Dear Nikola,
Thank you for your letter. Thank you also for expressing again your willingness to help me put my house in order. I made that proposal months ago intending to design a situation which would potentially be beneficial to both of us; specifically to you, in that it would provide you with a framework, however temporary, to shield you against squalls of emotional instability. Now, that your emotional affairs seem to have put themselves in order, your potential activities in Belmont might take their proper place, and in fact a very low place, in the hierarchy of opportunities open to you. If the priority turned out to be so low as never to be realized, I should not be disappointed. I would keep busy in other ways with other matters.

The epistemology which I entertain is tripartite: knowing that ..., knowing how ..., knowing why ... In German: Wissen, Koennen, Verstehen, entailing three different modes of mental disposition. Knowing that ... (Wissen) is the neo-scholastic ability to reproduce in the appropriate dimensions the verbal dogmata that purport to reflect the "truths" and "realities" of our social communities. Knowing how ... (Koennen) is the aggregate of the mental- physical skills that is given to us to acquire and to exercise in thought, speech, music, calculation, navigation, interaction, ... from finding our way home to finding our path to the moon, or to Solaris. Knowing why, understanding, (Verstehen) is ones ability to transcend the boundaries of his subjectivity to orient oneself, to become familiar with, and to find oneself "at home" in the infinitely remote world created and inhabited by ones next-door neighbor.

Such is my pretentious and presumptuous reaction to your recent letters inviting me not only to Solaris, but to les Champs-Élysées to meet the acupuncturist and the astrologer before abandoning the peaceful solitude of snow-covered New Hampshire, braving the clouds of Covid-19 to winter among the Trump-loving throngs of crowded sun-drenched Florida. To write "Das hat mit mir nichts zu tun," would be not only rude, but also untrue, inasmuch as like Terence's Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor), I claim: homo sum humani a me nihil alienum puto.

I have in fact been trying to obtain some perspective on the obvious inadequacies of my profession, indulging in my customary superficial Wikipedia self-improvement projects by acquiring factual information about illustrious predecessors such as Galen of ancient Rome, his Renaissance Swiss detractor Theophrastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim, and Vesalius, the first practitioner of modern anatomical dissecting. Of these, Paracelsus is of special interest, since he spurned Galen's interests in the animality of human nature, in deference to the apparent universality of the human spirit which he found patterned in the stars. I infer that the success of Paracelsus' practice of medicine derived from his studied rejection of the pretentious social formalities of his colleagues with which they added personal insult to the inescapable injuries of illness.  Instead, Paracelsus, like latter-day acupuncturists offered his suffering patients well-advertised empathy and sympathy, in part by linking their fates and fortunes to the infinities of the firmament. 

Thank you again: The panoply of ideas to which you invite me, provides me with unending opportunity in the practice of understanding. Please give my regards to your parents. Yourself, stay well, purposeful and content. 
EJM