Sleep. Men need to sleep; I need to sleep, but... Life is too short for it, that is one thing you can say. That you will sleep in your grave, when the time comes. But is it really true, or are we just fooling ourselves?
"Do you ever sleep?" Dobby asked when we were sitting in the tavern somewhere in southeast Boston. "I really don't know how you do it."
Of course, she meant the amount of work and travel I get done, but she was right.
"I try not to think about it," I replied.
But that is not true. I do think about it.
Because she was right. I rarely sleep at all. Not that I would not want to.
The problem is, even if I do lie down to rest, the sleep evades me. Or maybe it is I who learned to avoid sleep. Maybe the dreams are too disturbing, not allowing me to rest as I would need to. So I go on until I keel over and then, hopefully, the dreams stay away.
I see a large cavern, when I dream. I am walking around it, looking for something, looking for a way. Sometimes I meet other people; they seem to be my friends, although I do not recognize their faces. But they speak to me and I to them and we share the same feeling of urgency, fear and helplessness. A doom is approaching and although I do know what it is, I never remember when I wake up. My friends have their names and they also call me by a name I do know in the dreams, but those I do not remember either. Our garments look very strange, made of fabrics I do not recognize and there are things around us that I never saw in my life, not in the real one. There are two men and a woman, and sometimes we speak of other people, of a girl that was our friend but also a traitor. Sometimes we just stand together, remembering and hoping and fearing, and then they help me into a strange bed and there comes a little pain in my arm and a little pressure in my head and I wake up, feeling I have to go somewhere, I need to go somewhere and I am even less rested than when I lied down.
I try not to think about it, but I have to. Because sometimes I feel that maybe not that strange place and those strange people are a dream, but I am.
