s also a painfully shy virgin who devotes her life to helping others through her job in Social Services. Wendy is trying to break away from her family's overprotectiveness, move out on her own, and assert her independence, particularly from her father, who is pressuring her to marry the man of his choice. She, however, is in love with Billy Hicks, whom she knows her father will never consider suitable for her.

Here we see seven young people finding out the hard way that life is not the colorful picture perfect world as we believed it to be. Life is all about the harsh realities, how it hits you in the gut yet you got to roll with the punches.After the film, I felt nostalgic and it gave me back the focus on what life stands for. Survive the day, seize the moment then sit down and appreciate on what we have accomplished now. Life is a journey of hardships and pain. It is also the living album the will always remind us of our joys,happiness and all the great things we came across in this journey. It’s not about how hard we get knocked down , it’s all about how we take the hits and keep moving forward.

“Growing up, you don't see the writing on the wall

Passing by, moving straight ahead, you knew it all

But maybe sometime if you feel the pain

You'll find you're all alone, everything has changed

Play the game, you know you can't quit until it's won

Soldier on, only you can do what must be done

You know in some way you're a lot like me

You're just a prisoner and you're tryin' to break free

I can see a new horizon underneath the blazing sky

I'll be where the eagle's flying higher and higher

Gonna be your man in motion, all I need is a pair of wheels

Take me where my future's lyin', St. Elmo's Fire “

-St.Elmo’s Fire ( Man in Motion) by John Parr