watching someone sleep

A man once asked me, on the bus, if I would awaken him before he missed his stop. It must have been a Monday, since my son was with me and we were on our way home. The young man said his medications made him very tired, and he just needed to sleep. He was riding from downtown to Broadway and Central.
I said I would let him know when it was time to get off. He settled down immediately, though sleeping on the bus is never comfortable, and had nodded off within moments.
I've known a number of people who took medications for depression that left them dopey much of the day. Other meds too have similar effects, and a person with multiple diagnoses can have a tough time balancing dosages.
Of course, he could also have been self-medicating, recovering from a party, whatever. He wasn't drunk, at any rate, though in addition to looking absolutely exhausted he also seemed in need of a shower.
I watched him a little, as he slept. I like watching people sleep. Also, riding the bus means looking at the backs of people's heads a great deal -- the human in repose at close quarters, known but unknown. I never feel so much aware of the grandeur of the mind as when someone sleeps -- their bodies still, their motivations temporarily suspended, what is left is the vast interior space. Dreaming or no, neurons fire off echoes of earlier experience, repeating and learning and storing up impressions for use in waking life. It's all in there, rattling around the endless architecture of memory, and in this young man's mind I now too had a place. Whether or not he remembered me a day later, I'm still in there somewhere -- mind at the center of all contains within it all that it is center of.
He responded groggily, reluctant but ready, when I tapped him on the knee. For a moment his eyes rested on me without registering my purpose, and I felt the distance between us -- felt the odd intimacy of being the first face he saw on waking.
We are always at close proximity to one another, and only our adherence to resistance and denial keeps this kind of intimacy at bay.