Dear Cyndy,

Happy vernal equinox; happy spring time. But I myself just keep
on getting older. It's just as well that rejuvenation doesn't
apply to me personally. Fatuously or otherwise, I've said for years, 
that once is enough, and said it so often that I now believe it.

Brevity seems to be getting the best of me, unable that I am to finish
my letters to you, such as the last one. The 1946 English A essay,
The Awakening of which I attached pdf images to my last e-mail,
I consider quite troublesome, intellectually (and spiritually).
It's a species of Confession, and as such, a fraud, or attempted fraud
upon our Maker which we Lutherans abandoned in 1517 or thereabouts.
I ask myself why I ever attempted such robbery of truth, - even if
only with a toy pistol. "G.B.A. made me do it," is what I'll stutter
at the trial. The secret of good grades, as you in your teaching habit
will admit, is pleasing if not indeed flattering the teacher.  I still
do it all the time, as you yourself can testify. I must have understood
intuitively, that the fake self-psychoanalysis which I offered him
was bait which G.B.A. would swallow, and another week of the unpleasant
course behind me, I could chalk up another A. Even more to the point,
the fictitious conversion described in The Awakening solved another
problem for me: When in Abingdon or Marion, in Chilhowie or in Bristol,
I sat down next to a black person in a public place, I was parodying
the Good German who, at the risk of being deported to Buchenwald or
Dachau, slipped on an armband emblazoned in bright pink with the letter
"J" to demonstrate his solidarity with the persecuted Jew. Easy in
Virginia - no concentration camps, - and because in those days no black
person would dare to show his face in Konnarock, unless he was a convict
condemned to labor on the highways, a latter day slave whose status was
secured by the shotgun of the guard who kept him apart from the churchgoers.
Much more difficult in Philadelphia, where I was befriended by a family, -
the Jardens - whom I have described before, (cf my letter of 1-29-09)
which was adamently insistent on its right to exploit - and to be
served by - the lesser breeds of mankind, - myself being the exception
to prove the rule. In the absence of dogs or cats, the lowliest Jarden
family member was Olga, tall, very white, monosyllabic, expressionless,
the obviously depressed, quasi-catatonic and possibly schizophrenic
servant girl, perhaps in her early thirties, who prepared the meals,
and who waited on the table, and was permitted to leave the house
once a week on her evening off. The only offense of which Mrs Jarden -
whose first name was Gertrude, not Roberta, as I mistakenly told
you on January 29, - ever reprimanded me, was that on one occasion
I made overtures to Olga to help her wash the dishes. That would have
been a breach of the social order which Mrs. Jarden could never
countenance. I dutifully reported the episode to my father, who
scolded me for my insubordination. What choice did I have but to
"awake" and shift the blame for the world's injustices to myself
as a would-be hypocrite?  "The Awakening" was not the end - but the
beginning of a long story which remains to be told.

Margaret has been reading through the ancient correspondence of
_her_ family, and taking some interest in discovering who of her
forebears liked or more commonly, disliked whom. My own experience
in this regard is that acceptance and rejection are never absolute.
None of my family, you included, unreservedly accepts me, and none
rejects me without some possibility of conciliation. The process of
life it seems to me is the spiritual metabolism which mediates
between what is required and what can be accomplished. I see no
virtue in lamenting the labor - and the inevitable disappointments
that attend these efforts.

Since you haven't yet stopped me, I'm attaching to this letter another
essay, this one about Beethoven. I read it at the Germantown Friends
School commencement ceremonies in June 1956, shortly before my sixteenth
birthday.  The directions for elocution on the typescript I attribute
to the teacher of public speaking, Irvin Poley.  Margaret, who had just
graduated from Bryn Mawr, and whose brother Alex was in my class, was in
the audience. I had decided to marry her when we first encountered each
other at the Bethlehem Bach Festival a few weeks earlier. I don't think
I made much impression on her.  It was not until three years later that
she rediscovered me.

And that, you will agree, is sufficient entertainment for one letter.
So give my regards to Ned, and stay well yourself.

Jochen