There is, of course, something inherently comic about a Catholic nun, whom we imagine lives a strict and penitential life, observing a vow of poverty and perhaps even silence, sleeping in a cell with only a crucifix for adornment and only ever using her singing voice for the Ave Maria, suddenly carrying on like a sexy R'n'B star from Manhattan.
There is silence and sleep and night and paradise, true.
In the silence of sleep and in the absence of any contemporaneous sensory stimulation, these residual movements result in sometimes vivid sensory imagery that is subjectively indistinguishable from actual sensory perception.
I hadn't know how far I would have to go in my alienation experiment before it was okay to go home, but suddenly, I didn't know what I was doing thousands of miles from anyone I knew, halfway up an unmarked mountain, fighting off rosebushes with blood running down my legs, weeks into enforced semi-silence, and sleep-deprived from nightly ant visitations.
Or even better, if you have a sibling that you can trust, (or at least bribe into silence) have them sleep in your bed until you get back.
Think of the legions of European women who did this for centuries!" Silence falls; Emma sleeps.
Sometimes joking and reminiscing, sometimes in silence as Remo sleeps, sometimes, as time passes, listening to Remo talk in a sibilant lungless whisper.
Night after night, Lucile grows more sensitive to Bruno's presence in the next-door bedroom, to the sounds of his pacing and to the ensuing silences suggesting his sleep.
We can find silence in the sleeping faces of our children or partner.
Where to stay Sleep in silence and wake up to the crisp Alpine air at the homey B&B Costiera dei Cech (doubles €58 B&B), which is in the mountains a six miles' drive from Morbegno.
