"A child's cotton dress disintegrates as it becomes something else...a cloud of butterflies. 'While you were sleeping' was inspired by the legend of the win-laik-pya or 'soul butterfly'. It is believed that the soul-butterfly flies abroad when its owner is asleep, wandering through time and space, meeting the soul-butterflies of other persons and animals and returning when the owner awakes. Burmese children are still taught never to awaken anyone too suddenly, for fear the win-laik-pya cannot get back in time, in which case the person dies, or worse, lives on, without a soul." Su Blackwell
