Three Oppermann Dreams from November 2007

The following is an attachment of my commentary to Oppermann’s dreams in a correspondence between November 7th and 9th 2007:


would you please take a look at the three dreams below which you may find of interest (particularly the last one as it concerns cresswell who is always of interest as he may be another "Idiot")

enjoying your day at the office?

I respond to the Dreams as follows:

Dr. Oppermann,

I will begin a discourse on your dreams as I read them.I will bring your attention to be mindful of the precept concerningLot's wife in Genesis: she was turned into a pillar of salt whenlooking back at the ruination of her life. I have seen recently,women who have been abused and abandoned, women who have turned intopillars of salt, because they refused to turn away from this turning to look back.

01:019:025 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

01:019:026 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

Crystallized bitterness, dissolves in a sea of tears. Now you may be bitter, and you look back in dismay at all the mendying of their heart-attacks... somewhere where the heart just could no longer stand. These are great men, and they are great men in you, and they are dying, and part of you is dying too.There are of course two things, turning to look back and turning tolook toward the future. The second ripps one away from the first. Togive up the past, to rip ourselves toward the future it, the past, memory, must be sacrificed, but we must know what is sacrifice inorder for it to be any sort of a sacrifice whatsoever, so we must turnback to know what it meant. To ask to know memory is like seeking to get to the next village, onceone enters into the labyrinth of the text, the interplay is endless and exhausting until one becomes exhausted with the phenomenology ofthe past and gives up and lives into the phenomenology of the present. What is present is informed by the pleroma of the past, except forthe ripping where one gives up the past as well, and seeks to gainentrance into the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of presence, in whatis present.What is the value of such an array of experience? What is the valueof what is said here? They are diamonds of experience, this is as good as experience can get, which is, naturally, a great deal to say if one can say anything at all. "For those who look back, the whole world, even the starry heavens, becomes the mother who bends over him and enfolds him on all sides" (a paraphrase of Jung's Symbols of Transformation: paragraph 646).

So the task is not to look back, but to rip one's attention to what is just ahead. And this ripping, and the rending of hearts in great heart attacks is thefeeling of one's looking ahead, one is looking ahead at death.Death is not even the bloody mess of entanglements, the bloody mess ofthe suffocating fornication of the "particular" is a present thatstill claims its bloody roots in the past (think of the maggots swarming in the boy's leg in Kafka's "Landartzt"). Death is a silencing and a pre-figuring of some kind of redemption or resurrection that we all secretly long for (Grünewald's risen Christ).

Is Resurrection also a "salvation" --- no because salvation issalting, it remains, it preserves the past, it dries and crystallizesthe bloody mass into a horror of frozen meat.

Nov 7, 2007 10:31 AM

What happens when you teach from the heart

I am in the front yard in Torkenweiler. There is a party of some kind going on, and more guests are still arriving. I have an official function at this party, and keep coordinating something with my mother. The mood is good, and everything seems fine. Then someone talks about a little girl who has just had a heart attack. Someone else says that the Greek second husband of Gertrud Unsöld has also just had a heart attack. A third person runs up to my mother and me and says that Peter Blasenheim has also suffered a heart attack just now. I am scared. I walk down the stairs, and see Suse Unsöld pulling up in a car. A fellow is with her who looks like one of my students. He has curly hair and seems young. There is an empty expression on his face. I ignore him, and ask Suse if she has heard about the heart attacks. It appears that she has, and that she is not overly concerned about them. I accompany her up the stairs and then hand her over to my mother. I walk towards the Grohmann property, and this now suddenly reveals sight of the EZO. By the cash registers, there is a commotion of some kind. I see Peter lying there, panting. He curses at something. For some reason I cannot get through to him, and Suse calls me back to the party. I hesitate, and then some woman tells me that Peter has died. I sit around with my parents and talk about what Peter has meant to me. I tell them how Peter was supposed to have died soon in the 1980s but that he has lingered on for so long.

A patient's wallet (before the path to the right)

I am visiting a city I have never been to before. It has the feel of a large European city, and reminds me a bit of Berlin, but it is built on hills. I am there with my mother and one other person, staying in a hotel. I leave the hotel to explore the town. I walk along a long street, and enter a few stores. Then I go back to the hotel to rest. I leave my wallet and all my other stuff there, and go out again, dressed only in sandals, shorts, and a short-sleeved shirt in a rust brown color. I walk along the same street again, but now come to a newsstand-like bookstore which I explore a little bit. There are glossy new books in various languages, and for a moment I get the sense I am in an airport. I see a few t-shirts for sale. They have prints of faces of people on them. I do not recognize any of these people but have the sense that they are television comedians. In the very back of the store I see some older books lying on a table. There is an Indian or Pakistani woman browsing through them. I see a book of postcards that has an image of a face lying on a bed on them, in black and white. It says "Hospital Patients." I am intrigued by this concept, and decide to buy this to send the post cards to Justin. I leave the store to walk back to the hotel to get my wallet and my brown linen coat. Now I am somehow in the company of a youngish man with dark hair who seems to follow me. We walk across a large square which has a castle or a large church on its left side. I remember that I have originally come to this town to explore its many famous sites. I see a tall slender woman with long hair rushing by in the square. She is wearing hippyish clothes, and accidentally drops a small leather wallet. It falls to the ground and then rolls around. I shout: "Hey, lady!" but she does not hear me. Then a swarthy, unshaven middle-aged fat man walks towards the leather wallet and picks it up. He is accompanied by a big woman in late middle-age wearing all red clothing. This couple then walks up to me. The fellow with me has turned into Max now. We veer away from the main street onto a small path that leads to the right. Behind some houses there are woods, and we walk into the woods. The couple is following us. It now seems to me that I am in rural Virginia somewhere, and I point this out to Max. At this moment we see a few hikers who have a large black dog with them. The dog comes up to me and starts playing with me. I enjoy this, but then the dog crawls up my back and sits on top of my head.

I hurriedly re-frame Oppermann's account as follows:

Story of a man who is left with a dog on his head (the valiseincident): here we have the depiction of an educated man in his latethirties, he lays down his wallet and takes up his indescretion. Butif only you could grab hold of your indiscretion, you would suddenly be alive, and walking swifty with the tall woman who has picked upyour valise. "I hope you'll get your money's worth" I heard her say.I cannot be responsible for what I heard said. Here is my friend,again, taken for another wild ride, by a wild eyed yogi... a yokel and a yogi at the same time: for he is also the fat man, bespectacled andunshaven, worn clothes, maybe he is the sheep-man: Baah, Baah, Baah. That translates into any language as a formal hesitation: Bah! Idon't want what was said! "I hope you get your money's worth" is whatshe said. And this brings us to the question: into what have youinvested my dear friend? Into what is your dirty pocketbook invested? You are invested to become a man with a dog curled arround your head,like some Kossack with a fine flur hat, ignorant: guarding the door toyour very own truth, the door to the law, which is, if it is the truelaw, never to be spoken, for the law that can be spoken of is neverthe true law! A Cossack hat is always better than a leopard skin pillbox hat anyday, except in the eyes of Bob Dylan (see enclosed fashion details)."What was the purpose of the law?" I heard the young man said. Andyou were traveling for so long with your young man, who kept askingand asking this question, hoping for an answer. After all the law andall of its attendant civilization seemed to bring forth suffering. Perhaps you may have thought that it is better to become a bear, withthose pre-legal burning bruin eyes: the eyes of the adolescent, who remains before the law, uncomprehending: who never asked the question of the law which is always: "what is the law to me?" There is law even in your medieval towns, where you and the young man were crossing, and without great effort in you sojoun into the natureof the law
I will take the liberty of calling the third dream:

The Cresswell solution

(I enjoin it to be subtitled "Tears")

I am in Tokyo, at a busy corner where there is a restaurant that I have been to before. I have gone there to meet my parents and also to re-connect with some other people I have not seen in a while. One of them is a shy young woman. I look forward to this, but just as I am about to enter the restaurant, I hear a voice of someone talking. The voice sounds familiar, and I realize it is Cresswell. I am stunned to find him here. We talk, and he rolls a cigarette and begins to smoke it. I suggest that he join our meal, and we go inside. He connects well with my father, and the two of them talk a lot. We all sit on a large table, and I keep observing Cresswell out of the corner of my eye while I make small talk with the young woman. There is something uncertain about the food. At some point we all get up and stand around for a while, then sit down again but in different combinations. I now have Cresswell next to me, and we talk. He tells me he is on his way to Canada, somewhere in Saskatchewan or Manitoba to attend a wedding. Then he adds that it is his wedding. I ask him whom he is marrying. He laughs and asks me if I really do not know this. I do not, and he says something about the obvious woman. This makes me laugh in turn. I then suggest that we call Justin from my cell-phone, and see how he reacts to getting a call from Cresswell and me, from Japan. This does not happen, however, and before I know it, I find myself in a beautiful Japanese hotel, standing in the lobby, together with the other people. We are assigned rooms, and in a complicated arrangement, I am supposed to share my room with Cresswell. This pleases me as I have the feeling that I can learn a lot from him. When I am shown to the room by some hotel employee, however, I am actually with a young woman. The hotel guy says it is the best room they have. It turns out to be an extremely narrow, long room which has two ornamented coffin-like beds at its end. I am not sure whether to be irritated or intrigued by this. There is a door to the left, and this opens to a plain library that has all kinds of books. Just as I want to explore this, I find myself in an airport lounge that has a mall-like aura to it. The young woman is now Lauren, who tells me something about her and me. It is incomprehensible, but I am not surprised at this. I look forward to seeing Cresswell again.

Rembember that any solution, provided that it is not overly saturated(with ideas, meaning or significance) is capable of dissolving salt (which can be read as bitterness, but "bitterness" means nothing untilit becomes equated or distilled: "your bitterness." It is a part of you yourself in your ownmost: "Your Bitterness."Remember that Cresswell sailed on the ocean with a bunch of old salts. He always spoke of going away to the cold frozen north (where thecreek used to rise) and there in the ice and sunshine of an eternal arctic summer he would fish for salmon and god knows what other kindof fish). He would brag of being a man who could always earn himselfa sure living, doing something both hearty and back-breaking. He could literally go out there and fish. We stay behind and count the statistics: how many more years until the world is fished out? How many more years before we cannot produce livestock any more? How manymore years can we go on like this?

Cresswell earned a good deal of cash. There is money in your wallet,blood on your hands and on the tracks, I never could figure out whatmade Cresswell tick! Was it that his father was part of the American military? Was it some way in which he envisioned himself, the intellectual product of his father's worth, but someone who found hisown father's worth and work tasteless. Cresswell never spoke of his father. He was his own father from the start. He imbibed of all thecruelty and indifference of the father who shreds us from our past andsays we have to move on. And that he earned a good deal of cash forhis catch from the sea. And you could say you would like to earn somecash too, if you caught hold of something more than priveleged andentitled teens, there might be something, and something to look ahead,but as it is its only ashes, ashes and pot-sherds. I would, however,be wrong to leave you with just this image, just this piss-pot that isoverturned and broken. You have partaken of some share of your ownglory. You are a man of great discipline and you have obtained a double D: D stands for Doctorate, not bra cup size.

Herzog as found on:
http://www.thedocumentaryblog.com/index.php/2007/11/22/vice-interviews-werner-herzog/

Japan: from where, in a film by Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog complains of the aenemia of images in the civilized world, indeed within Tokyo itself: Tokyo-Ga. Tokyo-Ga has the advantage of having an image of Herzog, and an epiphany that the waste of time that one has playing pachinko was the only manner one could survive the horror of the Second World War: How we waste our time in these idle speculations, web-blogs, spider-solitaire (my own waste preferences) or perhaps in Oppermann's sense reading himself silly... Tokyo, where at one time in order to escape profound depression and shoddy workmanship the only route was through metalic silver balls being pressed round a senseless machine: The Pachinko Machine:

What inthe hell are you doing in Japan? Have you come on nothing but theimage of a jewish american princess? (well, Salome is not bad for astart.)What are you doing? In the arms of the Dauphin Hotel? Something ismissing! Yes, a clue of how you got there, yes, straight into theheart of a Murakami novel. That being said I would have to say thatyou are one very lucky fellow. You carved out a piece for yourselffrom existence, you and this exotic woman... or if she is not herself exotic the hotel is at the very least. So there you have it: from Cresswell to Cossack is indeed a very short journey. And from the cossack to the Soviet car: the Zaporoshet (that would yet be spoken of, and that has now already been spoken of, and indeed was spoken of in an even more distant past). Zaporoshet: one who dwells in fortified encampments. All that is missing is the stringy black tartar beard, butbehold, by Jove, Cresswell had such a moustache and goatee, a veritable Colonel Sanders: the Colonel, who was son of a Colonel. (I believe that Cresswell even referred to himself as a child of a military man).

So the question remains for you what is colonel? Does it matter this kernel of knowledge? Is it just some fried chicken, "greasy kids stuff," to paraphrase the Freewheelin Bob Dylan? What kernal have you gleaned from this. The Colonel was always a stuffy, stodgy old man, but i will leave this meditation upto you, if you have the strength or the resource to observe it. More on this later, because there is always time for what is later,rather than the suffocating excressence of what is past,Your call has been heard, whether you dialed it or not, or sent bytelegraph (now no longer existent) or by telepathy. Ayres