Dear Cyndy,

About three hundred feet from my window, the deer are trecking
across the road as they do on many days when the sun has slipped
below the dense foliage of the trees. One of my first projects, to
replenish the bird- and humming bird feeders. As yet there have
been few customers.  I suppose birds depend on air-cooling to
dissipate the heat generated by their very active metabolism,
and perhaps they find it too much effort on these very hot days
to bother with food, even when seeds are presented to them on a platter
and finding food requires no effort.  The hummingbirds likewise
are staying away from their feeders. 

Sandy Greene, about whose goings and comings you asked, is a
graduate of the U.S. Army where she was a mechanic. She is
represented as knowledgeable about automobiles, fond of driving,
out of work, and in need of some remunerative activity. As I
mentioned, she drove Margrit's little Mazda Miata to Detroit
on December 9. After Margrit's death, Klemens flew to Detroit,
and brought the Miata back to Belmont, where it now has its 
place of honor in our garage, surrounded by the philosophy
books of one Walter Solmitz, a sometime professor at Bowdoin
who ended his life in despair. His widow, a patient of mine,
offered his library to Bowdoin. They accepted the bloom and
rejected the dregs, which Mrs. Solmitz then offered to me,
whose psyche is incapable of contemplating the destruction
of any book.

Walter Solmitz' interests were very broad. Klemens and I enjoy
perusing the remnants of his library, and occasionally one of
us finds a volume that opens a new perspective. Most recently,
I came upon a small paper-bound monograph on Spinoza - and in
the telling I may be repeating myself - by one Carl Gebhardt,
whom I recognized to be the editor of my Latin edition of Spinoza's
works - I bought it years ago at Schoenhof's. Gebhardt, it turned
out has also written a long scholarly essay on Spinoza and
Rembrandt, - they were contemporaries in Amsterdam, with whose
Jewish community Rembrandt, judging by his portraiture, was on
excellent terms. However, on reading and thinking further, I 
concluded this topic was a dead end, alluring to would-be
connoiseurs of 17th century culture who understood neither
Rembrandt nor Spinoza or who, in any event have an understanding
different from my own.

I was recently reminded of the trenchant quality of Spinoza's
thought, when a friend, reflecting on life, disease and death
wrote to me that he was uncomfortable with the concept of ones
fate resting in the hand of God, prefering the notion that our
lives are expressions of the exigencies of nature. I was then
reminded of Spinoza's equation Deus sive Natura, God == Nature,
an insight for which Spinoza was banished from the religious
community to which he had belonged.

My mind went to work on the challenge: what does it mean to say
that our lives are expressions of the exigencies of nature, and,
for that matter what does it mean to say that our lives "rest
in the Hand of God"? This second question I scrutinize in the
light of Kierkegaards equation of God as subjectivity, God as
inwardness; and I interpret subjectivity or inwardness not at
all as an anatomic or geometric formula, but rather as a 
designation of the individual's intellectual and emotional life
as separate from and independent of society, - an insoluble
paradox which turns out to be a life-long affliction from 
which there is no escape.

In this context, I asked myself about nature whose exigencies
are said to govern my existence. Obviously, "natural science",
the "science" of nature, however fruitful it may be in many
respects, will tell me nothing about that "nature" on whose
exigencies my life is assumed to hinge. As if the term "nature"
were used in two different contexts and sported two different
meanings which contradict one another. "Natural science" is
clearly a social enterprise, a synthetic replica of communal
experience, which, although of much practical utility, enabling
as it does the most diverse and effective communal enterprises,
is conclusively incompetent even as a pointer to the nature in
which I am at home and the outgrowth of which is my entire life.

It turns out then that this "nature" in which I am at home,
and on whose exigencies my life is assumed to hinge, is similarly
a subjective, "inward" experience, i.e. an experience unique to
me and to each other individual. If the subjectivity of "nature",
accordingly has the same intellectual and emotional, i.e. spiritual,
function as does the subjectivity that constitutes the experience
of the divine, then Spinoza's equation God == Nature is validated,
q.e.d.

To get back to Margrit's Mazda Miata standing in our Belmont garage,
in the midst of unwanted philosophical literature, I was able to
start the motor last week. The brake which had locked one of the
wheels, I was able to release by backing the car out of the garage
inspite of the reluctant wheel, - like dragging a kicking and
screaming child. The left front power windows misbehaves. It opens
only reluctantly, and barely budges when the switch is pressed.
I had to force the window down with my hand, but then on closing,
it seemed to function. 

To drive the Miata to Konnarock, Sandy has to travel to Belmont,
and since Margaret and I are driving back on July 23, I thought
I should invite Sandy to come with us. She can help me drive the
850 miles without pausing to stay overnight. That should save
Jeane the cost of an airline ticket. Once in Belmont, Sandy can
get a good night's sleep, attach the new license plates to the car,
and drive it back to Virginia, I hope without incident. The car
was due to be inspected last October, a circumstance which my
sister ignored. She was very cavalier about such matters.

My immediate concern is the social situation that will arise
when Margaret and I are trapped in the car for 18 hours with
a sometime corporal or sergeant or master sergeant. No, I'm
not going to try to explain to Sandy about deus sive natura
or Goethes notion of Gott-Natur, or ask her whether she'd prefer
listening to a CD of one of Haendel's operas or one of Mozart's.
I'll encourage her to tell me about army life, about her child
children, about her childhood and her parents. I'll grit my
teeth (only 12 left) and listen to whatever radio programs she
selects, then try to ascertain her thoughts (if any) about them.
I'll try to construe the experience as an epic affair of sorts;
something that might deserve its own chapter in a novel the
plot of which has not even hatched.

Meanwhile I inflict my ideas on you, - with a vengeance. I consider
it good practice for me, - but also an experiment to calibrate your
patience and to test you for how much I can get away with.

Best to you and Ned.

Jochen