Dear Marion,

Thank you very much for straightening me out.
When I wrote you about the acrobats' poles as extensions
of the skeleton which amplified muscular contractions, I sensed
an error, but didn't bother to pursue it. In fact, the opposite
is true. Leverage makes the weight on the end of the pole seem
much heavier, and attentuates the force with which I try to
lift it. Once again, I'm writing about something I know nothing
about. My (maternal) grandmother, I suspect, once took me to
the circus, but whatever it was that I saw there, I've entirely
forgotten, (or repressed). I thought acrobats held their poles high
rather than low. I didn't know the poles were weighted. So much
for fantasy and imagination. As for the relationship between
leverage and rotational inertia, I wish I were a mathematician
capable of the analysis.  On the balanced beam, centered on a
fulcrum, the rotational forces at the ends are obviously opposite
and equal. As one shifts the fulcrum toward one end of the beam,
the rotational forces become imbalanced, until, when the fulcrum
and the beam end coincide, all leverage has been dissipated into
rotational forces, but how to quantitate the transformation of
lever into radius, I don't know.

In a much more poetic vein, I'm reminded of Hoelderlin's elegy "Patmos"
on which I have doted and brooded for years, a poem had a remarkable
intimidating effect on the Kuno Francke Professor of German Literature
when I recited it to him as we discussed Hoelderlin after I had examined
the Professor's eyes.
_
_                                 Nah ist
_          Und schwer zu fassen der Gott.
_          Wo aber Gefahr ist, waechst
_          Das Rettende auch.
_          Im Finstern wohnen
_          Die Adler und furchtlos gehn
_          Die Soehne der Alpen ueber den Abgrund weg
_          Auf leichtgebaueten Bruecken.
_          Drum, da gehaeuft sind rings
_          Die Gipfel der Zeit, und die Liebsten
_          Nah wohnen, ermattend auf
_          Getrenntesten Bergen,
_          So gib unschuldig Wasser,
_          O Fittiche gib uns, treuesten Sinns
_          Hinueberzugehn und wiederzukehren.

_          God is nearby,
_          but beyond our grasp.
_          Where danger lurks, rescue is rooted as well.
_          In darkness the eagles dwell,
_          and without fear though on flimsy walkways,
_          the sons of the alps traverse the abyss.
_          Therefore, since scattered about us are summits of time
_          and loved ones dwell near,
_          languishing on most separate mountains,
_          give us the water of life,
_          Oh, give us wings of truest remembrance
_          to visit them and to return.

"Unschuldig Wasser" refers to the verse in the Revelation of
St. John: Denn wer wa will, der nehme das Wasser des Lebens
umsonst."  I'm impressed by the similarlity between Nietzsche's
"Seil" and Hoelderlin's leicht gebauete Bruecken.

My friend Helmut Frielinghaus disputes my assertion, that I made
a complete recovery from my childhood ordeal in Nazi Germany. Maybe
he's right. Even today, I conceive of fascism as the prototypical
government. I have vivid memories of the marvelous Autobahnen,
of the promise of Volkswagen for everyone, signs fluttering in
the breezes at all construction projects: Dass wir hier bauen,
verdanken wir dem Fuehrer; memories of economic revitalization
in the mid 1930's which allayed the ravages of inflation followed 
by depression during the years of the Weimar Republic. Of course,
people were somewhat aware of attacks on communists and socialists,
Walther Rathenau and Rosa Luxemburg had been murdered, but these
disconcerting, isolated events paled in the brilliance of the
benefits the government was bestowing on the Nation. As for the
horror stories, "Der Fuehrer will das nicht." they told themselves
because they wanted to believe in him. They saw no alternative. We
voted for him, they said "um Schlimmeres zu verhueten." And even if
his administration successfully suppressed investigations into CIA
torture and pursued a morally indefensible war in Afghanistan,
we will still vote for him because he is so much better than his
predecessor, and the Alaska alternative is so much worse. France
is a wonderful society, perfect economic justice, no labor discontent,
and as for the Roma, well isn't it reasonable to tell them to go
back from where they came? The difference between what's being done
to the Roma, and the what was done to the Jews expelled from Germany?
Well, the Roma are just being driven out. They aren't being killed
and being put in concentration camps, except perhaps here and there.
And the Israelis as legatees of the horrors of Auschwitz, Dachau,
Buchenwald, - can do no wrong.  Quick, as I gaze into the abyss,
I need my balancing rod to preserve my sanity.

Jesus said: "Wo zwei und drei versammelt sind in meinem Namen, da
bin ich mitten unter ihnen." "Where two or three are gathered together
in my name, I am in the midst of them." I would argue that where two or
three or more are gathered together, a society is formed, and the 
participant unavoidably compromises his integrity and individuality
to merge with the group, whose values and imperatives become his
ethics or morals - from ethos = mores = custom, whose language becomes
his thought, whose mind becomes a mirror of the common sense. The
(re)discovery of individuality occurs from the competition between
societies. The lure to be "oneself" is the lure to be "subversive"
of ones society, to side with "the enemy", to become a spy, a traitor,
an infiltrator, a foreign body within ones group, and hence to run the
risk of being destroyed. That's why Magus, Mengs and Katenus were
locked up by Buddy and Billy. It's uncertain about what will happen
to them next.  Stay tuned.
Jochen