March 2, 2011

Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. I'm integrating my reply with my pre-breakfast annotations of the ideas - delusions - inspirations - fantasies that spawn in my mind early in the morning as I awaken. If what I write is too lengthy, too detailed, just skip it, literally and figuratively.

Katenus is very much alive. His prosecution for gift-tax evasion, his self defense leading to spiritual-intellectual self-incrimination was a nightmare in the mind of Jonathan Mengs who is bewildered by the Island scene. Mengs' dream is "evidence" that he doesn't know what to make of it.

Katenus is very much alive. Mengs' nocturnal agitation, his shouts for Joachim, have nudged Katenus into a lighter stratum of sleep and a dream of his own. Katenus dreams that he's received an e-mail, a telephone call, a telegram telling him that he has been selected for the Nobel Prize in literature, - and this although he's never had his name on a single publication.  Here's the story from my letter of 02-27-2011:

"Everyone has his chance to dream. In Chapter 45 it's Katenus' turn.  He dreams that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, but after reflecting on the difficulties of traveling, especially the security measures at the airport, he chooses not to make the trip to Stockholm, but asks the Svenske Akademien just to send him the check.  Katenus himself decides he needs a vacation from the Island and goes to his ancestral home in the mountains. The Swedes however, won't take No for an answer. They tell Katenus, the check can't be mailed, it has to be hand served, and that if he won't travel to Stockholm, they will visit him to deliver both the check and the medal. I've just started this chapter, but it looks as if the stage is set for a lot of action. It'll probably take a few weeks for me to straighten out all the details, - imagine the complications if 24 Swedes converged on 6533 Hayden Run Road."

Yesterday I composed a few paragraphs describing Katenus' railway trip into the mountains on a mixed passenger-freight train, on which he is the only traveler. Day dreaming about Stockholm, he would have missed his whistle stop, had not the conductor recognized him as an old acquaintance. Once on the ground, Katenus is forcefully reminded that he forgot to arrange transportation to get to his house, remotely located on a mountain top. His embarrassment is relieved when a grizzled man in a rusted-out pickup truck offers him a ride. The conversation between the two is the assignment for today's composition.

As I mentioned in the Feb 27th letter, the Svenske Akademien propose to visit Katenuses mountains in order to award him the prize.  In this morning's somnolent epiphany, it occurred to me that maybe the Nobel Prize offer and the proposed visit by the Akademien should be treated as a prank, a joke on Katenus, if not, in a broader perspective a joke on the Nobel Prize ceremonies themselves. Indeed, one of the topics which Katenus plans to discuss in his acceptance speech is the irony of self-conscious elaboration of historical events. Another facet which I want to explore is the response of the local population in having its neck of the backwoods so to speak "put on the map" by a visit from a group of Stockholm dignitaries.  What if it turned out they were coming from Stockholm, Indiana instead of Stockholm, Sweden. As you may surmise, I can see no limits to the opportunities for humor and satire.

Thank you very much for your comments about the composition of examination essays. Mengs identified his efforts in the dungeon cubicle as having two parts: historical and empirical. The historical portion relies on the Biblical texts of Genesis and Exodus. I'm not a "creationist", but I recognise poetry when I read it. It's a puzzle to me and to Mengs, how, since God was never a child, he acquired language in the first place.  Mengs notes that the original use of language was imperative. God was always telling others what to do and what not to do. God created the world by a series of verbal commands.  When God said: Let there be light ... etc. he was giving commands, he was laying down the law for nature. God's conversation with his human creation, Adam and Eve, also was purely imperative. He didn't say, Good Morning, Adam, how did you sleep? Or Good morning Eve, have you had enough breakfast. No, God said: Don't! Don't eat this, don't eat that. Not really a gracious host after all.  Mengs also noted the contradiction between God who when the bush was on fire, repudiated objectivity by declining even to have his name mentioned, and God who then cruelly institutionalized objectivity with innumerable immutable rules and regulations, laws, beginning with the Ten Commandments which he engraved in stone, although the second time around, he told Moses to do it.

When it comes to personal experience, Mengs noted that laws are as inconstant as the clouds and inconsistent as the wind. Legislators, kings, commissioners, are in continuing frenzy to invent new laws while the old ones are neglected, ignored, forgotten. Laws that exist are objects of continuing controversy. No one knows what they mean, what to make of them: Witness the legal profession. That's a fact!

It's also a fact that laws are language. Words are objects - as in banner headlines - visible , accessible to all. The the same time, these same words have individual, personal, subjective meaning to each human being who reads a word or who utters it. The Law denies this personal, subjective meaning of language. Language is ambiguous, being both subjective and objective. (Is the ambiguity of language a fact, or is it an interpretation?) This ambiguity of language, Mengs points out, is the focus at which the trouble begins, where the trouble is located, a focus which cannot be eradicated because it is the essence of human nature.  That answers the examination question. Mengs passed. He got into law school, but then, in retrospect he wished he'd become a plumber.

That's enough for this morning. Stay well, and give my best to Ned.

Jochen

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