Narrator: "I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life." This profound statement from the brilliant neurologist Oliver Sacks serves as the guiding principle for a story about love, loss, and rebirth in the city that never sleeps. What happens when a man, shattered by the sudden death of his partner of sixteen years, decides to start over not by seeking peace and quiet, but by plunging himself into the heart of New York City? He sheds his past, arrives with almost nothing, and finds a tiny apartment where the sound of laughter from a restaurant six floors below rises to meet his own insomnia. This journey of healing and rediscovery is chronicled in Bill Hayes's poignant memoir, Insomniac City. It’s a book that explores how a city can become a mirror for the soul and how love can find you in the most unexpected of circumstances, at any stage of life.

Narrator: After the sudden cardiac arrest of his partner, Steve, Bill Hayes is left in a state of profound, disorienting grief, an experience he describes as being like a brain injury. To escape the ghosts of his life in San Francisco, he makes a radical choice: to move to New York City at age 48. He sees the city as a kindred spirit, a place diagnosed with a rare condition of perpetual sleeplessness and nervous energy that perfectly mirrors his own insomniac, racing mind. This move isn't just a change of scenery; it's a deliberate act of reinvention.

One night, walking home on Hudson Street, he spots a dollar bill on the sidewalk. As he bends to pick it up, a woman does the same, their heads nearly bumping. They laugh, and he offers it to her, but she insists he keep it. In a moment of inspiration, Hayes decides to leave the dollar for someone else, an act he sees as a metaphor for his own decision to "throw his life to the fates" by moving to New York. He hides and watches as a man with hunched shoulders and a troubled look—an "insomniac," Hayes intuits—finds the dollar, a small smile gracing his face. This small moment reinforces a lesson he's beginning to learn: in New York, kindness is repaid in unexpected ways, and the city and its people will take care of you. The city’s constant motion, its sleepless energy, and its anonymous acts of kindness become the very things that help him heal, proving that sometimes, the best cure for a broken heart is not quiet solitude, but the vibrant, chaotic pulse of life itself.

Narrator: Hayes arrives in New York with the preconceived notion that one doesn't come to the city for beauty. He believes it’s a place of noise, trash, and grit. That perception is shattered one Sunday morning on Sixth Avenue. Waiting for the light to change, he hears a low rumble he mistakes for snowplows, though it isn't winter. Suddenly, the avenue is flooded not with cars, but with a brigade of hundreds of boys on skateboards. They fill the street with whoops, hollers, and the sound of their wheels, waving their shirts like flags of an invading army. Hayes describes the scene as "the anarchy of pure joy." He and the other bystanders are left open-mouthed, clapping spontaneously as the wave of youthful energy disappears downtown. In that moment, he texts a friend a simple, powerful realization: "Beauty stops traffic."

This becomes a recurring theme. Hayes learns that beauty in New York often appears in "unbeautiful ways." He finds it in the raw, uninhibited joy of the skateboarders, and he finds it again in a chance re-encounter with a homeless poet named Wolf Song. Two years after their first meeting, they cross paths again. Wolf Song, wanting to write a poem for Hayes, finds a scrap of newspaper containing a "Sky Watch" column—a map of the constellations. Using a car hood as a desk, he painstakingly writes a poem over the star chart, a poignant verse about pain and the sky. The moment is so profound that both men are moved to tears. These experiences teach Hayes to look past the city's tough exterior and find the deep, often fleeting, moments of grace, art, and human connection that flourish in its most unexpected corners.

Narrator: The most transformative connection Hayes forges in New York is with the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, whom he refers to simply as "O." Their relationship begins not with a chance meeting on the street, but with a letter. Sacks writes to Hayes after reading his book, The Anatomist, sparking a correspondence. When they finally meet, Hayes is captivated by Sacks's brilliance, his boyish enthusiasm, and his profound shyness. There is a thirty-year age difference, and Sacks is a man uniquely disconnected from popular culture. The day after Michael Jackson’s death, he famously asks Hayes, "What is Michael Jackson?"

Their courtship is unconventional. Dates consist of long walks through botanical gardens where Sacks expounds on ferns, or visits to museums to discuss the periodic table of elements. Sacks reveals he has lived a "monk-like existence," not having been in a relationship or had sex in thirty-five years. Yet, a deep, intellectual, and tender love blossoms between them. It’s a bond built on shared curiosity, profound conversations, and a mutual adoration that transcends traditional expectations. In one journal entry, Hayes asks O what else he can do for him before bed. O’s simple, powerful reply is, "Exist." In O, Hayes finds not just a partner, but a new way of seeing the world, a new form of intimacy, and a profound companionship that helps him fully embrace his new life.

Narrator: The book's final section is a heartbreaking yet inspiring testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Nine years after surviving a rare eye cancer, Oliver Sacks is diagnosed with a recurrence. The cancer has metastasized to his liver, and the prognosis is a matter of months. In the face of this devastating news, Sacks’s reaction is one of remarkable calm and clarity. He tells his doctor he is not interested in prolonging life for its own sake, but in living the time he has left with purpose. He wants to write, think, see friends, and be with Billy.

That weekend, as they process the news, Sacks creates a list titled "eight and a half reasons to remain hopeful." The list includes having time to complete his life, the loving support of Billy and his friends, and even the recent legalization of medical marijuana. He then dictates his now-famous essay, "My Own Life," to Hayes, a powerful reflection on a life well-lived and the experience of facing death. In his final months, his love for life never wanes. He continues to find joy in intellectual discovery, exclaiming, "I say I love writing, but really it is thinking I love—that rush of thoughts—new connections in the brain being made." When a hospice nurse asks his wishes for how he would like to pass, his answer is clear and steady: "At home, with no pain or discomfort, and with my friends here." His journey demonstrates that even in the face of the ultimate heartbreak, life can be lived with immense grace, love, and an unwavering sense of purpose.

Narrator: Ultimately, Insomniac City reveals that the antidote to loss is not to retreat from life, but to engage with it more deeply. The book's most important takeaway is that meaning is forged in the act of paying attention—to the stranger on the subway, to the resilience of a city tree, to the way light hits a building, and to the profound love that can arrive when you least expect it. In the end, after all the grief and all the joy, Hayes is left with the same question that follows any great loss: What’s the point? Why go on? His conclusion is the book’s quiet, powerful heartbeat: "There is really only one answer: To be alive."

The book challenges us to look at our own lives, our own cities, with the same open-hearted curiosity. It asks: what unexpected beauty have you walked past today? What quiet connections are waiting to be made if you just stop, look, and listen?