Dear Nikola,
Thank you very much for your letter. I think of you very frequently with the fervent hope that you are managing. At the same time, so far as I am concerned, I am very much aware of the physical and mental limitations that come with my age and which I cannot overcome. The only thing that I can do for you is 
a) to urge you to not to stop taking your medications, 
b) to urge you to consider it your task to care for and to take care of your parents, and 
c) to suggest that you occupy your mind with as much determination and discipline as you can muster, with whatever project, reading, writing, perhaps even musical composition, which seems most immediately accessible, and ultimately most compelling to you.  If there is any specific topic, or any particular book about which you would like to correspond with me, I am open to your suggestions.

As I may have mentioned to you, my most recent project was the composition in German, of sonnets addressed to the Greek god Chronos, this presumptuous effort as a shameless and shameful parody of Rilkes Sonette an Orpheus.  Since Rilkes sonnets are 55 in number, I decided to pause after no. 56. Some of the poems I've written, I can't be proud of.

Meanwhile I am turning again to the composition of drama, initially reviewing the text which I wrote last year about "Krötenrettung", the "Rescue of the Toads", with the initial determination that my text is perhaps too long, comprising 18476 words, as compared with Hofmannsthal's Arabella, 14049 words, or Ariadne auf Naxos, 7952 words, or Fidelio, 5193 words.  Plays for the theatre are much longer: Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans, 25848 words, Schiller's Braut von Messina, 20962 words, King Lear, 27574 words, and Hamlet 32013 words.

Next I must decide whether to leave "Krötenrettung" as it is, to shorten it to a conventional operat libretto, or to expand it to a tragic comedy for the theatre, (what theatre?) before proceeding to my next project, which, if I'm up to it, might be a text, musical or theatrical, about the disintegration of a social order.

My very best wishes to you and your parents. Please give them my regards.

EJM