Dear Barbara,

As for the satisfaction I derive from treading water rather than floating, I think each of us has his or her specific need for emotional and intellectual activity. Perhaps that need depends on the size of the creature.  The eagle is passive as he floats up into the clouds on a thermal.  A hummingbird flaps its wings up to 70 times per second to stay aloft;its heart rate can reach 1,260 beats per minute.  Consider me a hummingbird.  The number of wing beats of insects varies greatly from 4–20 in butterflies to 190 beats/second in bees and up to 1000 beats/second in a small fly.  or consider me a small fly.

I'm much taken with meditation. Is it truthful to argue that ones entire life should be meditation, perhaps with unavoidable interruptions, as few as possible. I consider my writing a protracted, a life-time exercise in meditation. Am I deluding myself?

You ask about the long trip. I've been shuttling between Konnarock, Virginia - where we arrived eighty years ago this coming October, and Massachusetts where I have lived since 1946, with a six year interruption 1956-1962. While my parents were alive, 4 times a year. Subsequent to their deaths, at least once a year, trips which laid end to end would reach to the moon and a third of the way back. My experience of this to and fro is subsumed in the opening lines of Hölderlin'w poem "Patmos" which is a phantasy of an excursion to the Aegean island where Saint John received the revelation of the end of the world.

1 Nah ist
2 Und schwer zu fassen der Gott.
3 Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst
4 Das Rettende auch. 
5 Im Finstern wohnen
6 Die Adler und furchtlos gehn
7 Die Söhne der Alpen über den Abgrund weg
8 Auf leichtgebaueten Brücken.
9 Drum, da gehäuft sind rings
10 Die Gipfel der Zeit, und die Liebsten
11 Nah wohnen, ermattend auf
12 Getrenntesten Bergen,
13 So gib unschuldig Wasser,
14 O Fittige gib uns, treuesten Sinns
15 Hinüberzugehn und wiederzukehren.

If your interested in what these lines mean to me, and would like to practice your German, I'll be glad to oblige.

I obtained some information from the Internet about Dr. Bernard B[r]eitman, about his thinking and his writing. The sphere of transcendental experience into which he invites his readers and his patients, seems potentially very important to me, but I would be more sure of my bearings, if I arrived there by my own intellectual, emotional, and - if you will - spiritual route.  

That's not only enough for now; it's too much. So good night. Greetings to yourself and Micha.

Jochen