One of the strangers I met yesterday was a gentle man who reminded me of my friend P; and last night P visited me in my dreams. But he was dying, just fading away, from an ailment nobody could explain or diagnose. We sat on the sofa and I put my arms around him; he lay with his head on my breast like a child, murmuring a prayer, very slow (which was odd, for an atheist). It may have been the Lord's Prayer -- it had at any rate the weight and cadence of ritual. This morning there's a sadness in me which is hard to shake.