Oppermann and Gossett have taken time to discuss my case (with limited success, Max, after all is constantly diverting his keenest analysis, impish as this undoubtedly seems to the uninitiated), they may indict me on the matter of my approach or non-approach to the feminine, at times they may adjust my sentence, murmuring something about my naive attachments to the "feminine" which may or may not have anything to do with the actual women with whom I have co-habited and fought with these hand-fulls of years that I have existed on this planet.
Oppermann's case has been laid out in several conditions:
- Oppermann as a sort of bachelor-machine
- Oppermann as a dude
- Oppermann as a thinker
- Oppermann as an author
- Oppermann as a practical explanation of genius
- Oppermann as a lover of bears (from the right distance)
- Oppermann as an academic
- Oppermann as a sort of critic
- Oppermann as a writer of Post-Cards (notations from the brink of some other topos or non-topos)
- Oppermann as an inhabitant of Seattle
- Oppermann as a commentator on the post-psychological epoch
- Oppermann as a German (Swabian)
- Oppermann as an inhabitant of the United States (Colorado Springs, Arlington Massachusetts, Seattle, and temporarily in other locations, possibly on an autobus to Texas or another state in his Freshman year of college or some such thing)
- Oppermann as a writer, now, of English web-logs
- Oppermann as a driver of foreign automobiles (sub categories on how I intensely dislike when he drives too closely to the car in front of him)
- Oppermann as control freak (with features of panic attacks when I have visited my former analyst Lee Roloff on light hearted business)
- Oppermann as an attendant of Bob Dylan, Greg Brown and Richard Thompson concerts (with sub categories of with or without Gossett or other fellow attendants)
- Oppermann as a walker
- Oppermann as a commentator on Ayres (sub categories relate to his own presenting persona: Arthur Holzgold, Falkenburger, etc.)
- Oppermann as an occasionally intoxicated writer (sub-categories of Tea, Bowmore, and Boddingtons)
- Oppermann as an observer of analytical psychologists
- Oppermann as one of the best informed literary thinkers of our time
- Oppermann as a leading authority on Robert Walser in the United States
- Oppermann as a sleeper
- Oppermann as a commentator on "Jeder fuer sich und Gott gegen Alles"
- etc.
- Oppermann as defined in a category of finite singularity
- Oppermann as defined by the totality of his human and non-human personal experience
- Oppermann as a world traveler
- Oppermann as not contained in the categories of this or any other essay
- Oppermann as one who has inhaled my second hand cigarette smoke
- Oppermann as a drinker of black coffee (I believe this is a religious conviction)
- Oppermann as expelled from the Institute of German Romanticism
- Oppermann as a reader of Franz Kafka (which is not the same as being a literary thinker)
- Oppermann as educator (in the manner of Schopenhauer)
- Oppermann as Kleist
- Oppermann as Hoffmann
- Oppermann as inhabitant of Ravensburg
- Oppermann as divorcee of his former American wife (whom I may not be able to name out of respect though he is free to discuss at any length my relation to Corinne, my own foreign ex-wife)
- Oppermann as procrastinator
- Oppermann as masturbator (in the image of Peter Handke's Kuerze Brief zum langer Abscheid)
- Oppermann as idiot (sub-category as fellow-idiot)
- Oppermann as friend
- Oppermann as one of those fucking sages
- Oppermann as used book salesman
- Oppermann as consumer
- Oppermann as nose-picker
- Oppermann as poet
- Oppermann as a botanical incompetent
- Oppermann as tennis player
- Oppermann as grand-son
- Oppermann as ....
- and so on.
- Oppermann as exhausted
- Oppermann as shot
- Oppermann as revived
- Oppermann as shot again
- Oppermann as retrieved
- Oppermann as gelassen
The key aspect here is to note that the Borgesian categories of Oppermann: perhaps these categories are driven by his intense, hysterical, but always somehow hilarious genius for anxiety, perhaps his Dasein in these web-pages is driven by his curious naughtyness, a Walserian reversal that always threatens to leap out into the text, and scrub the whole thing with an indictment [62. Oppermann as plaintiff; 63. Oppermann as professor of sentimental jackassery; 64. Oppermann as accusitor: "you're an asshole" 65. and so on (again)].
The Case of Oppermann is not by any means completed. In fact by beginning to render a formal or informal exposition of the various modalities and sub-categories of Oppermann's existence here it quickly becomes apparent that only I will be exhausted, needing desperately to go to bed after a long week of directing myself and others to act in accordance with the principles of psychoanalysis, needless to say of which comprise countless other ordinances, sub-categories, rejoinders and epithets. In the meantime it becomes increasingly certain that Oppermann simply has gone to bed. He may wake in an hour, or perhaps in many hours in a state of intense anxiety, that I may or may not later enjoy poking fun at.
6 comments:
"what might be my fine?"
i have not laughed this hard and this long in months, possibly years.
not quite sure what reaction there will be. will have to possibly forward this to falkenburger's blog on ayres, so as to get back at you in the best possible spirit of friendship, etc.
two things to correct immediately (since oppermann is a germanic perfectionist and control-freak):
1) oppermann has never been to a greg brown concert, but he has seen the lord of music three times, and dr. thompson three times as well.
2) oppermann would prefer it if you replaced the accusation "masturbator" with that of "bather" (in a tub). any one with a truly salacious mind can find the sad truth in this comment here.
I enjoyed your blog post on the Case of Oppermann very much and particularly found your list to be of value. Have you tempered or humored (yes, An Elizabethan idea) that list vis-a-vis a filter or are they spontaneous?
With that in mind let me acknowledge your expert status as a lister. There again is that wonderful 'play' on words, again Shakespeare is in the alley. Know the Ledge. Sort of like the missing link in Jesus Christ, or Anointed. Should we not add the word the? Jesus The Christ. Again let me simply say that things are always more theo-logical than we are inclined to think or reclined to admit.
Well, again I want to encourage you fellows on this good harmless fun.
Some possible suggestions for future post topics:
1) Oppermann as Bible figure
2) Oppermann's football reverie
3) Oppermann's malt variances
4) Oppermann's Beckett smokes (Davidoff)
5) etc, etc.Oppermann's travails.
The point is made here to Oppermann as Optimist. But such lists have their place.
And for a corollary let us examine An Ayresian compilation. For instance:
1) A man and his hair
2) Ayres and the Call of (&from) the road
3) Ayres anatomical guide to the feminine
4) Ayres waxes on philosophy
5) The Complete Ayres Guide to Roast Beef Pudding and Cookery
For the consideration of time I have chosen to limit the listing on my account to the number five. And if you are of a mind to reflect on the signicance of the fiver please do so.
And in closing a slight criticism because no where in the blog have I found any reference to Claudia Cardinale, Gina Lola Brigida, or the Goddess. As Van says,
"rave on John Donne."
I need to make some sort of comment on Max's suggested future topics of Oppermannian contention:
Some possible suggestions for future post topics:
1) Oppermann as Bible figure
2) Oppermann's football reverie
3) Oppermann's malt variances
4) Oppermann's Beckett smokes (Davidoff)
5) etc, etc.Oppermann's travails.
OK, well, number 1) "Oppermann as Bible figure" I verily think he would be a prophet. I don't think he will be a pharo, and i do think he is here in some manner to deliver the people... from what? Too what? The people are delivered from enslavement, bondage, and so forth, so one of Oppermann's biblical/ontological categories is liberator through cynicism and questioning of the soundness of any authority. This is something we humans have felt compelled to do, and we do not call ourselves prophets or saviors for this because ... what's a prophet or a savior? another advertising gimmick? In any sense you see what I mean. Liberators just don't give a damn about selling themselves to anyone, but a liberator can be a friend, and he can heed the call of being, which heralds from the mountains with trumpets (another sovereignty???) in the morning... yes well there is always another sovereign, but in between, have you noticed your own perfect delight at that moment in the park at dawn beside the ocean? Nothing may surpass this finite instant.
Number 2. Oppermann's football reverie. It is not clear why Oppermann does this. Possibly it is some allegiance he has with popular culture, somewhat like my playing copious amounts of computer games. Professional football games are specialized and marketed to have the broadest appeal to the masculine population, just as, for example, "The Gilmore Girls" is marketed to the female population of this count-ry. All I can say here is that Oppermann is buying into a stereotype, and this is where he can just as well just say, well enough dammit is enough. There really ain't no more to say. If he wants to participate in stupidity, largely he has had enough friends to kick him in the ass and suggest that what he is doing is stupid, so being that he is one of the most intelligent and open human beings i have ever met, he would laughingly agree and continue watching his game: either football, as in European soccer, or American Football. All I can say is that he knows what he is doing. I do not profess to have a damn idea of what it is though.
Number 3. Oppermann's malt preferences and variances. Same really as number 2. Oppermann knows what he is doing. He is a big boy now. I really trust that he will not over drink on the matter because he had an uncle I believe who died of drink, which makes that story a scary aspect in his "family" (if one actually believes the nonsense about genetics). Also Oppermann is a man alone, and in this sense according to another consumerist custom, single, divorced men are more prone to abuse alcohol, and so forth. Harvey Rabbin at Colorado College gave one of the better refutations of all the market pallaver when he spoke on Freud's coccaine addiction: well if you are still capable of making lasting works of sometimes eternal beauty, then what the fuck do you care? ...And certainly there is a withdrawl of genius when certain virtuosi become sober, which may be gradually replaced by some soul greatness: there is no telling, Oppermann may have to be dry (as in the image of Murakami's "Dried up well" for a while. Note though that the current of Oppermann's genius is flowing through his "Ayres in Theoria" web-log. So Oppermann is doing well... this is not to say that one should not exercise caution: there are in fact as with life and motorcycles only two kinds of riders: those who have fallen and those who are about to fall. I would rather be with the ones who have already fallen, though a Falkenburger or a Max on the other hand might prefer a fresh invigorating journey: as Walser himself in his short prose piece: "Lake Griefen" announces himself gleefully, and even as a form of absolute rebellion, brilliant, icy genius: as one who is about to fall.
Number 4. Oppermann smokes Davidoff cigarettes. It is not a matter of conversation that Oppermann discloses exactly when or if he smokes at all. The last time he began smoking it was after something you said. Then he smoked for a while and then announced to me that he had quit smoking a couple of years ago when I came to visit Seattle. As with football, malt beverages, smoking is no exception, and the response is along with those other addictive, banal occupations a matter of saying: "he knows what he is doing." Another way of saying this is, "let the fucker handle his own business." Another way of saying this, concerning the consumerist behaviors that you have indicated: Business is business.
There is yet another iteration with drinking or smoking: and that is that there is an undoubted aesthetic component of enjoyment of a luxury or a kind of delicacy. Oppermann in these instances prefers to think of himself as a connoisseur of delacacies, and so do you as a matter of fact. That such delicacy can easily lead to excess for idiots like yourselves is no wonder: so watch out before I have to come and kick your asses in.
Oppermann smokes Beckett-like Davidoff cigarettes? Once again we have the addition of a delicacy to something even more exquisite which is the prose of Sam Beckett. There is nothing better than Beckett since he will not let himself be compromised at any moment. period. Beckett will not let himself be compromised. There is no hope. There is something else: when one looks at the very end of the possibility of Dasein: the limits of the project: "I can't go on." Well there is Beckett with his goddamn prose poem saying "I'll go on." and that phrase is damn near intolerable. So, whether one indulges in smoking a Davidoff, or writing in the spirit of Beckett is just what happens after we discover that the limits of Dasein have been exceeded, which is not only wrong, but a very affront to the universe, and for which you will have to be later punished: but by God, move yourselves out there into the abyss, go ahead, don't tempt God to save you, because you've read too many times the Grand Inquisitor, and you know that this would take away your own human choice to believe or not.
Number 5. Oppermann's travails is covered under section 8 concerning his intense anxiety. That is really all there is to say about his travails. Aside from this as i have already informed you somewhere elsewhere I see Oppermann grinning like an idiot, donning a heavily embroidered Tibetan cap and venturing off into the morning light that resounds early through the mountains.
I must respond to Jim as a comment, and not as an entire literal web log in itself, which would be to take his advice literally, which in every case is ill advised.
And for a corollary let us examine An Ayresian compilation. For instance:
1) A man and his hair
2) Ayres and the Call of (&from) the road
3) Ayres anatomical guide to the feminine
4) Ayres waxes on philosophy
5) The Complete Ayres Guide to Roast Beef Pudding and Cookery
Article one: the first indictment. Fuck yeah, I had a dream about my long hair last night. It is a matter that that long hair was a part of my sexy and subversive side that got squelched a bit when I began to provide all this social sservice. Basically that sexy and subversive part of me can go to roost for a while until I can feel my soul is absolutely full from working where I do. I love my job. So the sexy and subversive pony tail has gone out the window. When things relax I might be able, like Poseidon, to take a break and grow my hair once more. Whether or not I will ever have that level of intense hair ever again it was worth having. Now it is worth not having it at all if you think of it particularly as an article of vanity. But it was not a matter of vanity, rather it stood for something. Vanity, an earthly sin, well please forgive us our vanity, and I am no longer in the mood to say all is not vanity... the very attempt to write a linguistic web log is probably an exceedingly long web strand of associations or hair. We can say all this is a major indictment against me: that I, insofar as I am a writer of web-logs, expresses a will to power to somehow break through and create a web-log that will somehow be remembered for it's unique set of turnings: vanity all is vanity.
Concerning all the rest of your questions: from philosophy to roast beef, if you don't like this meat then you don't have to eat it. Beggars are unwise choosers. But when I think of your charity posting, I will just shut up and take what I get?
I do not lift the skirts of a lady to find out what her body looks like, somewhere she can take it off, and that will be a beautiful morning. And all the joy and disappointment can then inform this experience like a flood of good and bad news. Just love, and then you can get to any anatomy. But if you look for it, you will wind up a destitute man in a cell.
I do not know about the road. The road is where wanderers "dwell" and the road is where the hero-wanderers move:
"[Attis] as son and lover of his mother he raises the incest problem. Incest leads logically to ritual castration in the Attis-Cybele cult; for according to legend the hero driven mad by his mother, mutilates himself. I must refrain from going into this question more deeply at present... Here I would only point out that the incest motif is bound to arise, because when the regressing libido is introverted for internal or external reasons it always reactivates the parental imagoes and thus apparently re-establishes the infantile relationship."
ergo the garden of flowers and the apparently benign infantile construal of libido on an internet web log; Jung however goes on to write:
"But this relationship cannot be re-established, because the libido is an adult libido which is already bound to sexuality and inevitable imports an incompatible, incestuous character into the reactivated relationship with the parents. [Jung footnotes: This explanation is not satisfactory, because I found it impossible to go into the archetypal incest problem and all its complications here. I have dealt with it at some length in my Psychology of the Transference.] It is this sexual character that now gives rise to the incest symbolism. Since incest must be avoided at all costs, the result is either the death of the son-lover or his self-castration as punishment for the incest he has committed, or else it is the sacrifice of instinctuality, and especially of sexuality, as a means of preventing or expiating the incestuous longing. Sex being one of the most obvious examples of instinctuality, it is sex which is liable to be the most affected by these sacrifical measures, i.e. through abstinence. The heroes are usually wanderers [Jung's footnote: like Gilgamesh, Dionysus, Heracles, Mithras, etc.], and wandering is a symbol of longing [Jung's footnote: Richard Wagner die Fliegenden Hollander], of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother. The sun comparison can easliy be taken in this sense: the heroes are like the wandering sun, from which it is concluded that the myth of the hero is a solar myth. It seems to us rather, that he is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing for the unconscious, of its unquenchable and unquenching desire for the light of consciousness. But consciousness, continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becomming a rootless will o' the wisp [Irrlichter], longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms."
[Jung then goes on to quote at length from Faust II "the realm of the mothers"]
To iterate again: concerning Gossett's question of "The road":
"The heroes are usually wanderers [Jung's footnote: like Gilgamesh, Dionysus, Heracles, Mithras, etc.], and wandering is a symbol of longing [Jung's footnote: Richard Wagner die Fliegenden Hollander], of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother. The sun comparison can easliy be taken in this sense: the heroes are like the wandering sun, from which it is concluded that the myth of the hero is a solar myth. It seems to us rather, that he is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing for the unconscious, of its unquenchable and unquenching desire for the light of consciousness. But consciousness, continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becomming a rootless will o' the wisp [Irrlichter], longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms."
On vanity:
eue-
DEFINITION: To leave, abandon, give out, whence nominal derivatives meaning abandoned, lacking, empty. Oldest form *1eu2-, zero-grade *1u2-, with variant form *1we2-, colored and contracted to *w-. 1. Suffixed form *w-no-. a. wane; wanton, from Old English wanian, to lessen (from Germanic *wann), and wan-, without; b. want, from Old Norse vanta, to lack, from North Germanic *wanatn. 2. Suffixed form *w-no-. vain, vanity, vaunt; evanesce, vanish, from Latin vnus, empty. 3. Extended form *wak-. vacant, vacate, vacation, vacuity, vacuum, void; avoid, devoid, evacuate, from Latin vacre (variant vocre), to be empty. 4. Extended and suffixed form *ws-to-. waste; devastate, from Latin vstus, empty, waste. (Pokorny 1. eu- 345.)
It is pretty clear that vanity has some very difficult issues: getting back to the Gossett issue of "A man and his hair." It is probably the entitled shadow person I will try to fight for the rest of eternity. This shadow carries, as you know, an essential part of my "Truth"
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