April 1993

The spring of 1993, April and May and half of June, was a strange time in my life. For the first time I was struggling with serious stress and depression, yet I was oddly excited and free. Strange.

Why so?

Well, for the first time ever I was both single and living alone. The whole music thing I was into for so long had derailed and stalled, and I wasn’t friends anymore with a lot of those people. I think I only had two, maybe three friends at the time, though I didn’t see much of them that spring. I was depressed because of the recent breakup of a three-year relationship, and I was stressed because I had just resumed attending college full-time, now at Seton Hall, while maintaining my full-time day job.

Why the odd excitement and sense of freedom?

Two reasons. First, I was living in an awesome apartment. Sure, it was tiny, hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, but it was isolated and had a lot of character. I really liked that isolation part. Second, for the first time in three years I was free to do whatever I wanted, and what I wanted at that moment in my life was to watch movies. Deep, thoughtful movies. Visceral, wrenching movies. Films I couldn’t and didn’t watch because my significant other – as well as the groupthink I was subjected to – was not so much interested in them.

Those dozen weekends that spring I must have watched twenty-five or thirty movies. Movies because I didn’t have much time to read since I was back at school and busy with homework and projects and reports and blah blah blah. So Saturdays and Sundays were movie night for me, and me alone. I turned my bedroom into my home theater. I wasn’t drinking, but I was smoking, and I remember lounging comfortably on the tiled floor against a pillow, watching my VCR through a 42-inch television on wheels, ash tray, pack of butts, and lighter at my side. Good times.

The first flick I watched was Goodfellas. Wow. The “ceremony” to make Joe Pesci a made man … jaw-dropping. The “Do you think I’m a clown?” scene. Now I knew what my friends were talking about two years back.

Then a succession of (mostly) violent, controversial, deep, and/or philosophical flicks followed. There was no plan, really. I’d just go in to my local video store and, more often than not, completely avoid the New Releases shelves and head for the Drama section. Whatever jumped out at me, whatever was gritty and challenging, was what I rented. In no particular order, I watched, all for the first time:

Unforgiven
The Deer Hunter
Revolution
The Razor’s Edge (1946, with Tyrone Power)
The Razor’s Edge (1984, with Bill Murray)
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Mission
Raging Bull
Lawrence of Arabia
Patton
Mean Streets
Bad Lieutenant
Glengarry Glen Ross
Shadowlands
The Remains of the Day
The China Syndrome
JFK
Gandhi
Agnes of God
The Last of the Mohicans
Equus
The Border
Chinatown

There are probably others; probably something important and significant I forgot – it was seventeen years ago. But I still can vividly recall watching each and every one of them, and loving them all, even the ones that now, retroactively, offend my morality or political views. The only bad one of the bunch was Revolution, with Al Pacino, because he had the worst accent (German? Austrian? Scottish?) I’ve ever heard an actor attempt. Also, the story itself was weak and poorly executed, especially contrasted with Mohicans.

Now, I was very busy at this period of my life: 40 hours of work plus 5 college courses that I commuted to three days a week. The only book I read was W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, about an idealistic young man seeking something transcendent after a near-death experience in World War I, while his friend goes on to disaffected wealth in the business world. The man’s experiences take him to India and the Himalayas, studying the Upanishads and Buddhism, and eventually he comes full circle back to England.

I was drawn to the novel because I saw myself in the main character, albeit with only a fraction of his courage and conviction, but I was (and still am) a seeker myself. I bought and read the Upanishads, I studied Buddhism half-heartedly off and on for the decade of the 90s, until I came full-circle back to Catholicism around 2001 or so (remember I had my main “conversion” experience Easter of 1992). I’m not interested in re-reading Maugham’s book, but it was valuable to me back then as a guide, as I had no one to share or help me out with my internal quest.

The Razor’s Edge led me to explore Hinduism in the summer of 1993, as I was studying physics at Seton Hall. I managed to read a few books and purchase a few slim paperbacks, and though I became enchanted with the culture and land of India, I knew quickly I was no Hindu. I moved on to Taoism and Buddhism, especially Zen, for the remainder of the decade. That fascinated me: true Buddhism, true Zen, not the trendy distilled Hollywood Buddhism and Zen Americans are exposed to. And like all things true, it is difficult, incredibly difficult for us Americanos. Meditation was difficult, though attractive and enticing. Zen was maddeningly addictive. I had to solve it! And by solving it, I mean, simply, understanding it. I loved the koans, the stories of the Patriarchs, the pure dynamic of the disciple and the master. I still do.

During this period I also began my love-hate affair with philosophy. In the summer of 1993 I bought Betrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, and read large chunks of it, mostly in the bathtub. It took me a few years to realize I was feeding myself Russell’s own biases, and not a true history of Western Philosophy. But I learned enough to know who said what and who thought what and what the what they said and thought was. (Best sentence I ever wrote!) I read bits and pieces of bought used philosophy books over the next decade. Sometime last year I threw my hands up and decided the only philosophy worthy of study, for me, would be that of Thomas Aquinas.

Now, seventeen years later, I regard the spring of 1993 as the trunk which allowed me to branch out into several limbs of exploration. Some are low on the tree, spread out and stopped growing. Others grew outward and upward, sending out shoots and smaller branches in other directions. A few are still sprouting, high up on the tree. What started as the freedom to explore ideas, in movies, transformed itself into a seeking through books, which continues to this day.

Yeah, there was misery back then, more than my fair share, though I ’spose everyone goes through such periods now and again in their lives. But I really only see the bright spots when I think back to April of 1993.