Dear Dr. Meyer: Practically speaking my question concerned, as you might have surmised, sleep: I mean the ability to fall asleep after such thinking as we are doing here. I have not slept much. At times sleep has seemed intensely necessary; at other times strangely absent. Tonight, for instance, on two nights of no sleep and many more of little (but let us not automatically say "poor") sleep, I stopped by to be with the neighbors whom we shared Christmas, and talked there animatedly about music (which I intend to teach-around to their daughter tomorrow), being listened to with rapt attention, and no exhaustion on my part. This I did after the previous night barging into my parents' room at 3 am and asking for help sleeping, whereupon, in spite of all the difficulties of the previous days, they cherished me and saved me. I thus went home tonight and found myself obligated (obligated, I say, for my own sake), to this letter. By the identity of self as illusion, are you alluding perhaps to the cataract that my family and I have been going through, and seem almost to have gotten through? I am now a different person, my mother somewhat different, my father I do not know yet. For he is not thankful, thinks my talking to you a sort of mitzvot, and is imparting: in the imperative mood, no less: that I consider keeping my distance (well, options there at least!). I tried to explain to him the difficulty with commanding me, but I was not listened to. I have listened to my parents down to the uttermost farthing; I have never interrupted them; I have sat in rapt attention, and had them share their wisdom with me; nobody has listened to me, and when I try to explicate things they get increasingly frustrated. Did you plan all this, Dr. Meyer? For it seemed planned down to the minutest detail. If not, who planned it? For it seems the door to my life, and I have walked through it. I wish to take you up on your offer to come stay: could it be Saturday night? My parents and I, still on enjoyable terms, thank God: I shall practice enfolding all this thought when I am with them: will be going to watch a skiing movie in Newburyport, and I will be able to get down to your house after dinner. Shall I bring anything (in the event)? Rilke: You, my friend, are alone, because . . . We, with words and pointing fingers, gradually make the world our own---- perhaps its weakest, most hazardous part. Who points fingers at a smell? Yet you feel so many of those forces that threaten us... you recognize the dead, and you cower before the magic spell. Look, now we together must manage with piecework and parts, as if they were the whole. Helping you will be hard. Above all: don't plant me in your heart. I'd grow too fast. Were I to remain in need of a lullaby, perhaps you would (if still awake at such time) be willing to read this poem in the original to me over the phone. Then again, the relevance of this poem to my own situation may be too startling. I opened to this page at random. But I think I will sleep... On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 7:07 PM Ernst Meyer wrote: On Wed, 2020-01-01 at 16:19 -0500, Nikola Chubrich wrote: > Dare we believe in a kind God, who grants us the time we need to > finish what we must? Dear Nicola, Your question: "Dare we believe in a kind God, who grants us the time we need to finish what we must? My reply: a) Please note that a reply is a reply and does not purport to give an answer. Subsidiary questions; b) who what and where is the "good God". c) how and by whom is "the time we need to finish what we must" determined? I rely on Spinoza for the identification of God with Nature. Deus sive Natura. God is Nature and Nature is God. The identity of God and Nature assures the "goodness" of God and the divinity of nature. It has been my contention for some years (cf. the disquisitions of Maximilian Katenus in my novel "Vier Freunde" that the identity of self is an illusion, that with the course of time, each one of us is subject to unpredicable change. that human knowledge is the assimilation BY the human mind of the world which it purports to know, and that human action is the assimilation TO the human mind of the world which purports to specify its conduct. I am recurrently impressed with the widsom and truth of Aesops fable about the fox and the sour grapes. My answer to your question: "Dare we believe in a kind God, who grants us the time we need to finish what we must?" is that the mercy of nature is obvious, since the time we need to finish what we must, is always available, because that time is unavoidably determined by the time that is granted to us. Q.e.d. EJM