Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter.
First things first.
I'm charmed by the Yeats poem.

Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
 
What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass.
 
It's a real poem. It's meaning is unique to each reader.
My interpretation reflects my obsession with epistemology.
The poem is about being taught by Unknown Instructors.
The circumstance that they are unknown, means they're not tenured.
Being unknown they must be unknowable, - because the first
and the most important thing the Professor - and don't take
this personally, - wants you to know is his or her name.
The only conclusion: that I'm taught by nature, by self, - or
if you care for Spinozistic dimensions, by "Substance", by "God."
The "things" that hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass,
are the objects known, or their images, the two are
interchangeable, representations, "Vorstellungen" of reality,
which is all that the "unknown Instructors" have imparted to me.
Like that drop of dew, my knowledge is fragile and evanescent.
It has condensed from only God knows where, and will in no time,
drip or evaporate whence it came.

Of course, Joanna can spend the night, so can you and Elizabeth
in the event that you change your minds, - all subject to the
caveat of camping conditions. I've been so busy with other things
that I haven't started to clean or put things in order, which
I will do before "you all", as they say in Konnarock, get here.

I have to get ready now for patients at 10 o'clock. Will send
this now. Maybe more later. Don't fall, and my best to Ned.

Jochen