Like in Murakami: a real Wind-up Bird!
It is quite unfair that Oppermann has sent me three post-cards today. In addition to my flagging directorial duties, the issues and contentions that abound around post cards has sent me into a flurry of activity.
Creating a journal round a post card is not as facile as it seems. A post card comes in like a dream: relatively effortless for the dream to do, save for the action of buying a post card of some description, a stamp, writing the letters and walking to the post-box, opening the lid and shutting it.
The problem for those who seek to be writers of the conditions of post cards is magnified many fold: did the bird in the picture of this post-card have enough sunshine this morning? Was there sufficient exposure to the correct intensity of temperature in the North-Western winds for the grasses (or reeds) in the picture? Had the writer consumed only a quarter of his cup or tea or single malt? Did the plants feel imposed upon by the photographer's solicitation of this obviously "brassy" bird having a twitter on their stems. Was the weight of the bird on the branch, or perhaps the bending of the twig itself, algorithmically related to the fluctuation of wheat share prices in Panama? Contentions, contentions, contentions. All we can do is the best we are able to do, which in the end we must admit is not really that much: after all the post-cards keep coming in, with a kind of bizarre nonchalance, and the parameters of post-card taking and making must be attended to!
Did Oppermann attend to the slight cough he had subsequent to the sending of this post card? Were there any factors of sudden post card transmission that should have been attended to other than jotting a simple note on a post card? In short, were the proper forms filled out and submitted in triplicate?
I know it may be a terrible world, which requires a certificate for one of humanity's last free acts: the sending of a post card: but it is not the adherence to any specification or regimine that concerns me as much as measuring the precise degree of adherence, and if there were any behavioral characteristics that somehow affected the production of the post card along the way. Moreover, there is concern for the ethicality of yellow and black birds... not merely if they followed institutional precepts of what yellow and black birds should do, but the ontological implications of what should happen were yellow-and-black birds to take wing in an improper manner: would the world as we know it cease to be? Entire cecession and elimination of a species because of a 33 degree turn on a tail in a certain portion of the forest, a swoop on the wing that might have happened at the precise moment before landing on this twig that might have condemned whole portions of the universe to profound black oblivion, not knowing, and not knowing that anything had happened: thus the profound ontological reaches of yellow and black birds.
Oppermann writes on this post card:
"12-7-07 9:40 p. Well, is he yellow or is he black? [this is a trick, I know Oppermann is leading me into an ethical dilemma that has confused some of even the best of philosophers] What's his deal? [Again, another cruel play of language, one knows that yellow-and-black birds do not play card games as a rule, but prefer literary consortation with raspberries] Is he a C.C. Tiger, barking in the Arcadian nostalgia such as certain bloggers and their blogee victims tend to do? [Oppermann's allusion is too obscure here and threatens to be unintelligible.] Or maybe he's just getting ready for a sudden walk (a new blog entry: Oppermann goes on a sudden walk! reflections on Walser and Kafka) [again, unfair, he knows I will be compelled to consult with certain mystical texts, along with a current telephone directory and a copy of the Seattle Sun Times to confirm if such a walk indeed even is possible without the consenting swoop of a yellow-and-black bird's wings] ... actually I just got back from a sudden walk. [again: incorrect!] It's been a long day grading mediocre papers on Nietzsche who went for a lot of walks himself. ["Grading Papers"... the activity itself constitutes a "C-" -Really Oppermann!]
I have nothing to say but had to write you a post card. [Excellent!] In your discussion of my black dog you forgot to discuss its covering and enveloping qualites - and its yellow ones.... [this is incorrect: black dogs always already consult with yellow-and-black birds whenever they do their black dog things. In addition the yellow qualities of a black dog are considered Geheimnis and will have to be discussed later]
The card is entitled "Wild Wetlands" with a subtitle in smaller script: "Yellow-headed blackbird." This too is incorrect, it is really a "Black-tailed yellowbird" but really one should only refer to it as a "yellow-and-black bird."
At this moment there is an infinite number of psychiatric reports that need to be filled in... that I must somehow attend to being their author, just as I am the presumed "author" of the words written here (we know that this too is not only uncertain, it is untrue) .... just as some endless stream of traffic began to cross the bridge, freshly created by the swooping tails of yellow-and-black birds...
It is said that the true being is not knowable by the categories of reason or absurdity, and yet it is manifestly the only real one we have; yet I say it is created through yellow-and-black birds.
1 comment:
Love the bird!
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