January 23, 2023

Dear Donald,

Thank you for your letter.  Thank you for thinking of me.  Thank you for telling me what's going on with you.  I admire your optimism and courage.  I'd like to think that they rub off on me.  But mine is the courage of folly.  I pretend there's gold at the bottom and that that it's not going to hurt, and that hurtling down the cliff into the abyss, into the endless ocean, will be fun because that's where Alberich's treasure is hidden.

I spend all my waking hours (when not on the toilet) sitting at my desk, barely able to move.  My body has become too crippled not only to negotiate stairs, not only to walk unsupported across the room, or even to stand without leaning on a table, a chair or a walker, but I'm too crippled, even though I'm out of gear, to be able to lift the foot off the gas pedal; so, as a result, without my going anywhere at all, my mind is racing in a way it never has before, in a manner that might be or should be considered indecent or insane.  I've discovered that when poor people go crazy they're locked up in jail or in the asylum.  When the wealthy go off the rails, they purchase their retirement in a sanatorium.

Living means nothing, if it's not forever.  The end of life is unimaginable.  That's why the Norse sent their heroes to Valhalla, and the Christians, depending on which brand, send either the faithful or those who have paid their annual dues, if not both, to Paradise, to Eden.  But Paradise, whether finite or infinite, would vanish and could never be found if either space or time had no boundaries.  That's why Einstein placed limits on space and time.  It was in order to make space and time available for paradise, that Einstein decreed them both to be limited by prohibiting their quotient, velocity, from ever exceeding 299,792,458 meters per second, the speed of light.

With due apologies for contributing to global warming, I send to both you and Jan my warmest mid-winter wishes for health and happiness.  Jochen