In September, 1991, I showed up at a realtor’s office in Brooklyn. The borough was to be my home for the next 18 years, but it was virgin ground to me then. I had graduated from college in June. After a summer at home and a trip to Europe with my girlfriend, I had come to start my new life, my New York City life. Some friends had found an apartment in the cute-sounding neighborhood of “Park Slope”. I was the first to arrive.
A week later I started a job as a paralegal at Wilkie Farr & Gallagher. The office was on the 51st floor of the Citicorp Building. Why the powers-that-be there decided to give me a job like that is a mystery on the level of Stonehenge, and they would quickly come to regret it. After six miserable weeks, I quit.
I was on my own. I had a small sum of money left me by my grandmother so I didn’t have to work right away. The organizing principle of my entire life, school, was gone. What to do? Totally adrift, I did what I always did when I felt lost - I went to the movies.
I had no way of knowing it then, but I had chosen a great time to be an unemployed cinephile in New York. Netflix and digital streaming were far off in the distance, and New York still had a small but thriving group of revival theatres. So each Wednesday I would get my New Yorker and take it to the gym. While I was on the treadmill I would look at the capsule review section, and plan my week.
There’s something almost physical for me when I encounter a great work of art. I remember the room where I finished reading The Great Gatsby (my parent’s bedroom). I remember the light that came in through the classroom windows when my college seminar first discussed Kafka’s The Trial (late afternoon, fading sunlight).
And I remember, during those chaotic, wonderful/horrible months in 1991 and 1992, each occasion when I saw some of the greatest films I have ever seen.
I saw Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller at the 8th Street Playhouse (it was dark and rainy when I emerged). I saw Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game at Theatre 80 St. Marks (a film student in black peeled an apple in front of me). I saw Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc at MoMA (packed to the gills, sitting on bench seats in the back). I saw Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard at the Public Theatre (blinding summer sunlight when I came out).
The 22 year old me would be astonished to hear it, but I now remember that time with great fondness. It’s not just rose-colored glasses, I think. I remember very clearly how unhappy I was then. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted, and was unable to live gracefully in this lack of knowledge. Mostly, I remember being worried all the time.
So why do I look back at that time with such gratitude?
Perhaps it is the stark contrast with how my life is now. In my life now, virtually every moment is spoken for. After working, spending time with my family, and writing, I am spent. Unstructured time is almost unknown to me; indeed, it is so unfamiliar as to be almost unwelcome.
This discomfort with free time has had some unpleasant side effects. I have, on occasion, puffed myself up with pride at all I am able to accomplish and been dismissive of other people’s more relaxed schedules. But what, really, is the virtue of being constantly busy?
Make no mistake – I am very happy with the choices I made. My life, by virtually any standard, is blessed. And I certainly have no desire to be in my twenties again, when I felt lost all the time. What’s changed, I guess, is how I view that time. I used to look back at that boy who idled away his afternoons sneaking off to the movies with something like contempt. Now I think it’s one of the best things I ever did.
