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bucks? I anticipated you railing against my new lifestyle, against the possibility that I might go back there. I won’t. How could I? It would mean death, of course. And the strange pile of papers and their scribblings? Oh, we will get to more of the scribblings the next time we talk. I do love you most when you are very angry at me. I am the decrepit, crumbling child; like one of those dwarfish tragic, chinless, bespectacled children who age too early, I have gone beyond my “in-between” status. (Remember when I sang that song? Of course you do.) I have moved far beyond Andy Hardy. The joy of unconditional love is that no test is too great, and there are no final threats. Is this true? (Don’t answer, please, don’t answer, my darling, please.) I love you.

I am still reeling from your last letter. I can almost smell the invective. I read and reread the first few paragraphs. I think what I treasure most are your threats. All this talk about my liver — can you not see that it is old-fashioned? As you well know, they have made a fourth from my own tissue; it is therefore indestructible — or so they tell me.
    I think this was the turning point for civilization, if I may digress. But I want you to know that what you have said is serious, very serious, and your threats are real. I do acknowledge that. I want you to think about the time when there was some sense — an order that was more than random — when we had to take threats to our health seriously. Do you remember when there were consequences? When actions had results? There was a time when medical insurance cost more if you put your life in danger, and people thought about taking risks in terms of the cost of their health insurance. Do you remember? Without laser healing, regenerative organ replacement and cyberbodies, these things had to be taken into account. The turning point came when people began to believe there
were no consequences
. Remember the middle of the last century, when doctors had a smoke while they warned you of the dangers of lung cancer? It seems we have returned to that era. One day people stopped caring about what they did, and ethics became inconsequential. Ethics are related to survival, but when survival is taken care of in ways that we don’t entirely understand, ethics become a questionable luxury. Fortunately we have the police.
Un
fortunately, the police can do nothing about hurt, betrayal, insensitivity or lies. No there are no personal penalties either — little that’s left is personal.
    There is one thing about Dash’s essay that I particularly liked. Dash talks about Olivier’s Hamlet giving up, giving himself over to death and flying like a bird — with his sword drawn — and finally falling on Claudius and killing him. He reads Hamlet not as a destroyer, but as a mystic. One who surrenders himself to the death instinct. Isn’t that what we’ve all done? We have given up, and why shouldn’t we? It is the only response. We know things will be taken care of, that things will be done for us, and that someone (we are not entirely sure who) is in charge. There is something unhuman, or dis-human, but completely typical and human about this response. On the one hand, Aristotle imagined that being human involved action, decision. But then the philosophies of the Far East — and, it seems, Hamlet — were telling us the opposite: that to be human is to relinquish all claims to the ability to change our fate. The concept of fate itself is old-fashioned. Fate still implies fighting
against
something: “Do not go gentle . . .” Of course, I gave up long ago. (Thank God.)
    Now, to address your concerns, because yes, they must be addressed. So I will calmly sit and mouth the words
my father
. I was astounded when you made reference to him, but I have every right to respond in kind, now that you have thrown down the gauntlet. And I know what you expect — you