A "celebration of what [writer and photographer] Bill Hayes calls 'the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected' of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late [neurologist] Oliver Sacks"--Amazon.com.

Part I: Insomniac City -- Insomniac City -- Sleep: loss -- Black crow -- O and I -- On becoming a New Yorker -- Subway Lifer -- The summer Michael Jackson dies -- A fisherman on the subway -- A poem written on the stars -- The moving man -- For the skateboarders -- Part II: On being not dead -- The thank-you man -- The same taxi twice -- The weeping man -- On being not dead -- On a typewriter -- At the skateboard park -- A woman who knew her way -- Driving a supermodel -- Lessons from the smoke shop -- A year in trees -- On Father's Day -- Part III: How New York breaks your heart -- My afternoon with Ilona -- His name is Raheem -- A Monet of one's own -- But -- Everything that I don't have -- A pencil sharpener -- Home -- Postscript.