I am trying to write about having a brain tumor and being alone. I would rather be cleaning. An icy-sidewalk night at the corner of Broadway and 79th, and I forgot what day it was. And then I could not bring to mind what month it was. What year. What time of day. I asked my mind to bring me back to the date. And then by accident I bumped into our homeless neighbor who collects for God’s Love We Deliver. His long gray dreads spun out as he steadied himself.

My first real job when I moved to Manhattan was in a mental hospital. I did television. I was in charge of running the video studio, an insulated box once used for detecting electrical actions in the brain. This box looked like a refrigerator where you would find big hunks of meat, except it was lined in maple veneer and had a faded rose carpet. It was in the third sub-basement of an ivy-covered building on the river.