September 26, 2011

Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter with its challenges, which I shall address in turn.

Mr. Esposito is a person much deficient in what my mother called "Zivil Courage", i.e. the courage of the civilian confronting authority as distinct from military courage for which one is awarded the Medal of Honor. My mother displayed much Zivil Courage in Germany, and I appear to have inherited from her a surfeit.  Probably on account of the language barrier, my mother's Zivil Courage withered after she arrived on these shores.
Mr. Esposito, an engineer of very limited talents who has survived by pleasing his clients, now finds himself uncomfortable asked to take sides in a very sharp conflict between Nantucket and myself. His instinct is to duck. Since he neither signed nor sealed my questionnaire, I can't use it except as a template for direct and cross examination.  Ordinarily I wouldn't be permitted to cross-examine a witness whom I had called to testify in my favor.  Arguably if I ostensibly called him to testify why he had refused to sign, I could cross-examine him on other issues. A further complication of which I must take note is that the Appeals Court traditionally defers to the trial court concerning issues of fact; and while the Appeals Court has been, and I hope will continue to be my friend, the trial court has been my enemy, and I must assume its attitude will not change. Therefore I will try to slant my case toward procedural issues - Mr. Ciamataro didn't comply with the Appeals Court order - which the Appeals Court will adjudicate - rather than with factual issues - the plumbing really doesn't leak, which would be in the province of the trial court.  The biggest danger for me is that if waterboarded, so to speak, Mr. Esposito would recant and testify that my plumbing was indeed very poor and needed to be ripped out. A smart attorney would sense Mr. Esposito's timidity and try to exploit it. I have as yet no indication of Mr. Pucci's interrogatory skills, but it's prudent to assume they are superior to mine. I surely have my work cut out for me.

Your second question it seems to me is more about the style than about the content of our correspondence. It's my conviction as you might know from Chapter Seven: http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/andere/E07.html that sin and evil are discoverable only in oneself; and for me to learn about them all that's necessary is to look into the mirror.  Since many of the 51 letters, 53431 words, approximately 133 printed pages with which I've inunated your e-mail box in the 9 months of this year tell you about me - me - me, I should think you have more exposure to sin and evil than is good for you.

The second facet of my answer to your second question is that of late - and I can't date the onset of my conversion - I've become progressively disenchanted with the limitations of language in the face of reality - as a reflection of experience, of "Erleben". Writing "about" truth and falsehood, good and evil, knowing and not knowing, facts and fictions, has severe constraints and spawns a scholastic universe of its own, with arbitrary definitions and contrived criteria of truth. That's not good news for the lawyer or for the professor of history, and poses a serious challenge to the scientist whose "knowledge" purports to "explain" nature. Hence I've lost interest in the formal academic exposition of "philosophy", preferring instead to compose "fiction" whose "truth" although indirect and elliptical to the exposition, now appears to me more valid than the purported factual and conceptual truth which I so avidly pursued in my youth. That having been said, I'm still very much open to theoretical investigations of all kinds.  But it's you who must ask the questions. I will try to rise to the challenge.

Your question about age is important. I've always been scornful of persons who deny their age, of septuagenarians who marry twenty-five year old blondes, of Gustav von Aschenbach types why dye their hair and apply rouge to their cheeks to make themselves attractive to younger generations. I discern in myself a disconcerting analogy.  While Margaret's physical limitations preclude our setting out on ten mile hikes, I think nothing about climbing a sixteen foot ladder to paint the cedar shingles on this house, - and would do so tomorrow if I deemed it worth the anxiety it causes Margaret, think nothing about wielding the chain saw to cut down trees that have died, to install the wiring on Nantucket, to earn frequent-driver miles by shuttling 850 miles oneway between Belmont and Konnarock several times a year, think nothing about arguing as if there were no tomorrow, my case before the trial court or before the appeals court even though I'm so deaf I hear only half of what the judge is saying, That's not how 81 year-olds are expected to spend their time, - but rather in a retirement community, advertised as eliminating "maintenance worries," being driven to medical appointments one after the other, having cataract extraction, hip replacement, CT scans, colonoscopies, ultrasounds, kidney biopsy....  I'm acting twenty years younger than my age; it's indecent and I understand it can't go on, and in fact I don't want it to go on.  Five years hence I'll be eight-six, ten years from now, ninety-one. Probably sooner rather than later I'll be older than is good for me.  I don't know how to stop myself.  I do get tired, sometimes very tired from climbing even a single flight of stairs. In mid-morning, I regularly fall asleep at the computer. I often tell Margaret, I hope I don't wake up tomorrow, - but so far - obviously - my wish hasn't been fulfilled.  I've taken care of enough old people to know that if one gets old enough there's always a day on which one has reason to wish that one had died the week before. My do-it-yourself passion extends even to dying; but the obstacles appear insuperable.  Margaret can't manage without me; Klemens and the grandchildren and maybe even Laura would feel guilty for having abandoned me.  As a reason for continuing to live, that's the ultimate irony.

And here's my unasked for ophthalmologic advice. On January 21, of this year I wrote: "I'm pleased that your driver's license has been renewed." Unless there's been a severe loss of vision since then, you have no business talking to an eye surgeon about cataract extraction.  If you can't drive safely, it's most likely the consequence of an aging nervous system which won't be rejuvenated by cataract surgery. And even if the cataract prevented driving, the recognized risk of accelerating macular degeneration by cataract surgery - your unthinking eye doctor notwithstanding - isn't worth the limited chance that such surgery would prolong your driving career for but a limited period of time.  So far as reading is concerned, if you're having trouble that isn't relieved by strong reading glasses and very good lighting, let David and Manuela set up a large computer screen for you on which you can obtain as much magnification as you need to read. Although I have 20/20 vision in my right eye, still I have much difficulty with even ordinary print and preferentially read on the computer screen where I routinely set the text to appear in large bold black type. There's an enormous volume of digitized literature available at no cost, e.g. in the Gutenberg Project, from Google books, and other sources. If you need to read conventionally printed materials, you can have David mount a video camera on an adjustable photographic stand to display any flat image on your computer screen at whatever magnification you need. Stop looking for perfect health or immortality in surgeon's offices or you'll be in the operating room before you know it.

Please give my best to Ned.

Jochen

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