Dear Mr. Lakey -

Thank you for your kind words. It has been a difficult year and I am ec-static that it has been now consigned to the bonepile of memory. 

I too was saddened by the death of my mentor and closest friend, Mr. Jones. He taught me more about life and, especially, death than anyone I have ever met. A most profound influence upon my life. But it was time. And he knew this better than anyone. I was honored to be there at the end and to carry out his last request of cutting off his head and burning the rest of his flesh and bones out in the Desert. 

Of course, I am soaking the head to remove the skin and such. Soon, per his wishes, the skull of B. Jones shall sit upon my desk, forever smiling with me as I work on publishing his extensive archive.

I will be in California in either the later summer or early fall of this year for a wedding of a close friend. As the date approaches, I will let know you know more. It would be nice to converse with someone with a strong hermeneutical grasp of Dasein and the allegorical riddles hidden within the Bone. 

I trust you are in good stead and that your lovely co-conspirator is also well -

Scot

P.S. Starting to work on a long poetic/philosophical piece on the last ten days/seven miles of Paul Celan's body - after suicide, as it was floating down the Seine, dreaming and decaying. Know of any good references - specifically concerning the period of time he met with Heidegger? 

This is from John Felstiner's Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew:

In 1964 he had written:

Water needles

stitch up the split

shadow- he fights his way 

deeper down,

free.

About 20 April 1970, around Passover, Celan went from the bridge into the Seine and, though a strong swimmer, drowned unobserved.... On 1 May a fisherman came upon his body seven miles downstream. 

A biography of Holderlin was found then on Celan's desk, open to an underlined passage: "Sometimes this genius goes dark and sinks down into the bitter well of his heart." Celan did not, I noticed, underline the rest of that sentence in the Holderlin biography: "but mostly his apocalyptic star glitters wondrously." 

People have said that Celan took his own life at forty-nine because valid speech in German was impossible after or about Auschwitz. Yet this was the impossibility that incited him: "Spills of mire I swallowed, inside the tower." And he did speak - more validly than could ever have been imagined.