The Importance of Mental Illness

The phrase mental illness shrouds his body as he walks and orients him, slips him like a peg into whatever dreamy ideas of madness fill the minds of those passing. The way he roots through the garbage cans in the winter snow and in the summer heat with an admirable persistence serves as a touchstone for some observers. Those who pass have had a sense that, perhaps, at least in theory, at least as some kind of innate potential, they may someday find themselves in the same circumstances.