In which I share a frog

(No. 147) Mental illness or divine connection? 66 or 46? Sleep regularity or sleep duration? Aretha or Frankie? Here is the dialectic of our lives.

Think about it.

I moved to New York City in 1985, when gun violence and street crime seemed out of control. I’ll never forget seeing a bloody-faced man sitting on a blanket in the stairwell of the West Fourth Street subway station, a syringe in hand. He asked for money from everyone who passed. The city has had its up and downs ever since, with AIDS, the crack epidemic, predatory capitalists (a permanent issue), high costs and anything else you can think of. But right now, in 2024, the city —- or at least my neighborhood — is witness to a huge increase in seemingly mentally ill people. At almost any time of day you’ll see people smoking meth in public, or dancing to music that exists only within their brains. I hesitate to offer this diagnosis of mental illness. But I see people behaving in anti-social and nonsensical ways, day after day. There is no help. Or no help is wanted. Either way, there are a lot of ill people acting out on our stoops, sidewalks and subways.

I’ve always wondered if some of the more eccentric people on the streets of New York and elsewhere might be mystics, rather than mentally ill. Perhaps they have shed their egos in ways that normies can’t understand. Today, I read that, actually, Sufi mysticism is believed to be helpful for mentally ill people, especially in countries where there is no mental health care system. I suppose it depends on our definitions of “normal.” Who knows. I’m rambling here, but I’m troubled by the disconnection between “polite” society and the society of our streets. Crime is down, but social dislocation, inexplicable behavior, and lack of housing are all up. Given the high numbers of ill people on our streets, at times it is hard to not latch onto to any intervention — prayer and meditation — that even suggests it might help. Depending on the day, I’m grasping for ways to fix these serious problems, when I’m not actively trying to avoid them altogether. My feelings are inconsistent.

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Did you know that some experts believe that sleep regularity — going to bed at the same time each night, for instance — is more important to health than how long you sleep? I try to have a regular bedtime, a one hour window between 10 and 11 pm. It’s not unusual for me to stretch that to 12, but rarely beyond. The time of my awakening is always a mystery until it happens, somewhere between 3:30 and 9 am.

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I never thought of myself as a traditionalist, but I believe that older men who have been President of the United States should wear ties at fund raisers in Manhattan. These guys look like they were dressed by AI. Terrible. Don’t bother turning up the sound. It’s just “Born to Run,” again, by that poet of fakery, The Boss. (I can hear readers unsubscribing en masse.) Also, what if Hillary had earned the right to be on this stage. What would the dynamic have been? I bet she would have worn an Hermes scarf, and that Bill would have taken a step back.

@saribethroseThe 3 Presidents in NYC tonight @Biden-Harris HQ

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Let’s see. I recently turned 66, which is the new 46, right? Except for those 20 years between 46 and 66 in which I gained some weight, lost skin tone, experienced many stressors, and had one big ol’ back surgery. Yet still, I persist. I probably work harder at being healthy these days than at any other time in my life, despite getting fewer results than ever before. But That’s Life, a phrase that led me to this video, in which Frankie Valli and Smokey Robinson illustrate how princes can easily be upstaged by the queen.

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