Will the insane of Dunedin please stand up?

Dunedin has more than its fair share of insane people. It's a small city, but if you spend just a little bit of time in public spaces you'll notice them everywhere. They loiter in the center of town, talking to the seagulls and the statues. They sit in the library stacks, laughing gleefully to themselves. They seem to love buses very much.

Stony, gloomy, and Gothic, Dunedin is perfectly suited for them. Returning the favor, the insane really add something to the city.

There's an alley near the medical school that seems to be a favorite spot for the clinically insane. They sing songs there and play instruments to the passing shoppers. One of the regular characters plays a guitar very badly, sings blues songs and looks just like Slash from Guns N' Roses. Another guy bops around on the balls of his feet and improvises a high-pitched song that sort of goes, "Mi mi mi mimi mimi mi," and sounds more like a little dog barking than a person singing.

That's the sound of dysfunctional brain chemistry, folks.

Someone told me about a man who walks around wearing a top hat with a seagull on top, and that, as the man eats, he stretches his arm up to feed the seagull little pieces of food. I haven't seen him yet. I've seen Speedy though. He has a long bushy beard and walks like a broken wind-up toy, with his arms flapping and his elbows sticking out. He waved at me once, from behind a tree in the park, standing among the ducks.

I'm not sure why so many of them are on the streets. On one level, it's terribly sad to see these lost people, hobbling around in rags and chattering to themselves. What happened to them? How did they get here? Some of them are genuinely disturbing. They sit on benches and argue furiously with themselves. On another level, when you walk down the street and see a neatly-dressed young man having a conversation with a lamppost, you just have to laugh. It's great.

So, hopefully this will be a regular feature of the blog, as I collect images of the insane people of Dunedin (surreptitiously).

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Today, we have Insane Dunedinite #1, who was sitting on a bench outside the movie theater in the middle of town and having a very heated argument with himself yesterday. And then, every now and again, he'd burst out laughing for no reason. I think he's insane, but he might just have paid money to see Drillbit Taylor.

Arguing with himself on a bench + unexpected laughter = Insane

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Next, we have Insane Dunedinite #2. She was standing in front of the onions at the grocery store, completely mesmerized. Catatonic. It's as if her body was right there in the grocery store, standing in front of the onions, but her brain was hundreds of feet underwater, at the bottom of the harbor, lost in a kelp forest. She was still standing there when I left with a couple of onions. Onions just aren't that interesting. Then we shared a bus home, which means she lives by us.

Very big glasses + obsessed with onions = Insane

(ck)