Dear Alex,

In the wake of our telephone conversation this morning, I am reminded
of my long-standing interest in defining "the present", specifically
the boundary between present and past. My first assignment in ophthalmology
was the study of eye movements, especially the saccadic movements which
define the minimum mechanically identifiable period of visual perceptions,
in the absence of all understanding of how these perceptions are integrated
into meaningful images and experiences. How should one distinguish the
image which dominates and defines the present from the memory of that image, 
from the "after-image" not in the residual excitation of retinal rods
and cones but in the life-long residual excitation of memory in the cells 
and fibers of the cerebral cortex?

All this in the context of the question of the present as that period
(in memory) when existence is personal, individual, and its publication
is - or should be - shameful, and identification of the boundary of this 
compelling immediate present with the past, where existence becomes history, 
becomes a story, become myth, a tale to be related without shame and without 
embarrassment, a spiritual transformation which is the essence of poetry - 
and of literature in general. (Interestingly, a major theological issue
for Kierkegaard was the program of 19th Century authors to consider the
crucifixion as history - "world-historical" was his term of contempt - 
while he considered contemporaneousness or simultaneousness, "samtighed",
same-timeliness is the term he used, as the essence of "being a Christian.")

No need for you to reply or any of this, or even to think about it.
But since I suffer from a compulsive disorder to write down and out
whatever happens to be on my mind, I thought I would e-mail it to you.

Love, Jochen