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Rapallo
September 17, 1905
Dear Alex
If I haven't written to you before, there is no need to feel offended. Even for those in Aussee I haven't produced anything but picture postcards, and this letter—the first since my departure—is already being written in anticipation of the return to the life of ordinary mortals. One just doesn't find time for anything; the heavenly sun and the divine sea—Apollo and Poseidon—are enemies of all mental activity. I realize that the only thing that has hitherto kept us going has been that remaining sense of obligation to identify—Baedeker in hand—new regions, museums, palaces, ruins; since this obligation does not exist here I am simply drowning in a life of ease.
Now for the sea. The beach is fine mud in which one can walk out for a quarter of an hour, head above water, and a little further on there are wonderful rocks (like those we saw in Capri) with pools in which one can sit, sloping carpets of rocks on which one rolls like a monster in one of Bocklin's pictures, completely alone and losing all account of time. Since I am all by myself I am not going in for serious fishing. But on the first day I managed to tickle an octopus, which refused to leave the water, then I got myself pricked by sea urchins, stung by jellyfish, tried in vain to detach some sea anemones, and to catch some of those wily crabs