Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter which gives me more to think about.
I've translated about 15 1/2 pages of Das siebte Kapitel with
about 3 pages more to go. Always takes longer than I anticipate,
but there's also some literary value in the translation.
When I've finished, I'll put it on my website and send you the
URL.  I'm pleased that so far you seem to have been able to
stomach my ideas. They're so wild, each time I send a letter,
I assume that this is it, and that I'll never hear from you again.

Eulenspiegel has been a lifelong role model for me. As you may know,
he's a compatriot, having been born in Kneitlingen am Elm, quite
close to Braunschweig. Just north of Kneitlingen was a Restaurant
called der Reitling, a favorite haunt of my parents, of which I have
the most vivid memories. If you care to look at a map, may be clicking
on this will work:

http://maps.google.de/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=de&geocode=&q=Kneitlingen,+Niedersachsen&sll=51.151786,10.415039&sspn=12.030075,27.597656&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Kneitlingen,+Wolfenb%C3%BCttel,+Niedersachsen&ll=52.174785,10.761456&spn=0.36719,0.862427&t=h&z=10&pw=2

In Braunschweig itself is der Eulenspiegel Brunnen of which there is an
attractive picture in the German wikipedia, which you might enjoy looking at. 
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulenspiegel-Brunnen

As for poor Gloria, the story that you tell seems to me a vivid corroboration
of my epistemological fantasies. I never intended to give the impression
that I thought the realities of a panoply of individuals were (necessarily)
different. Obviously they're not. They can't be. Making the realities of
diverse individuals (relatively) homogeneous is the inevitable and very
much desirable consequence of societal nurture; it's what "education" is
all about. The nurtured uniformity, however, doesn't preclude the 
individuality and uniqueness of the experience. Gloria's reaction to the
traffic is to my mind a dramatic exhibition of the truth of John Dryden's
insight:

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
and thin partitions do their bounds divide.   
_                               John Dryden

inasmuch as it's a characteristic specifically of "great wits"
to entertain schemes of reality of their own.
The circumstance that Copernicus and Galileo, Darwin and Einstein
perceived and articulated a different, an uncommon and unconventional
reality is what accounts for the historical significance of their work.
Gloria in her illness demonstrates, at least to my way of thinking,
how the minds of all of us function.

I've just uploaded chapter 38 of "Die Freunde" which contains the
scene on the beach that we recently corresponded about. The link
is for the record only:
http://home.earthlink.net/~jochenmeyer/freunde/f038.html
If you bother to read everything I write, you'll never
get anything else done. So don't.

Margrit seems to be recovering. She has an appointment to see
her surgeon on November 11, at 2 p.m. If it is indeed the surgeon
himself who examines her, rather than one of his flunkies, it
will be the first time he has seen her except for the episode
under anesthesia when he operated on her, - if indeed he rather
than the resident did the operation.

I have, of course, offered her my computer to check on her mail;
although in Konnarock she accepted my offer and regularly used
the surveillance computer I installed there, she hasn't asked
to use the Belmont computer. She asked me yesterday to take her
to the library, where she spent two hours, and she may have
checked her e-mail at the time. She didn't say, and I didn't
ask. The important issue, to my mind, is what she will want to
do two months or four months or six months from now. I wish
very much she would agree to stay here where I can look after
her, but I don't dare express my concerns. Perhaps ultimately
she will stay as it were by default. Her memory seems to me 
somewhat moth-eaten. I'm not sure how clear her notions of
what she would be going "back" to. You could surely earn some
brownie points if you would engage her in telephone - or e-mail
conversation, provide her with a reality check, and nudge her
in the direction that you think would be best for her.

Jochen