Dear Marion,

Yesterday's letter was e-mailed before it was finished.

Your prospective relocation into a renovated, mirror-image
apartment across the hall, if I understand correctly,
seems the most ergonomically efficient scheme for getting
newly finished floors and cleanly painted walls and woodwork.
You have my congratulations. Nonetheless the move will
entail a disruption of your routine, and for that you have
my sympathy. The difficulties of similar renovations both
in Konnarock and in Belmont, where furniture will or would
need to be shuttled from room to room are much more daunting,
And I'm not sure that I will even try to rise to the challenge.

I'm still at a loss for a systematic description of esthetics,
except to note that the concept is inordinately broad; the
"beauties" of literature, graphics, sculpture, music, dance, etc.
are each of them qualitatively so different one from the other,
that the presumption of comprehending them under a single concept
leads to nothing but paralysis of thought. I have noted that 
photography has superseded drawing and painting as the instrumentality
by which the transient visual image is made permanent; hence the
evolution of non-representational, "abstract" art. However, no matter
how conscientiously composed, the photographic image is necessarily
devoid of that subjectivity of its author which is indelibly displayed
in the in the painting or drawing. This expression (objectivation)
of the artist's personality gives to the work of art meaning and value
which is incomparable with that of even the most revealing of photographs.
It may be the subjectivity of the artist implicit and explicit in
the work of art which accounts for its effectiveness and power as
an instrument of communication among the viewers, to such an extent 
that it can become a catalyst for the fusion of their experiences.
It's also plausible that for a person so hell-bent on self-understanding
and self-expression as myself, the threshold of museum community and
consciousness should prove insurmountably high. 

Jochen