1  2  3

April 16, 2001 directly after our phone conversation

Dear Jackie,

Even before I receive your letter, which I assure you will be read and reread and taken to heart, as I do all of your letters, there were some "hot" issues among those that we discussed which I want to amplify, discuss a bit more; I guess I have a felt need to continue our conversation.

Jackie, you have never been boring. Not then, not now, and I'm sure to the point of bedrock conviction, not ever.

Back then, way back in early college days (I'm just letting my thoughts tumble out, so please don't look for a logic in the order or general grouping), I was under the impression that you were going out with others, and that your heart could be seized by someone else at any moment. A good deal of that last relates to a lack of confidence in my own value, something which was a good deal more acute in the days of my youth, and to which I will return in a moment. I couldn't be both committed and uncommitted at the same time, and that also played into my calling things "off". Plus, I was intimidated by your massive intelligence. I have never admitted this before, not even to myself, but there it is. That puts you in a terrible position, I know; it is like having a great virtue perceived as a negative. But I think that we are both older enough, wiser enough now, that as we do this probably necessary dissection we can both see these things as "objects" in a way.

That my foolish act of sundering us would have more than a passing effect on you had not occurred to me. If one has low self-esteem about everything but a few talents, well, one just doesn't know or believe that someone else may value you, let alone that such an act might have life-altering effects. That is not a reflection on you, you see. It relates to my interior self in a way you could not have known then, and which I would not have known how to express at the time. You could not know how many nights I spent aching, for years, feeling that there were just too many things that were not right about me. There was no reasonableness about a lot of that. Somehow I had to be at the top of the heap, or I would be at the bottom. I think there's no reason to continue in this vein, but in any sort of post mortem you'll have to take into account that what may have appeared to be confidence was a façade, that I had a sense of shame about myself that could easily be touched and that I lacked the tools to deal with my own issues. All this is probably impossibly trite, but it lies at the core of the matter nevertheless.

I did have a fantasy that we would reconnect one day. And that required a hiatus, which in a way we certainly have had, but my fantasy encompassed a romantic reconnection. Of course I should have called or written, but you know, it was only a very few semesters later that I received your wedding announcement. Then it was too late, I had to retire all fantasies, and life of sorts had to go on.

Stravinsky said, (and it probably was akin to a borrowed proverb), old sins cannot be undone, only forgiven. For mine, I have to ask your forgiveness, and your understanding of my blind parts. And I have to ask you to believe that I understand, accept and no doubt deserve your anger. That it relates to events of about forty years ago doesn't make it any the less real, potent or necessary to express. I'm only sorry that you've had to carry it with you for so long, like a sort of abscess that wants lanceing. As to punishment, I will assure you that I punished myself with mental-emotional flogging for a very long time for my fundamental error, and ultimately had to do the best I could to forgive myself. I consider this quite different from speculation about roads not taken, nostalgia, and just wishing we were all young again, at least physically so.

My final statement about this at this time is not easy, and I'm not certain that I can express the truth of it just right, but I'm going to try. You were so important to me that I almost couldn't stand it. I think that I had to become an independent me before I would have been right for you, or anyone else for that matter. Yes, I needed some life adventures and so on, but that's actually somewhat secondary. I needed to become a developed me, and in that area I've always been somewhat retarded to put it bluntly. That isn't to say that somehow I'm consistently whole now, but just to say that whatever I've become in terms of being a rational, grown up person, I was far less then. When Ira and Lisa were leaving Meredith, to go to their cabin in Canada-in Ira's case at least--I said to Ira, "When I was in high school I was really fucked up." Ira said, "We all were.", which was very generous of him, but I really meant it. I should not have limited my statement to those years, because that "fucked upness" extended quite a long time following.

My not having sex with you was not at all related to anything about you. In fact just thinking of you was enough to steam me up, so to speak. I feared pregnancy, disapproval (your mother, my parents) and the sort of snickering, smirking reactions on the parts of our peers should anyone find out about this. I did not like the sort of sneaking around that we had to do, to do what we did do, and did not want there to be anything clandestine about it. Recall that after high school we really did not have the opportunity. Do not ever think, not even in passing, that I found you less that entirely desirable.

In fact the first time I did have sex, at age 23 no less, she did become pregnant, and I married for "God, mother, apple pie, doing the right thing", a bad idea whose time had come, evidently. I blame only myself for that, and all ills that followed. None of it was (her) fault.
You may think all of the above reflects stupidity, or ignorance, childishness, whatever, and you'd probably be right.

For the present, I do not consider you to be just an "old girlfriend", or that I write to you just because I'm steeped in nostalgia. You expressed it beautifully in one of your letters in which you said we would always have those connections from our past. No, you remain a vital, living person, and a person I would seek out as a friend if I were meeting you for the first time. Of course I still have feelings for you, because we were what we were, and because I am who I am, and you could call it a "torch", if you like. But please do not consider it threatening. If circumstances permitted, we might both want to consider whether or not we wanted to do anything about that, as two sixty-year-olds. But I'm not about to do anything to make you uncomfortable, and I'm not into hurting anyone else either, unless reasons are so compelling as to make that necessary. Just accept a little warmth from this old heart
I do value and esteem you. The hardest thing to forgive, truthfully, is that I hurt you.

Still, my love and warmest thoughts are sent your way.

Dear Jackie,

You are right. It was a terrible waste, and a dreadful loss, for both of us I might add, when I terminated things. You indicated that you couldn't come sort of slinking back, and I appreciate that. Neither could I, though I sure thought of it. I imagined it would be "Too bad, sucker. You had your chance."

I think that soon we'll be able to just accept that we were coming from different premises, never really well articulated at the time, with different sets of assumptions. Everything I said in my last letter about this is true. You did play a part in this splitting up, more than you would have realized, though. We made plans, we looked into the future, and I loved you like crazy, no kidding. But you did keep going out with other guys. And you did keep being smitten by one person or another whenever you were in some other location. In a way I can see this as natural now, but you have to understand that this wasn't consistent with my idea of people loving each other. It made me feel that I wasn't enough, that you were actually looking for someone to replace me despite what you said; it seemed to me that your actions were contradicting your words. You've no idea how that hurt, and I was too proud to tell you so. Sometimes I would read what you'd written in whichever was the annual from the previous year for comfort. Other times I would just try to grin and bear it. For whatever reason, when we were in high school I didn't mind it as much if you went out with Ira, because in a different way, I loved him too. You once said, "when I'm not near the one I love, I love the one I'm near." Of course you were going out with other people in Boston. I was being "Straight Arrow" in L.A. because I couldn't be both committed and a free spirit. I don't separate love and romance quite the way you do. Besides the wonderful good parts, our relationship was fraught with anxiety and pain as well, for me. (I'm sure I gave you some pains too, but right now I'm just articulating my point of view.) That Italian system wouldn't work for me, and from experience I know that sexual adventures, whatever role they play in fantasy, just don't work for me. I always feel guilty, most often things don't go well technically, I have the feeling that someone is exploiting someone here, I never felt good about myself afterward, I almost always felt obligated to that person afterward, and the emotional strain just wasn't worth it. Anyway, I really did not know that you would be so devastated when we broke up. I felt, in a way, that you had already left me, or that I couldn't be that important to you if you had to have others, which you see, I picked up around the edges. All of my undergraduate years I had no girlfriend, significant other, call her what you will, and that extended to the time when I…had my first sexual adventure, and got her pregnant.

I kept looking for you in others, and of course I could not find you there (back to that point in a bit). I had given you up in a sense, but I never gave up loving you. That went into a special place, necessarily quiescent because you were married. - I now know I should have just grinned and borne it. My soul friend, Ralph Grierson, managed it with the shoe on the other foot. He always planned to marry his high school significant other, and did, but meantime he "sowed his wild oats", and damned near lost it with at least one of his companions. I did see how distressing it was to whomever was the lady of the year, and quite unfair. She would be charmed by him, fall for him, and in a hopeless situation. Some people can compartmentalize in that area, a lot of folks, of both sexes, cannot, and I guess I more or less fall in the latter group.

That is the sad underbelly in my side of this, you see. We can set it aside, I don't think I have to re-experience it any more, but for the picture to be understood that has to be a part of it. You would have to know that I would never cast aside something as precious as you were to me without some really compelling reason. ("Cast aside" isn't quite the right term.). I just couldn't keep feeling wounded all the time. Yes, I needed wider experience of the world, I needed to grow up, I needed to become my own independent man, financially, careerwise, etc., All that I've said is true. But I think that the most significant thing is what I've articulated quite completely now, I think.

But God, you were right for me. I still thought of you, I still had feelings for you, I still wanted you, and that just had to go into a quiet, internal place. As I said, I kept trying to find you somewhere else, an impossible situation of course. (In my maudlin way, I think of a Kurt Weill lyric, "There never was you, There never was anywhere you.") I kicked my own butt for giving up the you that I so desperately missed. I've never had fewer barriers with anyone else - let me try that again-I guess I have to be trite. I've never been as open, and as vulnerable, with anyone else. I truly gave my heart to you, and I know now that if I had been a stronger person, more confident and all the rest, those storms might have been weathered.

You must know that you're built right into me, Jackie. And hearing your voice again, re-experiencing the way you cut right through all the crap, reading your letters, has allowed me to release something I've kept under wraps all this time. I don't think that's the same as carrying a "torch". And it's not nostalgia either, though memories naturally play a part. It's just there, past and present. You have a history since those times, and I guess I have several histories, of which some have their bright spots. But they aren't made of the same "stuff".

I believe that we're on the same page now. And I think we're in a quandary because we're seeking the best form in circumstances that are impractical. Of course I'm outrunning us a bit as I project into the future, think about how we would live…It's getting ahead of where I suppose we are, but my left lobe compels me to consider all such matters. It's almost as though we've been given a second chance to make things right,, and I can't just ignore that. There won't be a third chance. We can never have those years back, but does that mean that we just can only mourn the "what -might-have-been"?

You're right. It must be one step at a time. And we have to be as sure as we can be that the hurt we are going to cause, if we take things to their more or less natural conclusion, is the price we pay for our greater happiness….

Like you, Jackie, I would not do this for anyone else, certainly not at this stage in my life. None of the above is because I want to run away from my present partner. I am contemplating this because it seems so natural, so right, to have what we can have of "it should have been". If we do decide to make the last part of our lives a shared and mutual being together, whether it's a legal marriage or not is immaterial, then we will have to be each other's anchor thorough that awful transition, and the problems that will follow. You'll have to trust 100% that I do love you, and I'll have to trust that in you too.

Well, one step at a time, as you say. And we will have to find some reasonable way to see each other. The circumstances won't be ideal, and something less than perfect will just have to suffice.

Can you tell it from my voice, from the things we finally have the courage to talk frankly about, that I want you, that I want to hold you, that I want to look into your eyes again (you can look into my left one), that I want to make you smile and laugh again, that you are still the best person for me that I've ever met? Yes, we need to confirm some of these things, no doubt. We now have forty years of baggage, and in other respects, physical particularly, we're hardly youngsters anymore. But it sure seems to me that what we, in our different ways, have carried inside ourselves has withstood the test of time.

And you know, dear heart, that even if the practicalities or our fervent desire not to devastate others, should mean we remain soul friends, rather than soul mates, isn't it somehow liberating to know that we still have it for each other? Damned near miraculous, I think.
Yes, one step at a time. You are probably being a little more level headed about this than I am, following the old proverbs, "Look before you leap" and "Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread", while I'm all too inclined toward "Strike while the iron is hot", and "He who hesitates is lost". I don't think I'm romanticizing you, or us, but if I am a little bit, isn't having a bit of Romance in the soul something that brought us together in the first place?
Well, now to complete the third movement of the serenade I'm writing for the Beach Cities symphony. Even as I do this, I know that this is what I'm meant to be doing, rather than teaching students who mostly want to be involved in commercial music. Too bad what I do best doesn't earn any money.

Then I will go to the P.O., where I imagine a package and probably a letter or two will be waiting for me, from you. How frustrating it is to be so near and yet so far.

Yours,

I crave you

April 22, 2001

Dear Jackie,
Yes, letters received. Better not send any more until the week of May 1. At that time I will greatly welcome another…

I'm saving the Mary Reilly letter until I have a chance to rent the film. I'll watch the movie, then read your letter, then watch it again through your eyes.

I opened the envelope with the photo of you at age 23. Yes, you did remain beautiful, and I'm envious of those with whom you fell in love (even if you did fall out of love with them again). It gave my heart a real wrench.

Of course there is a fantasy-element in speculative planning, exploration, any thinking ahead, whether or not that/those future (s) comes to pass or not. I tend to jump ahead in thought, thinking about the possible, the probable, the technical, and so on. And I shouldn't really drag you with me, I think. We haven't even seen each other in person yet. Our re-examination and exploration of our Rashomon (sp.?) like past (s) has brought up so many emotions that may not be so relevant in the present, I know. It's been almost like a total immersion experience, since I've been thinking about you, and about the then, and about potential futures, almost exclusively. I suppose that's because there has been little, no, nothing quite this exciting to think about in years. But neither of us is committed to anything but to continue to communicate with each other, and I have promised you that.

Your letter confirmed that you had already left me by the time I formalized that. It was simply too hurtful to me to have things the way they were. My great, fundamental error was to close the door. Had the shoe been on the other foot, (role reversal), and you were the sort of end point in a plan to which I might or might not return, and I was not really in love with you, but you were with me, perhaps you would have handled things differently, better no doubt, since you were always a couple of steps ahead of me. But you wouldn't have hurt any the less. And think about this. I had some talent and a brain which is/was not too bad, but I hadn't accomplished anything significant, I considered myself a social nothing and could hardly compete with high caliber, older men you would meet who would delight in you and gobble you right up, and keep you. You said that you were hurt intellectually when I called you and suggested that we'd better not count on being married. Well, I was being hurt all over by all this. It took me awhile to get back into this aspect of my life at the time; who wants to be awash in pain? I much prefer to remember our sunny afternoons in Barstow, the combination of ineffable sweetness and sadness, and the you I thought I knew then in your best self for me. But never mind. I've gone through all of that, and feel it should not be necessary to go back for all that I felt then any more.

I've loved three women in my life - I mean loved, not as a friend loves a friend, or a man loves his mother. And I don't count infatuations, which are fun, and easily recognized. You were the first. And I found a place to sort of tuck you away after we were sundered. B was the second. That was devastating, but to a degree, inevitable I think….There's no need to go into all of that now. For about four months I kept to myself mostly, considered myself unfit company, had to continue functioning as Chairperson and full time teacher while constantly being stabbed in the emotional vitals. That finally became a kind of dull ache, and I came out into the singles world. (This is simplifying a bit.) A good friend of mine whose wife had split for different reasons, went our different ways with singles organizations and would compare notes. After trying one, which held parties and dances and the like, and people wore little name tags on which they summed themselves up in about five words, I decided that one's chances of meeting a suitable partner were about 5% better than staying home alone on a Saturday night, using that route. Then I tried "Advanced Degrees", which automatically screened out a lot of folks with whom I would have nothing in common. After attending three of their functions, and taking out a librarian for a short time, I lost all interest in singles organizations. The German lady with the doctorate in economics was a wonderful person, with…. a great heart, and I certainly respected her and had warm feelings for her, but could not have loved her in the way she and anyone else should be loved. Plus she wanted to have children. Been there, done that. I met C at the funeral of a mutual friend. She I did love and do love. Too bad I haven't felt wanted for about seven years. I have gradually developed the capacity to live in such circumstances, with a kind of accommodating affection….Yes, I do take my obligations seriously. This is necessarily abbreviated some. Nobody's life goes in such straight lines. But it is a fairly accurate road map as far as it goes. Thus, as Jacques Brel said, "And here we are, tonight".

We've gotten to be too old to dwell any more on our parting, I think. If we don't understand each other about this we never will. All we have is the "now". And I really only want to be in touch with the "real" you at any time, though it doesn't hurt to dream a bit together, you know.

I guess we should be quite clear about what we are doing now, though it may seem a bit artificial to articulate things in this fashion. But it will help to minimize any misunderstandings. In my view, I think we should seek the best modality to be what is most appropriate for us to be now in the circumstances. I think we need some times of being together, as well as communication by mail and sometimes by phone. (It's probably best that I phone you, though I love it when you call.)We may conclude that it's best just to be special friends, and to tuck away other potential plans. We may decide that despite the travail, the tearing up of our contexts, that we want each other too badly to let anything else stand in the way. There may be a third way, but I don't see it without the involving of massive amounts of deceit, and I hate deception or being deceived. Note that all of these involve we. Nothing will be forced on you. And nothing that you have now will be taken away from you without your eyes-wide-open consent. You probably have additional thoughts, perhaps better thoughts, and if so, please share them with me.
I'm hardly "dusting off" an old "girlfriend", Jackie. Do you know Samuel Barber's opera, VANESSA (libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti)? From a line by Anatol from Act I, speaking of his father and his memories,

"All through my youth / I heard that name, Vanessa. /Like a burning flame / it used to scorch my mother's lips /and light my father's eyes with longing…"

You may think that entirely too Romantic, and of course ours is not really like that operatic situation. Still there is something that rings true here, from my end anyway. We can never really know what would have happened on the path not taken.. But I can say, truthfully, that you have always been built into me in some way, that the you I perceive in conversation and in your letters is, in essence, the you I remember; by all means, let it be the real you that speaks to and with me. For me, the real you will always also be the sum of my best memories of you, and the best feelings I had about you. Whatever comes in the present, those things are not invalidated; maybe understood a lot better, but equally true now.

How about me? Have I changed in my essence? I don't think so. I'm a lot better me now, I think. And if you find me to be just a different "old shoe", that would be O.K., you know. The me of old would have been in fact more or less devastated by that. Whatever you might want from me in the present is all right, and whatever you might not feel about me is all right. In one respect I have changed, and that is I'm not a need dumper anymore. (At least I can now recognize when I am, and rescue myself from myself, if that makes sense.) Now that we have finally reconnected in a "present", let us swear not to mislead each other, and I promise not to pretend, though I guess you 'd have to say that it is also part of my nature to project alternative paths into the future, probably a dangerous practice, but there you are.
Though it would not have occluded at all with your circumstances, I wish that we had met each other again in about 1973. I was recently divorced, unencumbered by any formal connections, earning a decent income, at my best physically, old enough to appreciate the good things in life and young enough to participate in them.

Incidentally, for the purposes of that piece about you that I sent, a part of a personal history I was writing for my children, I could just have said "things ended". There was no way I was going to go into detail, and what I did say, while not untrue, was necessarily incomplete. You are the only person to have read any of this document, which was not intended as a memoir, a confessional or for public consumption. In fact, while I was looking over some of the earlier parts for chronological accuracy (which aunt was born when, this kind of thing)….I simply stopped working on it, and will probably never take it up again.

I was intrigued by your description of the geological formation of Connecticut, and by your useful map illustrating same. It immediately provoked a question, which I will have to precede by telling you that when I first came to MA for an interview at Berklee I read an article in the THE BOSTON GLOBE. There it was indicated that a major fault runs under the city, that there will inevitably be a major earthquake there, and the question is not "if", only "when". (I hope it happens on one of the five days I'm not usually to be found there. Anyone who cares to look can see that nothing there is constructed to earthquake-damage-protection standards) Is the same true of the environs where you live? Of course I know that earthquakes can happen almost anywhere, even in Illinois, and that here in NH there is minor seismological activity happening all the time, possibly acting as a safety valve against major shifts. Does that geological history mean that one day you might awaken with your house coming to pieces around you?

I've been through a number of earthquakes, including the Sylmar quake that destroyed that V.A. hospital (with some of the mental patients in strait jackets , for God's sake), and some which did only minor damage. (I was already in NH when the big one in Northridge occurred. My daughter carried out her infants, in the dark, walking with bare feet over the broken glassware while other things kept falling around her. What a bitch!) I will say that those events do have a negative kind of excitement, but I would not seek them out.

I xeroxed a couple of at hand images of myself, so that you will not be shocked by anything you might see when we finally do see each other in person…You know that I will immediately devour any you send me. - My favorite photo of you when we were in BUHS was that which appeared in the annual during our sophomore year. I do not know, and cannot analyze why. Though I like most of those photos of you, I don't believe any of them ever really did you justice.

Do put your mind to how we might have our day together, and I'll do the same, and more particularly, after I've had my surgery…I'll figure out something for my end eventually. I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted to be in your presence again, whatever does or doesn't happen.

More, again, later.

How could I not crave you? It excites me just to hear your voice.

***************

I couldn't wait to read it-

I didn't realize that the Mary Reilly (forget spelling) letter was really so much about you, and really important things. I have to be really brief. In two hours I will arise again to go to school.

If I had really known how strongly you felt about me, I would NEVER have made that hideous phone call, which you cannot know how remorseful it makes me feel. God, did I blow it, and mainly because I had such a hard time to trust. Jackie, I was hot as Hell for you, and very scared about it all. And, believe it or not, I never really felt we had the opportunity to do it right. Back seat of a car? At college, my shabby little apartment that I shared with two and sometimes three other guys? I didn't have two nickels to rub together for a good hotel room, the least that you deserved, and I actually felt ashamed of my own poverty. (If I had known of the sacrifices my parents were making to pay USC's expensive tuitions, I think I would have transferred to UCLA.) Truly, if I could have believed, we'd probably be still together today! "But I was young and foolish, /And now am full of tears."-Yeats

It is good, in its own way, to clear up things, even all these years later. But what a sack of grief, deepest internal regret, the way I screwed myself, you might say - it's a bitter, the bitterest of pills the truth brings up, and I have to eat. We did die, in some sense, of unrequited love for each other. I thought of you as the very best person in the world that I could have had, in ALL ways, sexual, spiritual, every way. And that you might love me was too good to be true I guess; at bottom that was a part of it.

Why, after we left BUHS, do I have so much pain associated with everything? - I guess what was happening, without intent, just pushed all my wrong buttons, and that's not your fault at all. Ever since I was a kid I felt that everyone else knew something that I didn't, and I couldn't even put my finger on it. And that something gave them whatever it was that enabled them to mock me. I was the automatic chump, still being pushed around in a baby buggy at age 6 because I wasn't allowed to walk and my parents couldn't afford better. Jumbled images of what I thought I wasn't, come to mind.

I had the impulse to call you back and say, "I'm so sorry-I made a mistake." I thought you'd say, in effect, "Up yours, sucker. You had your chance. And anyway, I have this brilliant physicist/author/wealthy person/whoever-who knows everything that you don't."
It was a remarkable misreading, only understandable because of my past. I couldn't communicate worth a damn then. I have to cease. Another letter later.

You were (and are) an awesome person, the most articulate I have ever known. I should have trusted you.

Dear Jackie,

I guess, for all the reasons we have begun putting together, we must have gotten into a mutual withdrawal cycle. Rereading the Mary Reilly letter, I see that you felt the same thing from me. Plus you didn't think I wanted to have sex with you. At any age misinterpretation is possible, but at no time in my life would that have been more likely than my earlier years, when I couldn't explain my feelings to myself let alone communicate adequately with you. Such a fear of rejection. And the underlying feeling, "How could it be otherwise (that in the end I would be rejected), you fool. They really do know things you don't." These past couple of weeks, once we got past what you called our "stupid dance", has been an emotional reliving, like crawling into an earlier skin, and what has come out has come out sequentially. I don't think there has been any real contradiction in anything I've said, though it might seem that way at first, but if there is it is because I have had to analyze the emotional muddle that I was then, as I've relived those years. Things have come popping up that I had forgotten I remembered. When I said that hateful thing to you, I think I committed a form of emotional suicide, disguised as self-protection. Be as angry as you genuinely feel toward that Leroy. But think kindly of him who has carried you in him for all these years. What I did deprived me of what we both should have had, and that is a very deep form of punishment for me.

I really appreciate the frank explanation you have given me, from your side obviously, of that and subsequent times. They have prompted so much self-evaluation from my side, and painful as the enormity of my error and folly has been, it has been necessary, all of it, for half of forever.

I'm surprised I didn't get into these matters during the ca. 1 ½ years I spent in group psychological therapy with Nathaniel Branden. Honestly, I knew/know I made a mistake that was so big that I didn't want to look at it closely, self-protection from one's self you might say. And it was altogether too late to do anything about it. Anyway, since you may have an interest in Nathan, I'll share something of that period, around 1970-71.

He had been a member of Ayn Rand's objectivist circle in New York, together with his then wife, Barbara (who has written her own book about Nathan and about that period). To protect his own sanity, he finally had to withdraw from that untenable situation, in which he was Ayn Rand's lover on a somewhat scheduled basis, while married to Barbara, and not being really inclined toward this sexual involvement, while being spellbound by her mind and her ideas. (I think that's a fair representation of what he communicated to us.) At any rate, at the time I came into contact with Nathan, because of recommendations of a personal friend…..I perceived Nathan as the most together person I'd ever known. I still think that is true. Thoroughly individuated, and courageous enough to go into the world totally unarmored, while having the wisdom and empathy that comes of deep study and recognition of his own mistakes, he was the right kind of therapist for me. He only worked in groups, because he thought that progress was hastened by observing others in similar or different straits, and that owning up to the self, baring one's soul as it were, in a safe but semi-public setting, made the experience more real. No one was allowed to psychologize on anyone else, by the way. Everything said in reference to someone else's situation, revelations, experiences put out, etc., was in reference to the 'I', in other words, how 'you' felt, what this might have brought up in oneself. He was eclectic as they come in terms of methodology, so that even if he did not share a belief in the epistomological basis of a different view of human psychology from which an exercise came, if it worked, he used it. During that time I read every one of the books Nathan had written (to that point in time), including such as "The Psychology of Self-Esteem", "Breaking Free", The Disowned Self", etc. And I read in Pearles (who may have spelled his name "Perles"; that was a long time ago), and Reik's books also, (theory of "orgone" etc.), because of coinciding direct body work with the Reikian Chuck Kelley, who was taking therapy in one of Nathan's groups, himself!(Lowen stools, co-confident therapy, and everything from a mild form of Rolfing to physical expression of interior rage, fear, etc.) what all this did gave me a platform for self-exploration, tools for self-sorting, and the courage to go ahead and feel again. I had to learn how to cry again, for example, after many, many years of aching without tears. …If you ever care to, we can talk about this some more. I still have something of an objectivist's viewpoint, a distinct and essential part of Nathan's viewpoint and teachings/approaches, but I'm now flexible enough to allow for things unseen and unexplained. Let me tell you, it takes courage for a woman to say in front of a group of strangers, who are only known in the sense of the internal agonies they have "put out" and have re-experienced in her presence, that she has never had an orgasm, and to go around to each person saying, "One reason I never have an orgasm is…" It was extremely moving to come to know an older German lady who had hidden in a closet when the Russians (Soviets) came raging through Germany, but had been found and repeatedly raped by Soviet soldiers at the end of World War II. I learned so much that enabled me to put myself together again in a better way.

You should know, in the right now, that I want to have sex with you, I want you to show me the Boston you love, and go searching for that golden Buddha. Things in the sexual realm rarely go right for me the first time, but with those for whom I've had deep feelings, once the initial "jitters" are past, we've gone at it like rabbits. Its been so long that I don't know who I am in that realm anymore. I still wake up with an erection, so I guess I'm still functional. But that's not the end-all, be-all, but rather just a part of the profound comfort we need to offer each other for what I, we, lost. Are these appropriate, or possible, given our present contexts? It's as though we need some kind of time out of time to become, and then to make decisions as to what might be best to do. You see everything, and though I'm much better at thinking in these areas than I used to be, you probably have even better thoughts than I . Do share them.

And do know, that if I could, I would go back and tell the young Jackie that you were, "Leroy loves you more than he can tell you. He is afraid, and easily wounded because he has not yet learned why he feels so badly about himself, and that is why he does some of the things that he does. If you do deeply love him, tell him so, and tell him that you want him, and he will be yours again."

Love,

same day

Dear Jackie,
I HATE deception, lying, not being "straight" with C….She asked me if I wanted to see you, and I asked her if she hadn't wanted to see her old boyfriend, which she in fact has done. Of course I want to. She pointedly indicated that this could have repercussions on she and myself, and in your family. Of course she's 100% right because it will, doubtless in the biggest ways. I remind myself that avoidance of pain is not the way to live, and that you will be there for me on the other side. (I'm assuming a lot, aren't I?) I probably should not be burdening you with my problems. Actually I'm just keep you informed. It is a measure of how secure I am in my feelings for you to tell you what I am giving up…Anyway, the long and the short of it is, I want us, you and I, to be together the way we really want to be. My right lobe, my emotional "system", even my rational part says, "You know this lady is who you always really wanted. Why hesitate? You can work something out." But there is the principle of not conducting business by phone, of not leaping before you know how and where you'll land, of not…I know you understand. We have to confirm what we already know. And how to do that?

….I guess this is getting ahead of myself/ourselves, but you and I together, are almost all that I think about, and how to make it happen. (We're too old for long delays.) I guess I can gin up some sort of … function that I just have to attend sometime this summer, after I'm sufficiently recovered, so that we can FINALLY see each other again. You have some idea, I hope, of how much I want to kiss you again, to hold you again, just to see you again. And I'm presuming, almost to the point of conviction, that we're going to want to go through the physical, emotional, contextual, financial and every other kind of travail in order to finally be where we should have been in the first place. I think the likelihood that we'll wind up saying, "Well, it just isn't worth it. It was just fantasy and fond memories after all", are pretty damned miniscule. My guess is that, no, it's not just a guess, it' a strong feeling, that we're never going to want to let each other go again, and it will be all we can do to return to our present situations in order to clean things up. In order to do that expeditiously we'll just have to have a plan in place. Rome wasn't built in a day, an all that, but we don't have years in which to strategize, and to my way of thinking our timetable should be measured in months.

God, I am being presumptuous, I know. On my end, the parting of company is going to be filled with grief, and receipt of hatred….

I want to reassure you, Jackie, that you have been the measure of all women to me, that you are built into me, and that whatever the years have done to us, good and bad, you really are the one for me. I do love you.

….We're going to have to have a plan in place before long. C is more than just suspicious. She sees my tears, she knows that something is afoot, just not how much is rooted in the present. She cannot be left in her present position very long. It's too hateful, and just, well, immoral. It runs counter to everything I believe in terms of honesty.

…..And dear heart/friend/sweetheart, if it can't be managed, or if you should come to the conclusion that you will be exchanging one set of problems for another (no happiness is perfect), or something tells you this shouldn't be done, so long as you tell me that you still love me I will come to terms with my second loss with no recriminations. And though that will be more than just disappointing, I have promised never to drop out of your life again, and I'll keep that promise.

There's been little coherence in this letter. I 'm still writing in a kind of frenzy, because my time to do so is, again, extremely brief, particularly if I'm going to actually mail it….

Same Day (Friday), after call

Dearest Jackie,
It will maybe seem silly to you, or show you how sentimental I can be, or whatever, but I'll share a couple of things with you. I've already told you that I saved all those letters you wrote me from Wellesley, until my mother made me destroy them. For years and years I saved a bow tie that you had gotten a bit of lipstick on, because it was your lipstick . (I think someone else threw it away "for" me, when cleaning out wardrobes prior to one of my many moves (23 altogether, 14, I think, as an adult), since I no longer wear bow ties. Packed away, in some box are the monogrammed cuff links and tie clasp you gave me, each with one of my initials on it. I could hardly look at the 'lp' cover of Igor's first recording of PERSEPHONE, which you gave me, without thinking of you. Some things one sacrifices in the interest of not distressing a partner, but I believe (with no solid proof before me at this moment) that I still have the slightly inaccurate silhouette made of you on that trip we took to Disneyland with Bob Holson and Konda. (Wasn't it fun being children again?) So you see, my attachments were still there, and artifacts to remind me of them were/are never totally absent.

…..I'm with you, Jackie. The transition will be awful, but we'll get through it, doing as little damage as we can, and always remembering why we're doing it. We deserve to be with each other now, and we deserve each other now. It's what each of us has always really wanted, only I slipped for a bit because I was unsure that you really felt that way, because of the muddle that I was. It's about time we did the right thing, for and with each other. Yes, I love you. How could I not?

Do you suppose that this is why Ira was reluctant to give me your address and telephone number? Maybe he thought something like this might happen, or in a kind of inchoate way, intuited that things would change as a result. I only found out what Ira had said to C about you and me after he and Lisa had already gone. He told C that I really loved you, but there had been too many other men in your life…You see, even Ira knew that I really loved you. I think he did too, though he handled things altogether differently. I will always be grateful to him for being the gentleman he was about this when we were in high school. He never ceased being friends with either of us…

Dear love, I want you to think of me on Monday, when you'll probably get this. I know I'll be thinking of you. Be gentle with yourself. "Us" is not going to be taken away from you again, barring some terrible unforeseen tragedy. And if one of us should be run over by a bus or something, at least the other one will know that we've had a little bit of what we both wanted, even if at a distance.

As soon as I've picked up some blank tape today, I'll make a copy of the Hanson. I've never been able to listen to it without thinking, "however kookie it might seem to someone else, that was OUR song". It may not be the most sophisticated bit of writing, but it is/was heart-felt, and may bring a smile with it, as you reflect on those happy times that we did have.

I'm sorry I was so bossy. I don't remember that part. I know you'll forgive me.

With all my heart,

April 29, 2001

Dearest Jackie,
What we both knew, or thought might happen, did in fact happen. C intercepted one of your letters. The "cover card" would not have helped in any case. I'm too transparent, and do not know how to be emotionally deceitful.

It wouldn't serve any useful purpose to go into what ensued…. I know that you will probably interpret this as a "dear John" letter, and although it is not exactly that, I know that is how it must inevitably feel And the tone, my having had to give everything the hardest, rational kind of thought, while keeping all feeling content in the mix, may feel as though I'm distancing myself from you. I simply do not know how to overcome those things at this moment, while at the same time communicating to you that I do love you, that you are built right into me as an inescapable fact, despite all.

Though I do try very hard to be an honorable person, and not to harm others, I did not heed you as I should have, and taken things one step at a time. It is my fault, not yours, that I began planning a future before we had really settled the past and present…The long and the short of it is that I really need to discover the best that that which I have been committed to for fourteen years can be, first. It was wrong of me to suggest that you and I should "go for it" before I had done this. At the very least, and again , I take responsibility, I should have terminated things with C, gotten a separate apartment or something, grieved and gotten that out of my system, and made sure that I was 'clear" before giving vent to the feelings I have for you, and then take it one step at a time. That is what I should have done, and is no reflection on you.

Although C read at least a part of the letter postmarked April 25, I have not been able to bring myself to do so. It is so hateful to me to write this letter while still having feelings for you, that I sometimes wonder whether at whatever the "end' is I will still have a heart left to break. Think of me as a flawed human being, a bifurcated soul, but at least someone who does not get up from the table without paying the bill. I will read, and reread, all that I have been so happy to receive from you, and grieve, and grieve. And you know that I mean that. But I will be trying to have a real marriage with someone I do also love, and I'm not asking you to be put on "hold", or to string you along in any way.

I don't know whether or not you will want to write or hear from me any more. I know that I promised never to drop out of your life again, and I meant that. It may be that for you all of that is spoiled now, and you never want me to be in touch with you again. If that's the case, you'll still be tucked in my heart, but I'll understand. If you do want us to stay in contact…I am more than willing to do that. Is that acceptable to you? Do please let me know. I won't call you again until I do know, because I want to make sure that you've received this letter first, and have had a chance to make up your own mind in the matter. I'm not slamming the door behind me this time, not even for C.

We've both needed to acknowledge what we've meant to each other, to review what went wrong when, to revisit times both wonderful and extremely painful, and I think that, in a way, that has been essential for each of us. We've both, or at least I have, projected some of the past into the present. How could one not, at least momentarily, if one does authentically go back, feel and relive that past? And I know that we both know that we are right for each other. That doesn't really change, it's just something that is there. If I have blown our "second chance", please don't think that I have thrown it away, or have somehow decided that was unimportant. It's context, commitment and the desire to do the right thing, and not a negative reflection or re-evaluation of you, or of my feelings for you. I sincerely hope you believe me, because that is the unvarnished fact.

I really do hope that you still want me to be in your life, even if it is not the way I was imagining it….

Love,

May 3, 2001

Dear Jackie,
Package with a bounty of letters (which I know I will appreciate) videotape and book received. I just could not read your previous letter, the one intercepted, nor these, until I knew that you didn't hate me now. I will read them today, hoping that you will never grow to feel differently about me.

…..You described me as "conflicted", which is absolutely accurate. Giving pain to you, and to C, leaves me feeling morally bankrupt. Self-disgusted, even. And I do own up to it. C had/has the right to take me and the position I occupy in her life for granted in a certain way ( I hope you don't mind my articulating this.) How could she know that, poor analogies aside, inside me was a sort of slumbering time bomb, like a "sleeper" only waiting to be reactivated. …..You simply have to believe me, Jackie, that I am trying desperately hard to be true to myself, while harming each of us as little as possible. In the end I want to be able to believe that I am, and have been, a decent person. Probably I should have - no, that's not even true. Ira sensed, I think, without having said a word about it, that something would happen if you and I made contact again. Of course I had to approach you somewhat warily, our "stupid dance'. Just knowing that you had been married for half of forever I had to assume that, a few natural bumps and lumps aside, you loved your husband, and that I would just be a remnant from your past to whom you might attach a few fond memories. It would have been ridiculous to think that you might still love me, that my telling you how much of you I still carry with me might be treated as other than, "Oh, Leroy. That's very sweet. But get a grip on yourself. You're just having an old man's fantasies based on unresolved feelings from the distant past."

Hearing your voice again had such an effect on me. I really had to spend about a week doing an emotional and then analytical reliving of our high school and early college times to know how I could have given you up, in the then-immediate sense. To be forever wanting, and forever hurting as a consequence, jut didn't seem tenable, but we've been all through that now. Once, in a telephone conversation, you described us as being like "two old cronies". From any external, sensible perspective that is how I should have left things, and let my feelings for you remain unexpressed. From the internal perspective that would have been like self-denial. You knew it anyway, didn't you, almost from the moment we were speaking together again, that I still loved you? Yes, you wanted to know why I slammed the door on you way back in something like 1962, but you knew I think. Otherwise you wouldn't have been emboldened to tell me why you were so angry at me. The minute you said that, I sort of knew. Oh, we were connecting like crazy , as one can only do with a soul mate, but if you hadn't been able to feel anger toward me there would be no way you could still have cared for me. I think it was inevitable that we would end up precisely where we are at this moment from the time we first spoke with each other, from the very first letter. Things might have gone a bit more slowly, and God, do I hate myself for getting so far ahead of…I don't know what to say about this. It was so wrong of me not to tell myself, "Leroy, you'd better decide what to do about this, and then act accordingly. Right now your first commitment is ..to your marriage. Yes, things are not all right, but you're not going to feel good about anything if you don't first do your part, your job, to make things the best they can be." I've made rather a mess of things, from practical and from other points of view.

There are a couple of things I really need you to know, Jackie. I've been honest with C, and I've told her that I can't unbuild myself in the sense of somehow taking you out of my structure; you're just inside me, like some internal organ. Of course that infuriates her. I've also told her that we will write to each other occasionally…..I did promise you that I'd never just drop out of your life and slam the door behind me again, and I mean to keep that promise. She feels that you and I have had an affair by mail, as it were, and that my feelings for you are mainly resonances from the past and wishful fantasies. You and I know that they're more than that……and I hope you have a bit of empathy for her.

You are far too intelligent not to understand and see the big picture in all of its manifestations. And maybe, in the end, I'll just end up being a lonely old man, with nobody to love and care for. The best I can do, so it seems to me right now, is just to be honest as I can, to tend to things at home first, then if things are not what they should truly be, then depart or part company with C, take the time to get myself "clear", to become a separate, whole person again, and then see if you still feel the same about me as you do right now. And if things are what they should be, I will tell you that, and take the chance the you will just hate me thereafter, and will lose you forever, a grim, grim and internally devastating prospect….

Well, maybe you will come to hate me, and not want me to write or talk with you anymore. If that happens, I will still love you, because you are still built right inside me. After all these years, when I imagined that you had all but forgotten me, you were still there. Some things just never go away, regardless of circumstances and context….

…..We, you and I, need to be together, at least once. I'll put my mind to it, but I don't hold much hope of it being anytime soon. We shouldn't try to prelive that occasion. It will put more weight on it than it should have to bear. God, how I wish we could have reconnected during one of the periods when I was unentangled, and our re-meeting could have been joyous…If we had to unentangle you in the ways that had to be done, I could have (and could ) managed that. But untangling me! That's a job for a psychological Hercules. Try as I am to make myself into a trustworthy person again, in order to work on a marriage the right way, and in that I know you'll at least respect me, you'll come into my mind, or I'll wish I were riding that Green Line 'B' car to go home to you, or I'll find myself thinking, "I wish Jackie could hear this". It sounds almost manipulative for me to tell you these things, but they just happen.
Don't write for awhile, O.K.? Not because I don't want to hear from you. I always do. I just don't want any more accidents to occur for awhile. Wait until after my hospital stay. Don't think I'm deserting you. I'll write to you, and I'll call you, so long as I'm able. O.K.? I'm not trying to bottle you up. I just don't want to cause any more hurt. I'm no masochist, but I'd rather take it than cause it.

Gotta go now. I love you, Jackie.

Note: After this, there was only one more letter, signed by Leroy, but clearly not written by him, until August. He had now promised not to contact me at all, and perhaps C had promised not to contact her boyfriend as well. He finally called on July 12, before he left for Oregon, telling me he loved me, and that he would call me in a couple of weeks. When he called on August 3, his first words were that now he was ready to discuss our lives together. J

Aug 4, 2001

Dear Love,
I hope it is not indiscreet to be sending you letters at this time, but this is the weekend and I do not wish to be creating difficulties for you …..This is a poor substitute for seeing you, and hugging you, and doing all kinds of things with you, certainly not a substitute for hearing your voice again. But I'll phone you on Monday, as I said I would, and warn you that this letter is coming your way. I do grow impatient for the time we can be together again, and at least it sort of "gets out" a little of that frustration to write to you this way.

Errors, spelling, odd spacing and such may not be entirely my fault. I doubt that I've told you that another arachnid seems to have set up housekeeping in this instrument. Margins suddenly reset themselves, the typewheel carriage sometimes suddenly goes skittering across the width of the machine, the spacing bar may assume the functions of a non-regulated tabulator, or cause the mechanism to go into reverse, and sometimes the typewriter just freezes up altogether, all accompanied by electronic bleeps, as his/her legs make contact with the electrical relays in the gizzards of the equipment. The last time this happened the spider bounded out in short order, evidently finding the low voltage shocks not to its liking. This one seems to have homesteaded inside, and maybe find the electric tweaks thrilling, therapeutic or, at minimum, an intriguing experience, so you'll have to bear with whatever happens on this page, and any which follow.

You may rest assured that our future together is now assured, from my end at least, a reality that will not be dissuaded from coming into being. The road to this point has hardly been a straight line, and I must say has not been free of grief, some anger and the other effects of having to "tuck away" fifteen years of a shared existence, not all of which were bad, or shall we say, wanting in essentials. But I see no reason to impose details of what is now a failed relationship on you, nor is there anything to be gained by going over that territory. We, both of us, should now concentrate on our present and our future, and if there is residual emotional cleanup-housekeeping to be done, I certainly intend to do mine by myself.

You do have to understand that I did not want to sort of leave you dangling, or put you through any more emotional roller coasters, by contacting you along the way, until it all was a certainty. I sincerely hope that you still feel about me just as you have said you do, and that you look forward to our being together again as much as I do. We'll have logistical nightmares to work out and accomplish, but ultimately we'll do just that. You really don't have to worry that the necessities of my being here, at what is now my former home, will in any way alter the outcome. I'm committed to us , you and me, now, and the rest is the drudge of doing what must be done.

We are now sixty year olds. Imagine that! It was supposed to happen only to others, not to us, and if it ever did happen, it was in a remote time, a future that would take half of forever to arrive. But here we are, if it has taken roughly 40 of those 60 years to find each other again, well, better late than never. I think it would be a bad idea to dwell at any length over what might have been, or maybe even should have been, in those intervening years. We at least have the present, and some amount of future, and we should cherish and treat as very precious that which remains to us, making every moment count as best we can. At least we don't have to start from "scratch". …Isn't it wonderful that we can now bring things full circle, at least it is for me. We're both now a bit the worse for wear, and both aware that it's a bit late for trying to change each other and that sort of thing, a bad idea at any age, I think. But looking at the positive side, we are both so much richer in experience now, and have so much more to bring to each other than we could possibly have had as teenagers, while we still have those wonderful memories of the intensity of first love. You were the first I ever loved, Jackie, and even given the positive qualities in certain of the later ones, I could never have felt as strongly about anyone as I did about you. There's …never been anything quite like the excitement I felt when I knew I was going to see you on a weekend, never any pangs quite as strong as when I would worry about losing you, never any jealousies quite like those I felt when you seemed to be interested in others, and although I've never been involved with any but very intelligent women (I take that back; for a very short time I did try to sustain something with a cute little bubblehead, but of course such a thing could never work in the long run), I've never even encountered a lady with a mind quite like yours. In a way, you've always been the standard against which any others were measured, and naturally I never found you in someone else…You've no idea how numb I went, all over, when I received your wedding announcement. But of course there's no point in revisiting those negative times. I had to tuck you away, and just learn to live with my assumptions of you being with a millionaire genius, who loved you even more than I did - even though it's now distant history, we might just want to revisit some of our good times together in shared memories. I think that's what a lot of old folks do, and why not?

I think we're embarking on quite an exciting adventure. And damn, it feels good to be wanted by you. I'm smiling from ear to ear even now, and can hardly wait to give you a public display of "affection" when I see you…

My love,

Saturday (undated, but mid-August)

Dear Heart,
Yes, it was a splendid 2 ½ days, or however many it actually was after deduction of time for delayed flight, etc. Will we have more like these? I certainly hope so, though the actualities of the first time together after all the intervening years is bound to have special qualities. Most likely we'll have even better ones! Our being together will have additional resonance and depth from having more and more shared experiences, as time goes on.

I know that being with you, I will learn more, increasingly more, about American Indians, a general, broad subject area which I've explored in only the most minimal of ways. I haven't heretofore felt any of what you might call fundamental identification with our native Americans. But I have to say that I bought a nice big volume of the photographs of Curtis, who, as I'm sure you know, was attempting to preserve the essence of the cultures before they died out, or were modified out of their original forms by surrounding European/white American influences/cultures. What magnificent images, not just for what they document only, but because so many of them are amazing as artful photographs. I attended an exhibition of his photos, all original prints, and of course that type of photographic "print" paper (?) that he used was so special that some aspects of tone in the reproduced images just can't be captured. Anyway, I'm sure I have much to learn in this area, since I'm practically la tabla raza (sp?).

The element of repetition in music is seldom used for rhetorical effect today, almost exclusively for ritualistic and semi-hypnotic purposes. Direct, literal repetition is almost never to be found in my music anymore, in part because I am more inclined toward the interest borne of variation or modification. One of the matters of interest in that Harris Third Symphony is the general lack of literal repetition until the final Tragic section, and although we can't write music like his, of the positivistic rural-oriented type any more and have it ring as authentic in our present (except possibly as a nostalgic thing, perhaps a longing for the days of small town culture, the romance of the rural, etc.), the idea of the ever changing musical substance is more congruent with my own emotional and intellectual make up than the ritualistic or hypnotic in music. Both of the latter are borne of group type, or religious mystical experience, or suggestive of same; I'm just not participant in group culture in that way. And the kinds of music which in essence are static, have been generally reflective of static cultures, or fixed world views. We, our Western-culture selves, exist in such a fluid environment, where social, technological and understanding-of-the-universe matters are in such a state of constant change, that the static seems inauthentic to me as a reflection of the present age and general context. - then also, so much in terms of right-now contemporary music is divorced from the mainstreams of Western music up to about 1960 or so (any date you pick will be arbitrary), a connection I'm loathe to give up. I'd rather have my music "measured" in terms of its craftsmanship, imagination and beauty of itself (or lack of same) as object, rather than providing mystical or "feel good" experiences for the audience. Plus, let us say that it takes a certain information-density to keep my interest alive. Anyway, you probably know these things about me and my music already, even if I've not specifically articulated these thoughts.

The matter of what the composer is trying to say can vary so much from author to author that generalities are nearly meaningless (to which one must also add that the "what" most often varies from piece to piece as well) but there is no doubt that some make that "what" more specific, as in a pictorial composer like Respighi; some make the "what" more implicit but palpably present, as in a music-as-drama oriented composer like Beethoven (but not consistently); some require close study and a great deal of understanding to perceive any extrinsic meaning beyond the music as itself, as in some of Hindemith's works; and some do write a music so pure that any connection with the world external to the music would be conjectural, as in most of Webern's music (and Boulez).

But this kind of discussion is of limited value in letters, and much more stimulating when there can be the give and take of dialogic exchange. I suppose you could say I fall into several cracks, or maybe that my own intentions are not restricted to any one camp. My own emotional maps and states of being are reflected in my music, mostly in somewhat idealized ways, but almost never do I try to tell "stories" in my music, or become involved in literal representation . (One excepts music with text, like songs etc., from this consideration. There, word painting, and reflection of the character of the text, translated into musical terms is essential, I think, so long as that connection is not of the "Mickey Mousing" type.) You already know that I like, in music, to be provided with a complete musical experience - one involving head, heart, and all else, so that one can ask questions of the music at any level and find good and interesting answers, and I try to provide the listener a complete musical experience in the music that I write. But that feeling-content side of my music is often not of the soothing, happy or feel good type. If you were to look over my music as a whole, everything I've written, you would probably find more of the violent and the melancholy, with a smattering of the whimsical, than that which is joyful or celebratory. Thus a lot of what I've written will not be pleasing to those who do not enjoy the cathartic experience of aggression and violence, or who seek only to be transported to peaceful realms. That also puts me outside of the mainstream of most present music, which tends to be more monolithic than what I compose. I still want tension and release, the sense of dramatic progression, interior contrast, opposition and reconciliation, and so forth. That makes me more old fashioned, even if the means I sometimes employ would not have been used before the 20th Century. I really don't worry much about this, because for one thing, music which is just trendy or fashionable rarely outlives its times anyway, and I believe that solid construction and substance wears better in the long run.

It's nearly time for me to draw to a close. But I would be distinctly remiss if I didn't tell you that I do love you. And also that I'm so appreciative of your wish to make me happy. It's such a large part of feeling wanted, something of which my life has been largely bereft for so long.

Love,

Next Day (Sunday)

It appears that serious apartment hunting can't begin until Wednesday. Tomorrow I will buy cartons for packing essentials (but of course not everything; some things have to wait until we have a house). But the main thing is that C and I have an appointment with our tax lawyer that day, 'smack dab in the middle' (1:00PM), which screws things up for driving to Concord-Manchester to search for "digs".

Tuesday I have to assist her in driving the dogs to the vet, because Jesse has the runs, a most disgusting problem, and it's time for Hadley's shots; there is no way for even one of those animals to be taken by one person alone. Neither of them will allow a person to drive alone without imperiling the safety of all concerned. Then I have my physical therapy session. I'm so hoping that on Wednesday or Thursday I'll be able to find a place that will "do" in a temporary way. On Friday or perhaps on Saturday, I'll have to have a mover, and will have to have found a storage facility for such things as my 'lps', most of which are already encartoned and can be hauled away. Probably the same will be true of at least some of my books, though in my view some of that kind of thing could be left here since it's not really interfering with anything, at least no more than at present. C wants me out of here now, and "take your things with you". She is at the stage where she is profoundly angry…

A non sequiter - I didn't know that you had come to appreciate the Harris Third. In high school I thought it was just another of those records I had compelled you to listen to. In a way some of the reasons I liked it then, more so than the reasons that I still believe in that music, were tied up with my own background. Here was a composer of American rural origins, like myself, who was expressing the Geist of that life and those environs, and giving all of that a sense of nobility. And that was the composition (though I didn't know this at the time) which probably best expressed what was in him to say, and which he only sometimes approached in his later works, such as his Seventh Symphony. That sweep and the heroic quality, both of which I value greatly in music, were things that he sought to re-express in other ways in the compositions which continued to issue from his pen in profligate quantities, but he never again expressed them quite as well, and he never really moved on to other messages. - What can a composer like me learn from, or adapt to his own purposes, from such a work? Well, perhaps one can take certain technical means and use them to other ends, but one has to be quite careful in that area because Harris sounds so much like himself, not just in style but in the means associated with that style, so it would be terribly easy to sound as though one were trying to be a kind of clone of Roy Harris. But in certain principles, such as the idea of continuous variation, and the autocthonous melody with its properties of being ever renewed and always becoming (rather than being a fixed entity) I think one can find approach-ideas that can be used to purposes unlike those of Roy Harris. Though they might seem to be wed to those pieces of his which succeeded in the realm of the concert hall, and though aspects of autocthonous melody might belong only to Harris, those approaches can certainly be adapted to expressive ends quite unlike his, just as Beethoven could use the approaches inherited from such as Haydn to and for his own purposes (of course today we see more of how Beethoven was like his predecessors rather than what was so new at the time; Beethoven was really more of an evolutionary figure than a revolutionary one, taken all in all, though some of his works, particularly the late string quartets, are idiosyncratic and personal enough to be considered revolutionary.)

You are absolutely right that there were American composers besides Copland, and that right now they are being ignored. The more urbane and city-oriented, industrial age composer, William Schuman, was a factor on the scene in a way which seems to be fading away at present. And more's the pity, because although I believe he lost his emotional connection with his own central thread some of the time, he was never less than craftsmanly, and even at the end of his life wrote works which deserve to be taken off the shelf, dusted and heard occasionally. Important to be remembered that his music, with notable exceptions, like Walter Piston, also with one notable, perhaps two notable exceptions if you put band literature on the table also, did not really achieve popularity among concert going audiences in his lifetime. Schuman's administrative position (s), and status as a kind of dean of American music, gave him entry to the world of "being performed" through such as Leonard Bernstein and Eugene Ormandy in a way that his music alone did not. He just wasn't being performed elsewhere to the same degree as he was in New York (secondarily, Philadelphia), and today only Leonard Slatkin seems intent on keeping his name alive. Copland did write music with genuine populist appeal, and though I happen to think that he did even more important work in such less appealing works as his Piano Variations, which later became his Orchestral Variations, it is the easily appreciated music which keeps his music in the forefront of perception of what is American music up to 1960 or so. Charles Ives is a very special case, a composer more admired than loved, at least among those non-musicians who are not sort of cult-oriented. Carl Ruggles, whose status should be at least as great as that of Ives, would probably be in the same kind of boat, were his name and his music a bit better known. Well, Michael Tilson Thomas tried to bring Ruggles' music to general attention in so many different ways, but he'll always be something of a hard pill for most to swallow, because so many in that ageing audience for serious music want a safe sonic bath, and do not identify with the pathos and drama in Ruggles' sober, complex and always sonorous music. Such once important composers as Cowell and Roger Sessions have just fallen off the edge of the table altogether, and I don't know what could be done to habilitate or rehabilitate them.

You mentioned Grofe. Do you know that he wrote some "musicals" of the Gershwin era type, such as "Sob Sisters" and "Tabloid" (I believe these are his)? Setting aside his Piano Concerto and Atlantic Crossing, the majority of his music seems to be descriptive suites, of which the first was the Hollywood Suite. I have recordings of his Death Valley Suite, Grand Canyon Suite, Mississippi Suite and Aviations Suite, and evidently he composed a number of others as well. Of these only the Grand Canyon Suite holds up. (I forgot that I also have Kostelanetz's recording of Grofe's Hudson River Suite.) Even that one seems a bit tied to its times, with its splashy Hollywood harmonies and orchestration. But it still works. My friend, and fellow Phi Mu Alphan, Dave Christiansen (whom I've not seen in years) ran across Grofe, drinking by himself in a bar, a disappointed and disaffected old man, no longer able to console himself with memories of being a staple of summer bowl-type concerts at one time, and possibly even resenting (except financially) being now just an accompaniment to a Disneyland ride.

Time for me to draw to a close again. Man does not live by coffee alone, and it's time for me to eat something or risk becoming sick.

Tuesday night , after phone conversation

Its too late to continue encartoning, too early for me to sleep, and the day has, once again, been overly concerned with dog business. They demand, they require, they need, we have to, etc., et al.
And once again, the spider, or whatever is actually roaming the circuitry in this machine, is contributing his/her efforts to undermining thinking, typing, and the combinations of these two, setting the teeth on edge, those I have left, with the electronic beeps, stepping on contradictory contacts that sometimes leave the mechanism frozen. Then come the sequences of on-off-on-off, bringing all setting, (margins, etc.), back to zero, repeating as necessary. I wonder if whatever-it-is will survive the move.

You may, indeed, spark my interest in Indians, the origins of man, the stuff of which archaeologists and their subjects are made. I find myself asking, "Why have I overlooked, or had only a smallish interest in American Indians and such before? I've lived in the lands of the Pimas, Navajos, Hopis, etc. before, even driven through reservations, with junked cars, remains of old water heaters and television antennae on top of battered trailer houses (in pre-casino times). Why haven't I wanted to look more closely, beyond the standard mentions in the standard history books?" Conclusions? I don't know, really. Possibly related to finding what I heard on documentary recordings of such things as "Songs from the Longhouses", or "War Dance Music of East Coast Tribes"; not very interesting - rudimentary, in all respects. Maybe it's because, though I appreciate the beauty in "Mother Nature" more than most would even suspect, the idea of living that close to the ground, with bugs, skins, animals, horses,is not at all to my liking - little with which to identify there. Maybe because with all the time they had at their disposal, all the eons before the White Man's intervention, they revealed so little in the way of technological development, some not even making use of the wheel. Maybe it's because that what some might perceive as the beauties in the totality of the cultures and life styles are such that I could only appreciate from a remove, from an observer's perspective, not really identifying with them, never wishing to be a participant. How can I know, really? Yet, I respect your interest, will undoubtedly learn a great deal because of your sympathies, and will be bound to integrate what I take from your interests with my general perceptual mechanisms and views.

Well, our inclinations have taken us in somewhat different primary directions, and perhaps have influenced what we've learned and taken in the way of areas outside of those we've each "staked out" for the self. Obviously, I'm a generalist, no more than that, in areas outside of my realm. But my interest can be provoked rather easily, by someone else's enthusiasm, so you needn't worry that I sit here, or there, yawning as we discuss migratory patterns of the original Americans, or the mistaken dating of a possible site containing artifacts of early man. As much as anything, I suppose, limitations in knowledge (mine, I mean) have grown as much as anything else from being a doer rather than an acquirer. (I'd rather make a crossword puzzle, a maze, a problem to be solved, all of which I do from time to time, than to solve someone else's maze, crossword puzzle, etc) And time necessarily devoted to making a buck naturally circumscribed how much I've had to devote to reading for pleasure, information, or what have you I suppose you could say that making things - music, drawings, concrete items, abstract items (things carried only in the head) - is a kind of inner necessity, an itch that requires scratching but is never altogether satisfied. Sometimes I think I almost waste time by pondering whether a tank tread might be specially designed for the terrain in which it is likely to have to function, one tread for boggy, rain soaked territory, another for desert sands, another sort for rocky hill country, etc., and think about what those designs would likely be. How might one construct an aqueduct of the Roman type which would impact less on the view of the general environment? Were I designing a dirigible of the zeppelin type, how would I configure the control system, bearing in mind ergonomic considerations, mechanical necessities and the overriding concern with weight distribution? Idle self-imposed challenges, no doubt, left over strategies retained from an isolated childhood, for self-amusement. But that is how I relax, quite often. And I suppose part of the pleasure is being in control, making or forming the world as I think it should be, rather than just living in it.. Since one/me could hardly design, build, own and operate a dirigible in actuality, fantasizing about it is as close as I can get. But taking journeys in it is rarely a part of such fantasies. Once I've mentally constructed the whole thing the fun is over. Is any of this of any interest at all? Probably not much. But it may offer a small window through which to view how I am constructed inside.

Time to consider retiring to bed, alas, without you. Tomorrow will no doubt be a long one - the quest for a six month nest, furnished, but I hope with something better than hotel-like sensibilities. Provided it offers the amenities, and a small amount of private comfort, I suppose we'll be able to put up with small gaucheries.

Can't leave you without smiling a bit at what would seem to be a "Duh"- type queon that came up on the evening news. Why are hundreds of sharks gathering on the Florida coast? If there is an intelligence at all in that aquatic eating machine, wouldn't the Florida coastline look like a candy store?

Wednesday night

What a day. By the time you receive this we will have talked about it by phone. No luck, and the revelation that housing is at a premium right now, with respect to rentals and such. Will have to cast my net wider and wider, remembering that any situation is scheduled to be temporary.

I wish to Hell you could be here. It's so constricting that we can't even call each other when we need to, or want to, let alone that we can't be in each other's physical presence. There's something odd in not being able to look for our "pad" together, even if it's to be a temporary one, something surreal in my not being available to help you select what's to be taken, something kind of "one time removed" about your not being here to help me in packing and such, too.

Our phone calls are so important to me, Jackie. It/they remind me that you are real, that we both mean to be together, that this isn't all a vain exercise with a vacuum at the end. I need so much to feel that we are really together now, that everything isn't going to collapse, that it's really going to happen.
Someday I will actually mail this omnibus letter. Think of this as a brief, short term history. (Will someone excavate it one day I wonder.)

Thursday Day

It looks like we may have something decent, affordable and convenient with respect to my moving my things over there without having to engage a moving company……I would wish that it were farther away from Meredith, but with housing availability being so tight it seems like the best deal one could wish for, for our temporary quarters. It will be a Winter rental, thus September to or through June, which should be just about ideal provided your ducks are "all in a row". Will tell you all about it this evening, so by now you will know - I'm presuming that I'll get this letter in the mail tomorrow. What a relief, presuming the deal comes through.

As we share aspects of our creative work it strikes me that maybe you are more of a poet and I'm more of an architect - and that's just fine, and may in fact grow out of the natures of our primary mediums as much as anything else. But such polarizing statements tend to be misleading because the two, which might be expressed as Romantic vs. Classic, or right brain vs. left brain, are not really antipodes, or at odds, and there has to be some of both. It's a matter of the balance, I suppose, and in the end it is the convincing qualities in the results that count. A pure constructionist might well produce a music, a prose, a whatever that lacked some sort of soul, or affective quality (so I find in Webern's music). Someone who acts purely out of intuition and feeling (which is not you, any more than the other is me) usually finds his/her best expression through miniature or smaller forms, rather than large spans which generally require long term planning for direction and unification.

That balance between the two overlapping sides can tend to change as one ages, and gains more experience. At the beginning of his post-student compositional career, intuition played the largest part in Stravinsky's work. He said as much about le sacre du printemps, and incidentally, his writing about that ballet-symphonic piece was about as Romantic and purple of prose as you can get, at the time, when he was young. As he went through his middle period, and approached his final phase with 12-tone serial writing (about the time that Schoenberg died), the concerns became increasingly cerebral. It doesn't mean that one aspect of his writing is better than another, or that one sort of work is better than another, but it does mean that they were/are different in some ways, and different mind-frames have to be adopted to fully appreciate each of the types. From ballet ideas which occurred to him in visions to ballets which are abstract (like Dances Concertantes, and Scenes de Ballet, quite different from his early big three - Firebird, Petrouchka and the Rite). From emotionally charged writing about his music at the beginning to, "Music expresses NOTHING. Mood? That's for old ladies." Of course some part of that difference has to be understood in the context of how bitter he became that the general public was unwilling to follow him through his changes, and wanted him to continue writing more Rites of Spring. (Incidentally, several sources have convinced me that the translation from the original Russian would be more appropriately rendered as "The Coronation of Spring". Somehow that does not pack quite the punch of "Rite".) One critique I read of the whole of Stravinsky's output indicated that Stravinsky's compositions became, increasingly, music about music. And in a way, that's true.

Here is where the matter of what an audience can appreciate, or is willing to become engaged in, comes into play. Some music is best understood with the kind of understanding that I believe applies in the case of pure mathematics - abstract numbers, and other concepts for which there is no Rosetta Stone (sp.?) which can only be understood in their own language. There are musical languages which exist without reference to other than themselves, and which therefore generate their own worlds. They might elicit emotional responses, and such, from some, but they are not intended as expressions of the human condition, rather they are expressions of the manipulation of the medium just as itself. I think such expressions, in any of the arts, yield incomplete experiences. That does not make them invalid, anymore than Rothko's variations on the same constructive ideals are invalid. They just lack an essential ingredient that makes for personal connection. And such productions can be rightfully called "sterile", if one feels that art should always be connected in some way with the organic qualities of life in its various aspects. -

What was really "new" about the Rite? Well, there one must look beyond the harmonic vocabulary, which indeed did include combinations, polychords, a general dissonance level quite unknown to his predecessors. And one must look beyond the aspects of accent and rhythm, which though "Savage" to a degree not found theretofore can be seen (in a different context) in some of the music by Beethoven. (Innovations in both of these areas are to be found in plenty, and their importance is not to be minimized, but one must look beyond these for the fuller picture.) In part the answer lies in the way that the whole structure is organized around the idea of contrasting block-events, and the non-developmental way the short idea motives are handled. There aren't any long-line melodies in that piece, just short, evocative motives; the idea of "big tune" would be anathema, or just not suited, to the mosaic-like nature of the overall formal structure. And the idea of the ostinato, applied in the way it is found in that piece, is quite new. (And of course there is the connection with the ritualistic idea, the connection with "primitive" and thus more or less static cultures, repetition playing such large parts in the general psyche of cultures whose world-views are fixed.) Repetition, which promotes familiarity and unification, has always played some role in most musics. But the idea of conflicting, additive-nature use of multiple ostinatos was quite new, used again in a very different way in his later "Les Noces". - Unhappily, Stravinsky was so good at this that he more or less used up that idea, so that follow-up pieces by such composers as Carl Orff amount to watered down Stravinsky, "Carmina Burana" being a milder, and less imaginative "Les Noces", and so on (the list doesn't end with Orff). The Rite could be said to constitute a kind of revolution, I suppose, but most revolutions give rise to something new. In this instance a revolution was created without a commensurate series of results elsewhere, a composition which spent its materials and techniques in its own utterance.

Anyway, I must cease now. Still waiting to hear back from a realtor who I believe will come through for us, but whose prior offerings turned out, in fact, to be unavailable.

Quick post-shower afterward: I don't mean to mislead about unusability of most aspects of Le sacre in other compositions. One organizational feature that Stravinsky retained was the event-orders tending toward block-like sections of contrasting sorts coming in chains of ternary or rondo-like forms (ABA, BCBDB, DED, etc.), sometimes interlocking. In such pieces as "Symphonies of Wind Instruments", and even "Scenes de Ballet", that organizational tendency can still be found, though the sound and personality worlds of those pieces and the Rite are almost galaxies apart, at least different planets. I doubt that the first listeners to the rite would ever have predicted the advent of the Hollywood cellophane, filtered through a French sensibility, of "Scenes de Ballet" (created for Billy Rose's Festival of the Seven Lively Arts of 1945), one of my favorites among his later ballets.

As I look over what I've been writing today, it reads like a poorly organized lecture. Well, I don't mean it to be pedagogical, this is a lecture-like letter I suppose, but a letter nonetheless, not an essay.

Parting thought: in re: music, expression and languages, Mendelssohn (properly, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) said, "Music expresses those thoughts too precise to be put into words".

Today I have to be blamed for spacing errors. The spider seems quiescent. Perhaps he's finally been electrocuted.

Time permitting, maybe I'll include Xeroxes of a couple of my prose pot boilers. Remember that I don't apply an author's criticality, and have no illusions about their value (or lack of it). These things I write just to amuse myself, and perhaps a few close friends.

I have all the energy and enthusiasm for encartoning and packing that a salamander might feel when contemplating railroad construction. (do they do this, I wonder.) Found out that I did not hear from the realtor because she is/was sick, not because she's deserted the quest. Even so, it's left me wondering if I won't have to continue looking on my own.

Reread all my puerile stories his afternoon. Some of them boil pots more than others, and I claim no originality in any of them, but for someone who might get a kick out of Rod Serling's efforts some of them might be mildly entertaining. Maybe I'll just spend an hour or two, Xerox them all myself at the Tape Escape (the local video outlet, with a Xerox machine), and send you the lot on Monday. Some evening when you feel inclined to waste time, you might read them.

Something else I meant to say about early Stravinsky, specifically the Rite, without question the most original among his "big three" ballets. To a degree that could be considered unanticipated in previous music, use is made of the unpredictable within a consistent field of action. I assume you know the Rite pretty well, so I'll concretize. After the Introduction (the last part of the piece to be composed), which is bounded at both ends by those eerie, high bassoon phrases, and after that brief transition, come those chugging chords. Though even in note values - you know precisely when each chord is coming because the even rhythm is unvarying - exactly when the accentuations will occur, those chords in which strings are supported by horns, is unpredictable unless you know the composition very well. There are many other instances in the piece where the nature of the activity is consistent, but the disposition of its elements varied in irregular ways. If that unpredictability were not there the effect would be monotonous, deadly, not worth the hearing. And this is quite different from the unpredictabilities in the music of a Berlioz, who would use interjections, expostulations, sudden changes in tempo, and the like, though perhaps allied in intentions.

The business of writing the introduction last is one of the very few things that Stravinsky had in common with Brahms, who wrote the introduction to mvt. 1 in his symphony No. 1 after the rest was completed. Writing in that order allows the rest to seem like it unfolds from the potentials implicit in that introductions, in which primary motives are presented and the underlying tension is established. I think it was Clara Schumann who felt that the movement began too abruptly as it originally stood, but I could be mistaken in that idea.

Boy, am I bending your eye. Will we run out of things to talk about by 2002? I certainly hope not, and don't think so. But with omnibus letter like this, we certainly skirt perilously close to that possibility.

Sorry if I mentioned the unmentionable over the phone. I'm not accustomed to dealing with things in that way, which is to say self censorship, so that naturally slipped my mind….

More of everything anon. My best love. You've no idea how good that has felt, when you have sent it to me. But you needn't feel you should be writing letters, now that we are talking every night. I'm still doing it because…I don't know why exactly, but you have said that I write more truly than I speak. Anyway, it gives me some comfort when I feel the urge to communicate with you, and our circumstances are such that I can't. I don't try to imagine your end of the dialogue, since letters are essentially monologues, but I might sometimes imagine you, or picture you, reading them, and formulating responses which are uniquely yours.

By the way I find it somewhat disturbing that you don't like Chopins's music. I suppose it isn't all great, and one doesn't want it all the time, but there was a real poet in the realm of keyboard music, one of the most subtle and sensitive of musical souls. And a real (though in a sense hidden) revolutionary too, with modulations and sometimes harmonic progressions uniquely his own, and quite out of step with the commonalities of his time. In fact Debussy confessed to owing a large debt to Chopin in his music, something a lesser composer-and a lesser man-might not acknowledge. It's O.K. that you don't enjoy Chopin, just as it's O.K. that you don't like Bruckner's music, but I'm sure you'll bear with me if at times I might point out their very different virtues.

Well, good night, my sweet and very brainy love. How wonderful it is just to think of you.

Well, American history, as a generality, may not offer much of interest pre and post Civil War, but there are some interesting nooks and crannies in he worlds of church music history, and what you might call the homespun product. I'll touch upon only one of these, that peculiar to the so-called American Moravian Church, more accurately "Unitas Fratrum", which is probably best translated as United Brethren.

You may remember that they were the spiritual descendents of the Hussites, those who followed the heresy of John Huss - burned at the stake at the council of Constance, after having been given safe conduct. (Well, after all he did arrive there safely.)During the era of the "hidden seed", as they called it when the Hussites were forced to go underground, there was emigration to other countries from the areas of Bohemia, Moravia and elsewhere. The first of their "colonies" in North America was at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1749. In fact Benjamin Franklin visited that settlement and commented favorably on the fact that they kept one sort of house just for their musical instruments. They were the first church in America to employ orchestra in connection with their services and ceremonies, and used trombone choirs, ranging from the little soprano (which looks a lot like a slide trumpet) down to contra-bass trombone, for special occasions. A few years after the PA colony was established another one was set up in the Winston-Salem area in what I believe was then only called Carolina.

They kept up with the latest music on the continent, only a year or two behind, importing music by Handel, Haydn, etc., et al. And they had a number of quite competent composers, writing in the European styles and fashions. Some of the church anthems, for choir and orchestra, are impressive enough, and much of the chamber music by such as Herbst, Dienstadt, Peters and Antes is very well made. I analyzed the quintets by Johann Frederick Peters, the first string quintets to be written in the western hemisphere, and found them very decent, though not very original, a bit like Haydn with a small infusion of Beethoven. A sort of multinational curiosity: John Antes wrote his string trios while he was on his mission to Cairo and dedicated them to the Swedish ambassador to Turkey. They work very well too, though I'm sure few would be able to immediately identify their composer.

The American Moravians still produce bulletins listing performances their church composers have received, and I believe they may still maintain a trombone choir or two.

Next time remind me to tell you about John Billings, The Original Sacred Harp, Southern Harmony, the Continental Harmony, etc., and about Justin Morgan, who wrote hymn tunes as well as developing and breeding the Morgan horse.

Enough lecturing for one night. Seeing and being with you again can't come soon enough
(factor - 4. one who transacts business for another on a commission basis. Funk & Wagnall's Standard Desk Dictionary, vol. 1)

What a wonderful pair of natural "highs", to hear from you earlier than usual, so that I didn't have to wait so long, and to be told by Bogidar (his Bulgarian nickname is "Boshka") that my Serenade for winds was a hit at the Sierra Music Festival, and the performance went well. I told Bogidar that I was writing a piece for the Beach Cities symphony, and that I would send him the score in case he might find a venue for playing it. On that I haven't worked for at least a month, other things associated with moving having been given priority. Barry Brisk wants to know how that work has been progressing, and I had to tell him that it has been relegated not to the back burner, but to a middle burner, and he quite understood. Anyway, at the Eastern Sierra Music Festival Mark Hatter (who conducted my Serenade) gave the audience a history of my involvements with that endeavor, and read my notes for the piece, which no doubt helped to prepare the listeners, which usually does make for the possibility of greater enjoyment.

We may find a way to collaborate on the writing of something, though because I'm not generally attracted to mystery-genre of the who-done-it type I might prefer it to be something else. "Write about what you know" seems such a good idea that we might, indeed, want to write something that at least includes the vicissitudes of old age. For example, we could write about a boxing match between a 25 year old champion and an 80 year old man who was the favorite because he had more experience. Just teasing about that last, of course, but if we're going to aim at some particular market it might as well be those like ourselves, who are at least conscious that "getting old", at least physically, is increasingly becoming a reality. Maybe it could be set in Nazi Germany, in which an older man sacrifices himself in one of the failed attempts on Hitler's life, and a young man sacrifices himself in a failed attempt to keep the Russian troops from raping an old woman, something like that, that affords maximum contrast within the unifying idea of idealism. I leave it to you to judge the merits of such ideas. I have to honestly say that the idea of a series involving the same character or characters doesn't appeal to me much. I'm more in favor of each of our efforts being a unique item, presenting different characters, different circumstances, different challenges, maybe even different writing styles. …Maybe we could bring ourselves to crank out a series of some kind, so long as t