Dear Nikola,

Thank you for sending me a copy or your letter, which if I understand correctly
you composed for another recipient, and sent to me because you thought I
might be interested. You were correct, I am interested, and I thank you for
giving me something more to think about. That something more is first and 
foremost my own ignorance. Many of the modern composers to whose works
you allude with such elegance, I have not even begun to try to "understand",
without any notion about what I should think, or even how I should try to
think about them. I am, as you know, very much aware of my age, only five
months short of 90 years, very much aware of my difficulties walking, or
even standing, and cognizant that I must assume my mental abilities to
be similarly on the threshold, - no not of decline, but of collapse.

I may or may not have mentioned to you that among my ambitious presumptuous
and pretentious pipe dreams is to write a cycle of "Sonette an Chronos"
as a shamefully disrespectful parody of Rilkes "Sonette an Orpheus". In
preparation for this project I am practicing meditating about Time. 
The more I think about Time, the more inescapable it become to my intuition, 
that by its very nature, Time is, and must be, continuously flowing,
a stream which not only has neither discernable beginning nor end, 
but is not susceptible to and will not admit divisions or interruptions.
I am reminded of the teachings of Heracleitus. 

I recently read a set of lecture notes about Special Relativity, and
was startled by a reference to "transporting space", as if "space" were 
contained in a box which might be moved from my attic into your basement. 
Analogous to my intuition of "Time" as having neither beginning nor end 
nor subdivision, I found myself convinced that Space was by its nature, 
inherently and essentially unbounded. I was reminded of Anaximander's 
teaching about the Apeiron, the Unbounded from which everything that exists 
comes into being, and into which that which exists ultimately decays, 
(by its decay requiting the injustice of its existence.)

Of course I am sensitive to and acknowledge the many cyclical phenomena of
nature, the seasons of the year, the months, the days and nights, the
pulsation of the heart, the in and out of breathing. I suggest that these
cyclical phenomena may be interpreted as being superimposed or projected on 
time by nothing less than being recapitulated by the memory,
by a mental process which far from interrupting, confirms the flow of time. 
I further suggest that the operations of geography and geometry 
which enable us to come to terms of sorts with the expanse of unbounded Space 
by projecting onto this Space patterns and constructs 
which seem to divide and partition Space, are,
faculties of the human mind analogous to memory, 
which enable the mind to orient itself 
in the otherwise incomprehensible vastness of the unbounded.

Because I was dissatisfied with and uncertain of my understanding of Space
and Time, and perhaps because I had nothing of substance to impart to the
sonnets I wanted to write, I persuaded myself that I should review and 
"upgrade" my knowledge of "physics". Nowadays such efforts in self-education,
in self-improvement, are very accessiblle and very inexpensive. The Internet,
it seems to me, is crowded with a spectrum of physicists eager with
evangelical fervor to share the intellectual and spiritual edification
that their discipline seems to promise. For example it is Richard Feynman
who writes in an epilogue to a three volume collection of his physics
lectures:

"Finally, may I add that the main purpose of my teaching has not been to prepare you for some examination—it was not even to prepare you to serve industry or the military. I wanted most to give you some appreciation of the wonderful world and the physicist’s way of looking at it, which, I believe, is a major part of the true culture of modern times. (There are probably professors of other subjects who would object, but I believe that they are completely wrong.)

Perhaps you will not only have some appreciation of this culture; it is even possible that you may want to join in the greatest adventure that the human mind has ever begun."

In my very old age, I presume to re-embarque on the study of physics as I have
studied literature for many years, 
a) by listening to and looking at the words, giving the words themsemlves 
the opportunity to address my fellow listener or reader without my intrusive 
interpretation.
b) by maintaining a catalogue of relevant new concepts that correspond 
to my own experience.
c) by maintaining a catalogue of relevant new concepts claimed by the 
lecturer to flow from experiment
d) by maintaining a catalogue of relevant new concepts required by the
lecturer to be taken on faith
e) by maintaining a catalogue of new mathematical concepts required to
be memorized and practiced.

The strict symbolism of reasoning, mathematics and logic, 
are in fact exhibitions of the constraints, of the laws of human thought. 
These laws we discover not by observation, not by experiment, but by the
exercise, by the practice, by the act of thinking itself.
Hence the intrinsic quasi esthetic value of mathematics.
Hence also the circumstance which seerms to me undeniable that
mathematics is not essential for thought. 
It is possible to think in the absence of mathematics.
Mathematics does not guarantee the validity of thought.
Indeed there are circumstances where calculation masks that validity,
because while "figures don't lie", "liars can figure."

Arguably and obviously even "correct" calculations do not assure
vouchsafe