Habilitation

My Dear Fortune,

I have thought of writing to you for some time now.  The evenings on the island have been humid and unpleasant; the curvature of the earth here is such that I have felt like nothing more than a tuning fork for suffering. The only news I have received from the mirrore realm was a very desperate letter from your dear father, and there were no details, only that you were up to your neck in politics, or at least its consequences.  

I hoped to avoid the conventional lines, but it seems that those suspect words are all that I have with which to write. Not to evince melodrama, in these crystalline times, but I am very upset by your, and Ljuba's, behavior, that you haven't found time to write a line since our meeting in Vienna. I know, my attitude towards life is increasingly petit-bourgeois, but with that dreadful scare still in my bones, I wonder if it wouldn't have happened had you written. I shall return to the sanatorium this eve, and am hoping against hope that you will be able to join me again. There is a village nearby where the fever has not yet touched; it is no floating-world, but will do for the moment.

Under some duress from the assembled martyrs, I have begun writing again, starting with a portrait of Max Weber (you know his achievements in some forms of quiet space travel). I think often of our past together, your image a song, the grain of your voice with me late in the night. My exile to these hotels and swamps has led me to further consider the difference between the concepts Gelten and Sollen (there may in fact be some useful gesture there). Although, as you know, perhaps better than I, we are each no Leo Naphta, caught deep inside magic mountain.

Although I don't wish to keep you from your studies, please let me know if you have thoughts on the colloquium. P____ has expressed his distaste for my politics, but then again, he was the first to decry quiet space, and that has gotten our cause nowhere. Don't forget about the machines, or the sites of prophecy! Without maintenance they, also, will be lost. Be secure in your feelings towards E_____. Her love affair with that musician is imminent. The three of us are living together, although with physical proximity comes inner separation; the only real solution seems to be a friendly parting after the war. I am suddenly aware of every fold in my skeleton; my own capacity for balance seems to be growing.

I affectionately embrace you.

Until then,

H.