Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. I apologize for having importuned you
so insistently with unconventional opinions. Apologies, of course,
are easy. Reformation is difficult to the point of impossibility.

The last three days have been distorted by a wild dental abscess on
the left side of the jaw. The pain has disappeared; the swelling seems
to be slowly subsiding. At Klemens' urging, I have made an appointment
with a dentist who for the past three decades now has been graciously
superintending the inexorable decay of my dentition. Since professional
intervention seemed ineffectual I resorted to gambling. I made a bet
that I could manage to die before I got into serious difficulties by
neglecting my teeth. I'm not yet certain, but there's a possibility 
that I have lost my bet.

Since on the one hand, I can't help thinking and writing about the
issues that arise from our correspondence, but on the other hand,
I don't want to importune you with my craziness, I decided I would
file what occurs to me from time to time in secret locations on my
web site and offer you the key, which for today is:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/diary12/d120119.00
if you have the stomach and care to look.

I also made a New Year's resolution to compose my novel in parallel
concurrently in English as well as German, and I've begun with the
most recent chapter of Die Freunde which may now be found in English at 
http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/e049.html
In preparing the English version I started with the German text, which
I replaced sentence by sentence with an English translation, paraphrase,
emendation or expansion, with the consequence that the English version
has 28% more words than the German, while on average English words are
only 94% as long as the German ones. Such statistics I find trivial but
amusing.

More significant to me seems an observation of differences in style.
The German is written in the language I learned from reading, memorizing
and reciting to myself literature and criticism of august provenance;
while the English is at least in part the koine which comes naturally
when I converse with my patients or my colleagues. - With interesting
esthetic consequences: The German is protected by the aristocratic
eloquence with which it boasts. Its fatuousness is masked by its 
elegance. The English version which has no such protection sounds a
bit corny in my ears.

The next "Status Review Hearing" in the Nantucket case has been
scheduled for April 5. Think of it! Winter is almost over. The Court's
(in)action at the December 13th hearing proved so embarrassing to the
Court that on the official records it entered the notation:
"12/13/2011  14:00 Conf:review status  Event not reached by Court"
The comedy is entering a new stage: reason enough to remain alert and
alive.

My very best wishes to you and Ned.

Jochen