Downstream

I

To tell the story of a child as you would tell the story of a grownup would be to commit forgery, for once you are wide awake it costs you a great effort to describe a dream exactly as it occurred.

The tide of events flows remote from the child. Only occasionally do its eddies touch upon the consciousness of the child, and then the latter is unaware of their significance. It is precisely this inability to understand the connection between events which makes the realities of children so dreamlike.

In the long dream of childhood there reigns a capricious, mysterious and yet irresistible Fate, beneficent like the fairy with its wand beside the princess’s cradle, or cruel like the wolf in Red Riding Hood. The shadow of that Fate still casts itself over our riper years. It haunts us, ghostlike, even when we have begun consciously to order our lives. Only a few chosen spirits are able to cast off the spell of these fairies and trolls.