A budding artist comes to New York City in 1980 after having just-graduated at 19. Upon arriving and eventually getting an art-delivery job in the then-thriving SoHo art-district, he goes-on to live-in and simultaneously renovate his own East Village tenement apartment from scratch. Rather-than living Thoreau-like on Walden-Pond, life takes-on a "Separate Reality" of "Life During Wartime" after he leaves his SoHo crating-shop/art-delivery job and becomes engrossed with East Village Landlords, Landlord-Tenant Court, block-controlling drug-dealers, and a host of survivalist-characters whose personalities determine who they are, or are derived from how they live. Tumultuous borderline-survival in the East Village takes its toll and to exit his Dante's Inferno-like environment - into Purgatory and hopefully Paradise - he opts to work on an even more promising up-and-coming Wall Street career, where his creative-side again allows him to deal with an entirely new spectrum of characters. His aesthetic temperament moves him forward as a disparate-careerist amidst the whirlwind of late 1980s M & A takeovers. Comparisons are made as to how what started in the 80's may have gotten us here in 2010 and how focusing on what matters most - healthy-relationships as opposed to exploitative ones - might get us out.