April 25, 2022
Dear Nikola,

Thank you for both your letters, the one from today and the one written early in 2020 and now resuscitated. I infer that you are well; that's very good. I very much hope you stay well. As for myself, I feel somewhat desperate in that I see no escape from an existence which is becoming progressively more confined; but for all that, I keep myself in good spirits, working on my novel, expanding my crackpot theology, toying with my dissolute mathematics, and with my scurrilous insistence on interpreting physics  , - and science in general - as social phenomena, as exercises in group thought, such as persuades geese to fly south before winter arrives, and to return to their northern breeding grounds when the days become longer and the air is warmer.

I read with interest your letter of January 2020, which arrived two years and four months belatedly. I interpret it, with its quasi pugnacious assertiveness of spontaeous individuality, and  with its disdainful and quasi contemptuous dismissal of the conventions of verbal discourse, as documenting the two wellsprings of language. I'm not in the least critical.  I've spent much time in the course of many years, pondering the explicit social pressures that create uniformity of spelling, of syntax, and most significantly uniformity of meaning that makes it possible for us to have faith in the validity of mathematical and logical axioms, to have faith in the assertions of physicists, chemists and biologists, not to mention faith in the stories that the historians tell us. It has been said that the just shall live by faith. I ask myself and I ask you: what is the difference between Faith in the Standard Model of cosmology, and in the Standard Model of sub-atomic particles and in the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics, and Faith in the Standard Models of Redemption by Elijah, Jesus or Mohammed? Should we be serious and take the word Model at its meaning? My model electric trains were great when circling the Christmas tree, but they never got me to Pennsylvania Station.

In the evening when I run out of ideas or get too bored with my writing, I pretent I'm studying physics and read the lectures of Richard Feynman.  I find him a very entertaining lecturer, so easy to follow that I actually think I understood everything I read when I read it, but must admit that my 91.8273972602 years old brain has a poor memory and could reproduce almost nothing that I have read. But the effort to pretend to become a physicist is a dignified way to pass what little time remains to me.

I've read the English wikipedia, and made a start on the German wikipedia article about Roger Penrose. I'll skip his contrubutions to popular science and try to come to terms with his mathematical/physical discoveries/inventions once I've received my degree from Richard Feynman.

I hope that you are well and that you continue to be well. Thanks for writing.

EJM