The Mad Hatter of Market Street

Goya's The Madhouse

Every week, I bike through the worst neighborhood of San Francisco and then get into the manual elevator at the historic, decaying building that holds my ballet studio. There, I spend a few minutes with the operator who is clearly and visibly insane. I enter some monologue that has been running for a long time. It doesn't necessarily involve you, it’s just whatever is on his mind: the need to go with the flow, the warranty on his phone, the changes these days, the price of apples, vaccines, the illuminati, that you've gotta watch out in this neighborhood. There is always a sense of mysterious forces at work on him and in the world. He’s letting you in on it. At first, I wondered each time whether we would plunge to our deaths. One typically does not want the operator of heavy machinery to seem deeply disconnected from the world. But so far, he has simply ferried me up and down. And as time went on, I found him to be a non-threatening then even a familiar and comforting presence. He reminds me of the Mad Hatter, and sometimes even has a beard dyed a bright color. He calls me "Mary Poppins." I don't remember why.

I've always been surprisingly comfortable with crazy people. Some people might object to that word, but I don't mean people that have the more widely prevalent levels of depression or anxiety, who see a counselor or take some SSRI. I'm talking about people who have a somewhat extreme version of either schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or something in that family. People who fairly frequently do not occupy the same reality as the rest of us. 

This comfort might be in my blood. My dad has always been dispositionally friendly and open to strangers of all stripes. He has a higher than average frequency of interactions with the mentally unusual. He regularly strikes up conversation with a group of adults with mental disabilities who frequent one of his favorite book shops. He sits down beside the solemn loners at the bar. I remember him telling me a story about an old woman that he had been tasked with taking care of during college. She likely had advanced dementia and she would frequently make inscrutable statements. Once she pointed at his sweater and said, "That's my dog." He replied, unfazed, “No Myrtle, that’s my sweater.” And at one point, she said, "They are gone." And he said, "Who is gone? Where?" And she pointed and she said, "Up, up into the dark." He remembers these statements all these years later because they are something like a Zen koan. They contain a mystery or a riddle, and perhaps even some valuable insight that we, after all these years, still fail to grasp. 

This comfort may have also come from growing up in Portland, which like San Francisco, has a fairly high number of homeless people, many of whom are addicts or mentally ill. I rode the public bus alone since 5th grade to my grade school downtown. There, I'd frequently come into contact with the unhinged, and came to feel more compassion than fear.

I volunteered during high school at both a soup kitchen that served primarily homeless men, and at a shelter that gave toiletries, food, and other hygiene services to women who were impoverished, addicted, prostitutes, mentally ill, or a combination of all. The best volunteers settled in among their guests like they were one of them, they had a low and soothing voice, they met them as peers wherever they were. When things escalated, they switched to a tone somewhere between what you would use with a nervous racehorse and that of a grade school teacher: soothing but firm, not threatening, but not one to be trifled with. Sometimes, when needed, I can re-find that tone. 

One memory from that time was bringing out the needle return box from the shelter to the needle return van. I didn’t introduce myself as a volunteer because I thought it would be obvious, but clearly my high school fashion choices were questionable because they took my information like a regular visitor. The sheer look of disgust and disappointment when I gave my age was searing. I remember thinking, “If these were my needles, I’m not sure I would bring them to you if it meant getting looked at like that.” 

I'm not religious, but I am very near to that. And when I'm with these people, I feel some sense of ministerial duty. My little brother led his college’s Jewish student union, and it turned out that that didn't just involve getting the ingredients for latkes. It also involved caring for his flock. And so he took care of the homesick Jews, the drunk for the first time Jews, the mentally ill Jews. He got messages from mothers asking him to help their children find friends. He cleaned up vomit. He drove people home. He counseled people through breakups. When I'm in these situations, I strive to have even a scrap of his calm and patience.

On my journey to and from ballet, I am doing some tiny, tiny piece of duty. I am there witnessing lives that could have been my own. I am seeing what is on the other side of a role of the mental dice. I know this is possible, because I have seen it happen: My first love had a mental break. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, and a large part because of the arbitrariness, the contingency -- there had been no way to predict it and there had been little warning. And so I know how possible it is for someone to leave this realm and enter somewhere else, and how much they deserve kindness as they wander through that dark.

San Francisco contains a startling amount of human suffering on display in its civic spaces. On my way to ballet, I pass people in rags. Men that look like lepers. Men swaying, lurching, limping. Dirty blankets wrapped around bodies that are likely sleeping but could be dead. Bare feet, sores, wailing people, feces on the street, people actively using drugs or craving for drugs. It is medieval. It is the oldest sight of a city, and a persistent reminder that we have not escaped our past. This could be Greece in 200, London in 1500. It is also here, now. It is always shocking to see these people in a city of such extreme wealth -- though I am not naive enough to think that money alone can fix this. It is difficult. Likely any fix involves some amount of coercion under the law -- even if that coercion is simply to force people to get off drugs and stay that way, or try to hold down some employment, or go to counseling or various things in that direction. If you put someone who is addicted or mentally ill into a house you solve one of their problems, a large one, but leave many others unattended, and the situation will likely deteriorate again. And mostly for the better, we are uncomfortable with coercion in our present system. 

At my ballet class a few weeks ago, we were stretching after class, when a girl wandered in and confronted us over an imagined slight. She said, "Do you have a problem with me? Let's all just be adults here. I'm just here to dance. People think I'm a harmful person, but I'm not a harmful person. What have I done? Do you have a problem with me?” The teacher told us later that she had had an accident where she'd hit her head. We sat there fairly calm. We continued stretching. Finally, one of us said, "No. We're fine with you." And she stormed out. I said, "Just another one." And they knew what I meant. I said, "It's like Alice in Wonderland here." And they agreed.

In situations like this, I feel a deep sadness for them being in their own reality, unable to leave it and unable to bring anyone else fully in. It is much better to meet those who are detached from reality but are not angry or paranoid. They are simply somewhere else, such as my elevator operator. 

It helps to experience them like a mythical being: a sage, a sphinx, a gnome, and what they say may contain some scrap of truth. The same sort of insight that people strive to find through mystic experiences or drugs. Some alternate slant on the world. And in this spiritually impoverished world, robbed of all symbols, there is sometimes something special in that.

There is also something about a rawer connection with the world, a less mediated one. These people seem more free to express what they actually think, what they actually feel. Most interactions I witness seem mannered and constrained, people distant from their own emotions, desires, and beliefs, and in some odd way, it can be refreshing to interact with someone that seems much more alive. 

At ballet, no one there knows what I do. If they asked, I would dodge. In this place, I do not want to wear my extraordinary luck visibly. I am an earlier self, perhaps a more essential one. I am the girl from the homeless shelter, from the women's shelter. I am my brother's sister. I am on my way to 5th grade on the public bus.

After ballet ends, I prepare to wheel my bike out onto the street. The operator watches a barefoot man race back and forth down the block screaming. He tells me: “He’s on those NASA drugs. That real strong stuff. The government has been giving it out.” I nod solemnly, and thank him for the ride. “I’ll see you next week.”