Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me

Ali still had that frozen expression on his face. “No one says thank you, so the matches are same.” “Really …?” “Things change,” Ali said with not a hint of regret or emotion. “Things change.”

O no longer wants any visitors to the apartment unless he expressly invites them: “I don’t have time to be bored!”

But what to do, where to, next? To be a New Yorker is one thing, but to decide consciously to stay, to live out one’s life here? That’s another. I wasn’t sure I had what it takes.

I had visited New York many times over the years but living here, as I soon discovered, is a whole different ballgame.

Ali nodded. “Have the sleep, the eat …” He shrugged. “But you can’t plan. Something might happen. The day off doesn’t come, then what? Everything bad. You plan the day on the day,” Ali said with real clarity, force. “Not before.”

I remember how Wendy once told me she loved New York so much she couldn’t bear the thought of it going on without her. It seemed like both the saddest and the most romantic thing one could possibly say—sad because New York can never return the sentiment, and sad because it’s the kind of thing said more often about a romantic love—husband, wife, gir