Sleep Time

One of the cats came in this morning and held a tiny mirror in front of my face to see if I was alive. I was. When he found out, he left me and I went back to sleep. Sleep is funny. Normally, after I’ve been out for seven or eight hours, I get up to begin another day. I guess my mind is saying that I can’t afford to waste any hours lying in bed like a corpse. This morning, though, after the mirror check, I slept again . . . for almost three hours, my eyes simply whirling around in REM sleep. There seems to be a sleep demarcation line that once you’ve crossed you can sleep and sleep and sleep. In My New York days, I remember Chuck, my song-writing buddy, would sometimes sleep for fourteen or fifteen hours on the weekends. I remember wondering how he could do that, just wasting hours from his life. But we were both young then and didn’t care about wasted hours. It’s a different story now. I almost wish I could be a Ben Franklin and sleep only three or four hours a night. Or even like the Lawrence Block character, Evan Tanner, who didn’t sleep at all, couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to. No wasted hours there.