Dear Ned and dear Cyndy,

Thank you for Cyndy's two letters, one before, the other
after our visit.  The first letter I read the evening we
left Hilliard, in the lobby of the the Quality Inn in
Ripley, West Virginia, where we spent the night. The
second letter I found here in Konnarock, when I turned on
the computer which I keep on the enclosed porch to control
the video cameras and to send me the surveillance pictures
of the house that remind me of home.

Margaret and I found our visit to Hilliard meaningful and
memorable. It will be a long time, before I forget the gate
shutting out the modernity of the housing developments
incongruously engrafted like parasites onto the rural
landscape which they destroy, the long narrow driveway,
a secret access to a different world, the unpretentiously
elegant house, the pond with the visiting mallard, and
above all Ned and yourself reigning in your own Eden in
splendid isolation, rewarded for having defied the onslaught
of commercialized housing where one size fits all.

After we had left you, I thought more about the Goldberg
Variations, fancifully and perhaps foolishly, regretful as
often before, that I was never able to play more than the
aria on Eric Herz' harpsichord.  Perhaps that regret explains
my difficulty finding the access to Interstate 270,
All the variations seem to point back to the beginning
or forward to the end since that's where the aria recurs.
Where the beginning and the end are identical,
getting lost inbetween seems to me almost unavoidable,
seems to me what life, at least my life has been all about.
We had listened to a CD of the Notebook of Anna Magdalena in
which the aria is included immediately following the Hospice
Song: Bist Du bei mir geh ich mit Freuden zum Sterben und zu
meiner Ruh. I mused that the musical variations were analogous
and perhaps symbolic of the episodes of human existence, which
may themselves be interpreted as variations on the unitary
theme of life, bracketed as it is by birth and death, just as
the variations are bracketed by the simple, inscrutable mystery
of the aria. Nonetheless, preferable by far to expanding these
ideas of dubious validity and value, would be the ability to
play the music, - on the harpsichord, as it was written or on
string instruments as in the transcription to which Ned
introduced me.

Beklemmt, the adjective about which Ned asked me, describes a state
of spirit with which I am not unfamiliar. It has its roots in the
verb klemmen, (English: to clamp). "In der Klemme sein" means to be
in a predicament. "Etwas klemmen" means to clamp something. "Geklemmt"
or more commonly "eingeklemmt" describes the condition of an object
that is held in a clamp or vise. "Beklemmt" as distinct from "geklemmt"
points to the (subjective) experience of a spirit that is clamped or
pressured.

The most widely used German-English Internet dictionary (Leo - Muenchen)
does not recognize beklemmt, perhaps a reflection of the circumstance
that contemporary German culture holds that if you're oppressed you
don't admit it. Leo does recognize "beklemmend" as distinct from
"beklemmt" (oppressing as distinct from oppressed). Leo translates
beklemmend as  "nightmarish" or "oppressive."

The 32 volume Grimm's Woerterbuch der deutschen Sprache, is much
more comprehensive. The word "beklemmt" appears to have resonated
with proponents of sensitivity in the 18th and 19th centuries,
e.g. Winckelmann, Schiller, Goethe, who used the word to describe
anxiety and emotional oppression.  "besser beklemmt von bauch als
beklemmt von herzen. pers. baumg. 6, 9;" (Better a belly oppressed
than a heart oppressed) is a facetious comment with a reference
that I don't recognize.

On the other hand, a modern dictionary published by a technical
university (I forget which one), indifferent if not contemptuous
of sentimentality, defines "beklemmend" as pinching, and "beklemmt"
as pinched. Is it possible that Beethoven who for all his musical
greatness, was not a poet, was using the word "beklemmt", albeit
awkwardly, in the purely mechanical sense in which the word "pinched"
might be used to describe the fingering (or even the bowing) of a violin
or a cello? I don't know. That question requires the expertise
of a string player.

The promise - or threat - which I made as Margaret and I left your
house Wednesday evening almost became imminent this afternoon in the
office of the Abingdon deputy probate clerk, Rhonda H. Roop,
when after hearing of Margrit's preregrinations, she challenged me:
But your sister wasn't really a resident of Virginia. I answered,
Well she thought she was, but you know better. And are you a resident
of Virginia? she turned to me.  Again I explained that I had lived
my life under that assumption and had maintained my parents' house
in Konnarock for the past fifty-eight years. If you expel my sister
and me from Virginia, I'll have to see if I can find a home in Detroit.
With that bit of ironic humor, Rhonda relented and appointed me
administrator of my sister's estate. And not only that: she said
I sounded trustworthy.  No bond, not even an accounting would be
required of me. "If you find a pot of gold, we want you come back
to tell us about it. Otherwise we don't need to see you again."
The Beklemmtheit which had been haunting me for the past several
weeks dissipated like fog. For once I awoke not from a nightmare,
but from a dream. I credit the magic of your gate, your driveway,
your pond, your house.  I call it the Hilliard effect. If ever I
have to probate another estate, I'll certainly be back.
Stay well and happy.

Jochen