August 23, 2019, 1:50 p.m. Dear Barbara, Thank you for your most recent letter. Again I write down immediately what is on my mind, because my memory is so fleeting, and it will be difficult to the point of impossibility, for me, days or weeks hence, to recover or reconstruct my present thoughts. At the same time, to preclude unseemly haste in our correspondence, I plan to hold this letter for perhaps a week in my computer's memory, before sending it, much as I store food which is too much for one day, in the refrigerator for a week or so, sometimes for so long that it gets moldy. On further contemplation about my intellectual activity, I've decided it's impolite for me to importune my acquaintances and friends with my feelings and with my thoughts. What I have been having on my mind is recited on the Internet; but I find no reason why anyone would want to spend time and energy with my writing, where there are so many activities which are more rewarding. I've long been fascinated by language and literature as instruments of of communication with which we establish and maintain relationships with one another. Now, in my old old age, I begin to understand that there is nothing which will bridge the isolation in which each one of us lives. I make this observation without complaint, without regret, and without any wish that it should be otherwise. I am comfortable and content with the solitude in which I live, and it is across this wide, much cherished chasm of solitude, which does not make me lonely, that I send Micha and yourself my warm end-of-summer greetings and good wishes. Jochen