"That's the first time I remember experiencing what I call The Sleep O' The Dead, this profound uninterrupted sleep that leaves you quiet inside for hours---days even, to a lesser degree. That happens to Mouse and I moderately often, usually when we're particularly tired when we go to bed. We wrap ourselves up in each other and utterly die to the rest of the world for several hours. And when we wake up, there's no need to say anything. Our minds are totally clear, but mostly blank. Thoughts arise, but they never get verbalized; they are just noticed as they go by. Sometimes we've made a game out of not saying anything to each other for a whole day. We hang out and go places and eat together and stuff, but we don't say a word. We took a weekend train trip a while back without saying a word to each other. We cheated a little bit by directing comments and queries to other people, the ticket agent, a fellow passenger, whoever. But we didn't actually speak to each other for two and a half days. That's just being silly, but it's fun and sort of interesting.
"The really interesting thing is The Sleep O' The Dead. What's going on there? It's only ever happened to me when I was sleeping with one other person who happened to be someone I was unconditionally comfortable with. Is that required? Why doesn't it always happen? Could it, if we knew how to make it? Just curious."
