Dear Bob Dylan,

I’m reading Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities.    By the time I’m finished with Volumes one and two I’m sure I’ll be a different person.  This is what happens when someone is introduced to great literature.  So for not writing at regular intervals like, as Musil says, a giant pendulum, my mind has been preoccupied with new ideas though my heart is always with you.   There is a significant difference in the way my life was several months ago to the way it is now.  It’s somewhat terrifying.  Not so much the day to day but the afterdays. When I look back and realize how interchangeable things can become.  And people.  People one is accustomed to looking at and spending time with, even loving, suddenly fall back into the soft depth of one’s heart and mind.  Those whom I used to depend on now ignite nothing.   Well, for all I know I could be setting myself up for a fall, since every ideal I used to value now seems less significant.  Not that my values have changed.  It can be better explained if I said:  what used to be my ideal, my model for living an exact life, is now more or less like a painting in some downtown art gallery.  It is there when I go to see it but it is no longer there when I am looking at something else.  In Musil’s book, Ulrich is the man without qualities.   I read how he is and what he is and how he uses his abilities to thwart his own inclinations.  Ulrich is also supposedly a passionate man, but not in the sense of passions as commonly understood.  Ulrich is both passionate and detached at the same time. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions but so many of Ulrich’s traits reminds me of you.  I doubt I’m totally right but I don’t think I’m completely wrong.  There’s like a vast field between you but the same sky above.