Perchance to dream

I had trouble getting to sleep the other night. I’m usually the most complacent of sleepers. On this night, it started off well enough: I quickly drifted into that episode the scientists call hypnagogic sleep—the borderline between alertness and slumber, where images, shapes, words lift unbidden into the relaxing mind—before it all went wrong. Concerns of the day stamped back into my mind like a gang of thugs jeering their way into a yoga meditation retreat. Sleep became utterly unavailable. I disapprove of sleeping pills, because they reduce dreaming. So at moments such as these, I look for something so…