Sleep. Such a pretty word. You can
say it short or long, chop it clean or pull it out into something
like taffy. It's my favorite word, at the moment. Thinking of
curling up in my blankets, a little music to white out the other
noises... eyes closed into a calm darkness... drifting inside my
head...
And nobody has figured out exactly why
we do it. Don't really know what dreams are for, either. But
mammals do it, birds, reptiles, marsupials sleep (the koala is a
champion sleeper). Not sure if fish do, but I know dolphins and
whales spend a certain amount of time in the flukes of Morpheus (the
original, not the Laurence Fishburne character).
There are hypotheses, of course.
Physical and mental maintenance cycles, a way to get through a
non-optimal part of the day-night cycle with reduced bodily resource
consumption, a period in which the leprechauns can make shoes without
us hovering over their shoulders, all sorts of possibilities.
But right now, it's the snow that makes
me think of sleep the most. It's beautiful out there, smooth and
white (where it's not torn up by cars and footprints), so bright even
normal people can see well, and looking like blankets and pillows and
soft restful dreams. I'm wondering why Rip van Winkle was never
heavily associated with snow. Seems like the kinds of imagery that
would go together.
And faerie tales tend to feature lots
of sleeping...
… think I'll go find a few of the Fey
and see what they're doing these days.
'Night.
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