Neil's response

30 years ago today, he replied

Hypnos, god of sleep

Friend,
the oneiroi deliver mostly distraction,
gauzy visions with no substance.
They travel through two gates:
one of horn and one of ivory.
The oneiroi who come through the ivory gate
bring us dazzling fantasies
but those that come through the gate of horn
are sworn to tell divine truth.
Honestly, I doubt my dream came by way of horn —
it’s too good to be true.

Penelope speaking to a disguised Odysseus in The Odyssey by Homer

---

March 26, 1996
San Jose, California

My then-husband remained in denial about the end of our marriage for almost a month. It didn’t help that I fell ill with a bad upper respiratory virus about then and couldn’t start preparing to move out right away. It wasn’t until our appointment with Tiffany the therapist on the evening of March 26 that it finally sank in that we were breaking up. I was dry-eyed during the session, but the reality was that I’d already cried for years. The only thing left to feel was the painful edge of endings.

After the session, he drove me back to my car where it was parked at Fujitsu. He mumbled something about needing to go back to work for a while. It didn’t even occur to me that he might relapse. He’d already relapsed twice for reasons that had nothing to do me. It wasn’t my business. I was ready to move forward. That future, though, was emotionally murky. I sat behind the steering wheel, staring at the dark, damp asphalt that surrounded my car, wondering if I’d ever be in a relationship again, if I’d ever meet someone who could deal with this. Who wouldn’t think I was a freak.

I drove home. When I entered the house, little Ophelia meeped at me for being gone so long. I was exhausted, conscious of the fact that I needed my rest because I had a lot of work to do planning the move, and I had a ticket to a Brian Weiss seminar based on his new book, Only Love is Real: Soulmates Reunited, the following evening.

Before falling into bed, I sat down at the computer to see if I had any emails. Ophelia took advantage, leaping right into my lap. The modem made that god-awful angry robot-monkey sound it always did and I downloaded my inbox, watching email subject lines drop one by one into AOL’s small window.

And then I saw it: a subject line that read, “The Book of Stuff.”

I thought for a moment that it had come from one of the few friends who knew the reference to “The Book of Stuff” from The Letter.

But the email address was entirely unfamiliar to me.

I stood, Ophelia jumping to the floor as electricity swarmed over my skin. Oh, no, I thought. Oh, God, no…

Nobody in my group of friends would have put a period at the end of their subject line. Nor did anyone have a Compuserve address.

It had to be Neil Gaiman.

I couldn’t do this alone. I grabbed the phone and stabbed every phone number I knew into the pad. I had to redial repeatedly, as if I were in a nightmare where I couldn’t seem to dial a number properly to save my life. And when I succeeded, no one answered.

Do it scared. That’s what my sponsor always said. There are lots of things in life you have to do that won’t feel good. Just do them anyway. It’s just a feeling. It won’t kill you.

When the software program finished downloading the emails, I faced the computer and gripped the mouse. My hand shook, yet I managed to double-click and open the message.

I could not have been prepared for what it said.

---

Subj: The Book of Stuff.

Date: 96-03-26 09:03:18 EST

From: 100015.336@compuserve.com (Neil Gaiman)

To: blacktech@aol.com

Dear Maria --

I was going to send you a nice postcard, but there’s not a lot of room on a postcard to say very much, and you put an email address at the top of your letterhead, so I’ll steal ten minutes from what I ought to be writing and write an email to you instead.

I got your letter of Feb 20th yesterday. And normally I don’t read anything that even looks like it might be stories or fiction; and I almost never reply to anything anymore, as there just isn’t enough time. But I read your letter, and the story, and the letter at the end, and I read it again this morning, and here I am replying…

Not, I hasten to add, with anything particularly sensible to say.

No, I don’t think you’re crazy. You write too well to be crazy.

I’ve always assumed that people come back, life after life (”They will come back, come back again, as long as the red earth rolls: He never wasted a leaf or a tree, why should He squander souls?” [Kipling from memory so expect some words or punctuation to be dodgy]). And, having assumed that, I’ve also never paid it too much mind. It’s a big world and weird synchronistic stuff is always happening. (Or at least, it is to me.) And I blink a bit and carry on.

So, I suppose the main thing I have to say is not to worry. I do believe you. I don’t think you’re making it up.

Feel free to reply. I’m currently in the UK making a BBC TV series and madly trying to finish the novel-of-the-TV-series so my time is a bit stretched, and I can’t guarantee either long responses or (because I’m traveling around a bit over the next six weeks) always timely responses.

And you may read this and decide that, actually, it’s all too embarrassing for words now that someone’s actually replied; or, for that matter, there isn’t anything to say in reply.

But I’m replying because you seem sane, upset and in some need of reassurance.

all the best

Neil Gaiman.

PS: I don’t use my middle name much. But it is, of course, Richard.

---

Photo by Tyler Quiring

As I sat in that lecture hall the next night listening to Dr. Brian Weiss’s seminar about soulmates, I felt a completeness. A peace. I no longer had to make my own God. One was forming for me — an astounding, universal presence that gathered together the pieces of me into a whole being. No more intellectual and spiritual circus antics. I simply was. It was enough. And it was joyous.

I share this with the world now not to exonerate Neil for what he’s done, although he certainly didn’t have to respond to me and I’m glad that he did. Rather, I share this to show why my disappointment in him was so profound.

I also share it because I want to tell a more important, still-untold story: that of a young woman who shed her lifeless, rigid religious beliefs, healed her heart, and embraced who she really was. She made sense of her life, turning pain and uncertainty into a liberating, more authentic existence.

Neil’s validation helped — it unlocked the objective reality of my metaphysical experiences — but I was already on my way. The email response was even more validating for those around me, I think, because they’d come with me on this strange journey, believing and supporting me when they didn’t have to. One friend who’d been mildly skeptical at first read Neil’s email and told me, “It’s your world now, Maria.”

Perhaps for a shining moment the universe curled up in my palm where it rested as if it had never left. But 30 years later, I don’t think it is my world at all. I often feel like I have lived a life that is both too much and not enough. Like I’ve found Odin’s other eye and it sits sightless in my hands. Who am I and what do I actually know?

More importantly: What do I do now?

Neil once said when he was angry with me that I was “a good writer” but that I’d never be “a great writer.” I think he said that because he thought it would wound me. If “great” means lauded by the world and very rich for it, then no, I’m not. It’s a fool’s dream. But I do watch my peers succeed repeatedly where I have failed and there are days when I wonder if I’m even a good writer.

But writing is all I know.

Great or not, I’ll be damned if I stop.

(P.S. I obtained permission from Neil repeatedly in writing over the years to publish this email, along with other people’s correspondence that has appeared here on Substack and in my unpublished memoir. Just so you know.)