the afternoon nap society

It was something I said that broke the rank and file of emotion. Something about reliability. Her head bowed over her breakfast bowl of oatmeal and berries. There was a pause, and then... tears. I sucked in my breath. Sunlight, missing for the past two days, streamed in the hotel restaurant's dining room. I snatched my napkin from off my lap and deposited it on my empty plate, rose and turned to unleash my purse strap from the back of my chair, lifting it over my head and down to rest on one shoulder, its weight at my hip, weapon-like. We marched single-file and tight-lipped past the black-clad waiters and waitresses who smiled as a reflex. She cried. She cried the tears that are squeezed from the inner-most chambers of the heart. Her personal war story was one of many battles—diagnosis and remission, diagnosis and remission, diagnosis and remission, with life laying siege each time in between. Though her arena differed from our own, the language of the campaign was so much the s

The radio announcer's voice, mellow and moderated, speaks of a study Stanford researchers are conducting regarding post traumatic stress disorder and coping mechanisms. A group of patients, veterans young and old, of wars long-past and current, have gathered in Menlo Park, California where they focus in on meditation expert Leah Weiss's directions, issued in a voice equally mellow and moderated, to slowly take three deep breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth. Weiss has been leading these guided meditations for more than a year now. She directs the men to think of a person they care about, a family member or a friend, and to bring that person close to them. "Allow yourself to feel the presence of this person," she says. This alone is an exercise in will. These soldiers, though no longer in combat, still bear the marks of their training—the heightened sense of alert that any person at any time may represent a threat. Thus, in the civilian world, making f