Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. We've long since recovered from our trip a week
ago to New Haven. What was most stressful was the cramped car, five passengers,
Laura, Leah, Laura's brother Charlie, Margaret and myself stuffed into our
purportedly seven passenger minivan. Klemens was the driver. He helped
a great deal by sliding his seat forward, giving my arthritic right hip
which will not flex, immediately behind him a chance to stretch - somewhat.
No one complained. Everyones good nature shone. The trip is short, only
150 minutes each way. I slept most of the time.

Tomorrow Nathaniel flies to a music school in Bloomington, Indiana, which
has given him an audition. I don't know what that means. He seems well and
in retrospect quite content with last week's concert. His future, of course,
is uncertain; but in this day and age an uncertain future is arguably
preferable to the certainties of medical school or law school.

Your comments about the uncertainties of Joanna's physics career, remind me
of my own situation in 1946 when I came to Harvard to study physics. I had
done very well in physics at Germantown Friends School and had gotten an
almost perfect score on the College Aptitude Test. I've spent the past 66 
years nursing feelings of inferiority for not having become a physicist and
trying to understand why I turned away from physics so abruptly - 
although I'm still good enough at it to intimidate the plumbing board.
In conclusion, rightly or wrongly, and cautiously, because this is clearly
a sour-grapes scenario - I explain my failure as the consequence of my
mistakenly confusing physics with metaphysics. I approached physics with
Faust's anticipation "dass ich erkenne was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhält"
(that I might understand the inward forces that maintain the world) At the
end of a lifetime, I'm able finally to propound some hypotheses as to how 
these "forces" might be characterized and why physics can't describe them.
- as a practical matter, I now let the characters of my novels do the talking - . 
I die with an eerie feeling that if, like a cat, I had nine lives, 
the next time around, if I knew then what I know now, 
I might indeed become a physicist - or a mathematician - because I
wouldn't be looking for answers that are not to be found, but would be satisfied
to be a "team player" in our society's Babylonian construction project
which we call "science".

I'm afraid the legal efforts in which I had to engage briefly a week or so ago
have somewhat toxic spiritual emenations. I think they may have had an effect
on my mind, - I hope it's only transient -, analogous to that of a pungent 
aroma on the taste buds or on the sense of smell, with the consequence that
the texts which I'm preparing for publication which once seemed innovative and brilliant,
now strike me as dull, verbose, insipid and uninteresting. I'm led to ask myself: 
why publish this boring stuff which will be read, if at all, only to be scoffed at. 
The obvious answer is that I have nothing else to offer, and nothing else to do. 
I think I have no choice but to proceed.

Snowdrops appeared in the garden today; spring must be on the way.

Jochen