Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. You get extra credit for having
reread my essay. I should have thought once was enough. I'm
also appreciative of your kindness in assuming the blame
for all that I failed to make intelligible, saying you did
not understand, rather than calling it nonsense, which
would be apposite, both figuratively and literally.  And,
yes, I would like to read some of your work, if its not too
much trouble to send it to me.

I'm appreciative of the sympathy implicit in you comments
on my career choice. In retrospect, I'm not unhappy with
what I did - or what happened to me. The Harvard philosophy
department rebuffed my expressions of interest, they rejected
the advances of everyone who was not of the Logical
Positivist persuasion. Wouldn't even give philosophy credits
for Werner Jaeger's courses on Aristotle. In the context of
Nathaniel's wavering between Harvard and Yale, I wonder
whether I would have found the Yale philosophy department,
which, after all, was host to Ernst Cassirer, more congenial.
Perhaps it was already the taste of sour grapes at a young
age that convinced me of the essential incompatibility of the
kind of work I needed to do and the contemporary academic
environment in the US. - And not only contemporary: for an
academic outsider, there are seductive role models: Spinoza,
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and especially Kierkegaard. In Damascus,
working on my essays, I often thought of the maligned,
excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, grinding lenses while persuading
himself that God and Substance were, after all, identical.
Realistically, I don't think my opportunities in German or
Comparative Literature were much better. Just a few days ago,
I came across a letter to my parents in which I described my
oral examination for senior honors. It was given by a man
named Stuart Atkins, an academic bureaucrat who had risen
to be chairman of the German Department, because my patron
and friend Karl Vietor who so to speak took me under his wings,
could not or would not cope with administrative details.
Atkins, who was not a native speaker, and however knowledgeable,
lacked both the sensitivity and the passion requisite for an
inspiring teacher, was intensely jealous of Vietor, and when,
at my orals, I dutifully repeated what Vietor had taught me,
Atkins snarled at me: "I've heard that before. Don't you have
any ideas of your own?" He blocked my getting the Summa which
others though I deserved. Years later, for a few minutes,
Stuart Atkins was my patient in the Eye and Ear Infirmary
emergency room. After I had finished treating his eyes,
I reminded him that we had met before, - but he seemed not to
remember.

Yesterday (Sunday) and today, I was unable to adhere to the
discipline which I have set myself. First, there was uncertainty
whether Margaret and I should accept the invitation from next
door to accompany them to Symphony Hall for the gala
performance of the Boston Youth Symphony with all three
younger grandchildren in the senior orchestra and Nathaniel
starring as first trumpet in Mahler's 5th Symphony. I wasn't
enthusiastic because, unlike Nathaniel, I'm not inspired by
this music, and because the semi-public nature of the concert
audience relationship to the family member performers embarrasses
me as a travesty of the bonds to each of them individually which
have never developed as I had hoped, and because - shame on me -
it didn't seem worth the fifty dollars for the two tickets.
In the end it was Margaret's decision that we should stay home.

Afterwards she regretted that we hadn't gone. She was somewhat
distressed that yesterday we didn't see anything of Klemens
or any of the children, and thought we were being punished for
not whooping it up with them.  This morning Klemens stopped by
to say hello. He was in a hurry to catch the bus, so as not to
be late for work.  He doesn't take the car any more, largely
because parking at the hospital is so expensive. He accepted 
my offer to drive him into town. He told me about the concert.
No, our absence caused no offense, and we weren't missed. As
a matter of fact our aged and debilitated presences would have
detracted somewhat from the youthful glamor of the occasion.
Klemens, Laura and Rebekah's seats on the floor were not far
from those of Governor and Mrs. Deval Patrick, who are acquaintances
of Laura's - Laura knows everyone - social connections are her
specialty - and Klemens ironically compared Governor Patrick's
reaction to Nathaniel's trumpet playing with George II and the
Hallelujah Chorus. I didn't ask for details.

Meanwhile - back at the ranch - I was preoccupied with
a new malady of our 1997 Dodge minivan which is due for
inspection next month. Just a few weeks ago I managed to
repair the left turn signal, which had been malfunctioning
for over a year, - even after a $200 repair in Chico's
Fresh Pond Sunoco Garage. Then a few days ago, I noticed
that the on-board diagnostic (OBD ii) warning light "Service
Engine Soon" had made its appearance. At the Watertown
"Autozone" store, for $60 plus $3 tax, I bought a scanning
tool with which I could obtain the OBD error code. It
turned out to be 1698, - meaning, so I learned from the
Internet, that the OBD is not receiving signals from
TCM (transmission control module) and/or BCM (body control
module). It's probably a defect in the wiring, which may
or may not be easy to identify and correct. I had planned
to begin the attempted repair this morning, but by the
time I got back from Boston, rain drops had started to
appear on the windshield, and since my repair shop is
my driveway, I decided to wait for a sunny day later in
the week. The absurdity of all this: error code 1698
has nothing to do with pollution control; the car would
function perfectly well and the blue skies of Massachusetts
would remain unsullied even if "Service Engine Soon"
continued to remind me from month to month of the
world's imperfections. After all, my colleagues the doctors
have been telling me for decades, "Service Body Soon";
I've ignored them and gotten away with it.

When the rain drops provided me with an excuse to defer
tinkering with the car, I went back to my writing. I began
in English, then when the prose got bumpy, I switched to German.
I explained to myself that the assignment of ethics to the
realm of time and the assignment of esthetics to space might
work out after all, if I could persuade myself that the virtue
of music as essentially temporal experience was ethical rather
than esthetic in nature. What transparent word-mongering! but
it has its charms. Let's see: When I sing a song, or when I
play (or try to play) my violin or my harpsichord, my action
for the next 30 or 60 or 300 seconds is controlled by the 
musical score more precisely than under any other circumstances,
(except perhaps if I were running a race.) During that interval
it is the music alone that controls and dominates me, and while
I am under its spell, all other ethical considerations, -
what should I do, what should I refrain from doing, - lose their
meaning. If that isn't the apotheosis of ethics, I don't know
what is.

I'll leave the chatter about esthetics for another letter, -
and then there's money, to think if not to write about.
For now, however, let me try to get back to my computer
programming. Stay well, and give my best to Ned.

Jochen