Dear Marion,

Thank you very much for your letter, which exuded
a placid confident composure, suggesting to me that
following the recent breathtaking somersaults on 
Dr. Skarda's medical trampoline you have landed on
your feet, right side up. In my book, placid equanimity,
in 18th century parlance: Ruhige Gelassenheit, is
the bottom line.

By no means a recommendation, not even a suggestion, just
a passing thought: if you wanted to study the relationship
between subjective feeling and objective systolic, diastolic
pressures and pulse, you might keep a lab book in which you
recorded first, e.g. on a scale of 1 to 10, how you felt,
then measured your blood pressure and pulse, ascertaining to
what extent if at all, your feelings were predictors of your
"vital signs", and on other occasions reversing the process,
measuring vital signs and then jotting down, again on a scale
of 1 to 10, how you feel.  Come to think of it, for me at least,
such an experiment seems a silly, an impossible proposition.
If one refuses, as I do, to pay any heed to feelings, - then
the question "How do I feel?" becomes meaningless, and I
wouldn't know how to answer it.

I haven't roused myself to look at Beth Namenwirth's pictures,
but I will. Tonight I feel unusually tired. I had only two
patients today, - but each a person of great affection and
loyalty, encounters which, however gratifying, unavoidably
evoke an ennervating emotional response. I've also done more,
much more work on estate planning, work which even when successful,
is likewise depletive of energy. One must guard against the
mistake of projecting ones own preconceptions onto a text
whose complexity serves to conceal insoluble contradictions.

Maybe I'll make more sense tomorrow. Good night.
Jochen