The Other

by Thomas Tryon

Soon it will be dusk, then dark again. Always the loneliest part of the day to me, that painful, slowly descending interval before the night ultimately comes down. What the French call l’heure bleue, a time of rare conviviality, gaiety, bonhomie—things all lost to me in this place—people eagerly planning, over apéritifs, their evening rounds—carousal, rendezvous, dalliance—bright lively figures, tingling with anticipation, surging forth upon the boulevards, shimmering in the public dark, their reflections wavering in puddles of light.

sleep is a most holy thing.

It is while we sleep that we get our mind and our imagination filled up again.” She shaped a bowl with her gnarled hands. “It is like a deep pool, this imagination, and during the day it gets used up, like water, and when we sleep at night the water we have used during the day gets replaced. And if it is not replaced, if there is none to drink of, we are thirsty. It is from sleep that God gives us our strength and our power and our peace, do you see.”

“We help one another by understanding one another: that is the only help there is. And the only hope as well.”

Out at the back of the tent, in at the front, mingling in the audience.