I don't know how old you are, but I went through a similar episode. Part of it was the idea that I couldn't stop the moving train into adulthood filled with work, responsibility, death, heartbreak, disillusionment, and ultimately, the real. The other part of it was that this life thing was going to take some real effort. The thing that never died though was my desire to create art. That passion has saved me. It's idealism, it's optimism, it's sensitivity, and ultimately, it's the bridge between the magic of my childhood and the reality of this world.

Let's not give adulthood shortshrift though. The more we learn as we get older about astronomy, people's stories, anthropology, our place in this world, the more fantastic it actually becomes. For example, I'm taking this physical anthropology class, a science that would never have captured my interest while I was younger. Thinking about the development of the human species that starts millions and millions of years ago leading up to this moment of me sitting here writing this comment in answer to your letter - this whirlpool of existence and you're sitting in the middle of it - what could be more fantastic?

So my only advice is don't lose heart. There's still magic in the world, and it's right in front of you right now in all of its ferocious terror and its ecstatic joy. Open your eyes. It's all here.

...not you, LW - I refer to the people commenting on your letter.

I have worked professionally with children for many years. The feelings the LW describes are very common - yes, even amongst "normal" children, who have gone up to lead "normal" adult lives. People who bandy about terms like "schizophrenia" and the new chestnut, "personality disorder", would be advised to get some real experience of the complex, contradictory, alarming, wonderful nature of actual children. And perhaps read some Michel Foucault whilst you're at it.

I am gobsmacked by your lack of humour

Now let's forget it and get back on topic

Whether this letter is "fake" or not,I too felt this is the most moving piece Cary's ever posted.Dreams and imagination are important,and should not be quashed by psychiatrists or psychiatric drugs.I offer this:

"We are the music- makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams.

World-losers and world-forsakers,

Upon whom the pale moon gleams;

Yet we are the movers and shakers,

Of the world forever it seems.

With woderful deathless ditties,

We build up the world's great cities,

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire's glory:

One man,with a dream at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure,

Can trample an empire down.

We,in the ages lying,

In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And o'erthrew them with prophesying,

To the old of the new world's worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth."

(Arthur O'Shaughnessy)

I'm quivering with dread.

Really, Meandering, do you use that as a threat?

I'm curious....does it work?

I might have a new way of forcing everyone to be nice to me, like that kid in the Twilight Zone episode who put everyone who crossed him out in the cornfield.

That would be COOL.

Dear Anonymous,

Yes, as Cary wrote, there are many pretenders in that army of prudence and so-called rationality.

They cringe as they consume and consume and hold their noses as they marry into the proper life or otherwise suck up to borrowed dreams- like those we see on that great dreamkiller machine, the tv and our beloved slavemaster, the internet.

Join them, if you choose but that death you will know shall be a suicidal one- not a murder.

Only you are responsible (to use a very misunderstood term) for your own imagination and that road uponj which it sets you upon.

You may certainly trade in your fairies and their realestate- mortgage the whole soul, if you would- but it is YOU, not the sweating flannelsuit man who is to blame.

I say, rather: tune in (even further before you forget the frequency); turn on (to the bliss which you can allow to manifest); and importantly: DROP OUT.

We all know the result of the enforcement of "normal life" our planet and her cultures are dying on that materialistic,rat-raced pseudosensiblity. We have tried it their way and found where it leads- ecocatastophy and dystopia!

It is that long chain of command in the dreamkiller army which you must break. Look, Mother Nature is going to soon enough lay perfect waste to thze sweating flannelsuit men and women- and all their markets and real estates and credit cards, anyway.

Take the high road- take the initiative and pull the plug on the ego empire while you can still claim credit for part of its well-deserved demise.

Ask your fairies for help- or your gods or your baby sibling, perhaps. Enlist a conspiracy of dream revivers and put in for another building variance for a new subdivision of fairyhuts.

Those little allies are going to need somewhere to bunk once they return for reenlistment in your insurgency against that inhuman and unfantastic unhappiness which some (ever fewer) are still trying to call "normal life".

I remember building houses for fairies. I remember obsessively turning over stones in a cornfield, looking for the entrance to the hollow hill. And what I can say now, fifty years later, is that time moves differently there. Shakespeare knew it, Barre knew it. For the children we were, years have passed, but for fairies and the pan, it's only been hours. And what if the fairies had been waiting in the houses when we went to look? What if pan had appeared at the window? Where would we be now, changelings? They come for us eventually, you can be sure, so you need to prepare your dreams.