Dear Cyndy,

The reasons why on occasion I drive Klemens to the airport
and to his office are obvious and simple, economic and social.
He usually takes the bus and the subway to his hospital.  If
he left the car at the airport or at his office, he would incur
substantial parking garage charges.  Yesterday, however, he took
the red Dodge to Emerson Hospital in Concord where he is director
of a dialysis unit and a member of the medical staff. When he
came home, he had an hour-long conference call with colleagues in
some national organization for which he is a consultant. Then he
needed to go in town for his Thursday clinic. No time for bus and
subway. My driving him not only saves parking charges but also makes
the car available for my use. We have four cars for six drivers.
Don't you find the economics simple and obvious? The time spent
in the car together gives us a chance to talk, about the children,
about his work at the hospitals, with the dialysis clinic, with the
national network forum (on which he is serving a two year stint as
president) and about his work with the Medicare/Medicaid authorities
in Baltimore. Gives me a chance to tell him about my writing, about
my (mis)understanding of the political and legal scene. What could
be more satisfactory?  What I plan in some later chapter is to describe
the evolving father-son relationship in greater detail. Given your own
family experiences, you understand that such relationships are never
simple and must be calibrated against other family obligations.

Nathaniel is having some difficulties recruiting singers and chorus
for the 9th Symphony which he hopes to perform in conjunction with
the Yale commencement ceremonies. The approximate date: May 18.
It's obviously an ambitious project.
Because the music is so difficult, I urged him to schedule many
rehearsals and to put himself in a position where failure would not
embarrass or humiliate him. He understands, and I understand. Like me,
he needs ambitious projects to make life meaningful.

If I remember correctly, you were critical of the lengthy theoretical
dissertation that weighed excessively on the last half of chapter 51.
I agreed, and took, so to speak, the bull by the horns, - excuse the
inapposite metaphor, and excised the ballast. But I was too fond of my
own verbiage to throw it out. To preserve it, I made space in what is
temporarily denominated as chapter 52, for later deposition in an appendix
of some sort, unless the text swells to such an extent as to warrant
a volume of its own. The present chapter 52 begins with a set of notes
attributed to Katenus, - yet to be reconciled with his dinner speeches
in chapter 49. - These notes are as of now incomplete. I'm still revising
and expanding them. The rest of the 22 page chapter is taken up with
three dialogues between Jonathan and Joachim, very informal discussions 
about Katenuses theories. The original draft was in German; the English
translation, at this juncture very awkward and very wordy, will require
much work before I accept the circumstance that it wasn't worth writing
in the first place. It certainly is not worth reading in its present
state.

As of now, I haven't recovered from my fascination with Katenuses
theories:

a) that knowledge is the assimilation of the mind to the environment,
that ones "knowledge" of language, of history, of physics, of chemistry or
of anything at all, can be consistently and very usefully interpreted as
modifications of the mind by stimuli from the "external" world.  The
biochemical or biophysical changes with which these modifications might be
demonstrated will make them plausible to those who as Plato said, consider
real nothing but which they can touch with their hands, but will add nothing
to our understanding which must remain phenomenological.

b) that the mind which has assimilated its environment will synthesize
spurious, incomplete, and fragmentary imagery of that environment.
This imagery, expressed in mathematical and especially verbal symbols,
Katenus calls "ideals". The mental processes by which ideals are created,
Katenus calls "idealization." The world of ideals, the conceptualized
or interpreted world, tends to interfere with perception and may impair
the essential processes of assimilation. (Consider all the spurious
theories with which human beings have cluttered their minds in the course
of time.) (Systematic) doubt, scepticism which Katenus calls de-idealization, 
is essential for preserving intellectual (spiritual) order and sanity.

That's enough, - maybe too much - for this letter. When I next write,
I may disclose Katenuses theories of ethics or I may not. Meanwhile,
with the usual ironic disclaimer, that you may or will find what I've
written obnoxious, I'll provide you with the URL to the dialogues on
which I'm still working. You click on the URL at your own risk:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/e052.html
I'll defer to Shakespeare for the conclusion:
"As you from sins would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free."
Jochen