Dear Marion,

Your letter, which I received last evening and for which I wish to thank you
very very much, reminds me once more, - as if I had ever forgotten! - how
replete with problems and difficulties our lives are; how each of us deals
with these problems and difficulties in his or her own way; how readily the
"well-intentioned" effort to help may prove to be counter-productive; and
how essential it is that each one of us be given the opportunity to live
in a subjectively appropriate manner.

You ask: "What have you been doing with yourself?" My life is an exercise
and in a way, an experiment, in solitude, and the preliminary results seem
to me satisfactory. My days are tranquil and untroubled; I am very grateful;
given my age, they could hardly be better. From the correspondence with my 
parents when I was in college from 1946 to 1949, before I started courting
Margaret, I retrieve frequent reminders how in my youth, I idolized "work"
as the cure to all of life's difficulties. Initially it was the 
pre-fabricated technical academic activity of studying for and passing
"examinations." Later it was practicing medicine; then taking care of 
Margaret in her declining years. Now, in the two years since she has died,
I find myself in the same straits all as the rest of us who are unemployed 
or underemployed, looking for "work".

It turns out that the "work" which I have found, - or invented for myself,
is the making and preserving of documentary records about what I, and
members of my family, have thought felt and understood about our world
in the course of the decades that I have survived. This project entails 
not only composition of letters, essays, novels, poems, but includes
also editing, organizing and "preserving" both the records I myself
have made, and those made by my family, - primarily letters. In addition
to presuming to try to write novels - volume eight is perhaps 40% complete,
and poems - I persist in writing letters, like this one, which are much
too long, much too intimate, and much too detailed, letters which are more 
likely to annoy and embarrass than to gratify and please their targets. 
All this "literary" activity, of course, is inconceivable without contemporary
technology; writing so voluminous could never be accomplished by hand, or even
with the typewriter. But the digital computer - and the Internet - which
make possible for me publication of my writing without cost, makes it possible
also for thousands, - indeed for millions of other would-be Shakespeares to
"publish" their "works". But the day remains limited to 24 hours; the number
of potential readers remains unchanged, and the question who should read
all this, "Wer soll denn das alles lesen?" receives the implicit answer:
Keiner. No one. As a matter of fact, not even I myself have the time and
energy to read all that I have written over the past eighty years. 

On my computer, I have programmed a "server" i.e. a set of programs from which
868 documents, novels, essays, poems, but mostly letters, are accessible to
anyone who has access to the Internet, as of now, in theory only,
because the transmission speed on the DSL connection to which I subscribe
is much too slow; this server is a configuration of files which I could 
easily move to a "website" on the Internet which would cost me perhaps $25 
per month to rent. All this effort of course is a monument to my 
megalomania, - for who, besides myself has reason to care? - but 
my effort is also a symptom of the end of life, a symbol of the desire 
that my all too transient personality should somehow endure after death. 
I used to scoff at the boast of the Latin poet Horace: Exegi monumentum 
aere perennius ..., (I build a monument more durable than brass...); I
understand now that I am as pathetic and ridiculous as everyone else. 
The straight answer to your question, What I have I been doing? is: 
Making a fool of myself sub specie aeternitatis.

Aside from these sententious musings of questionable taste, I have one
bit of practical ophthalmologist's advice concerning your impaired vision,
a symptom of age which has also befallen me. I rarely anymore read from a book
which I hold in my hand. I read from the computer screen where print
can be made to appear very large and very easy to read. I couldn't do
without it. There are many thousands of books available on the Internet
free of charge; and virtually all contemporary published books are
avaiable as "e-books" whose print can be displayed in large letters
on the computer screen. "e-books" can allso be borrowed from public 
libraries.

If you would like letters from me, tell me what we should correspond
about, and I would do my best - which might not be good enough.
Meanwhile my fervent wishes go to Minneapolis to greet you, and my
thoughts are with you.

Love, Jochen