Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. Klemens telephoned this afternoon
reminding me that he will be flying to a meeting of his dialysis
company early on Wednesday morning. Since I want to be sure
to have caught up on sleep when I drive him to the airport,
we will be leaving here a day earlier than planned, on Sunday,
October 17, arriving in Belmont on Monday.

Tomorrow I'll spend putting the house in order, vacuum cleaning
and dusting. Saturday we'll pack. Because when I work on my novel,
I become so compulsively engaged that it's difficult to stop,
I have posted Chapter 42 in its present incomplete state on the
Internet, planning to resume my writing after I've disposed of
the various chores awaiting me in Belmont. When I glance back
into what I wrote months and years ago, I feel haunted. Of its
"literary value", if that term is meaningful at all, I can have
no opinion.  I understand that because of its volume, I have no
alternative but to forget much that I have written, accepting the
loss as inevitable, a fact of living, or more accurately, of dying.

Tomorrow it will be 71 years to the day since we first arrived
here by train from New York City. In one perspective, the past
seems very unreal, but in another perspective, it seems like
yesterday.  I contemplate my failure with equanimity, grateful
and relieved that I don't have to do it over again.

I hope you and Ned are happy and well.

Jochen