A Letter to Oppermann

Dear Dr. Oppermann,

It seems that there have always been two kinds of letters that have been written. There are letters that have been written because one was passionately on a path to write a letter. There are letters that are written because with an immense astonishment one discovers that one must write a letter. This falls into more of the latter category.

I write as Ayreses have always had to write: when the terrible urge overcame them and not a second before or after. Unpredictable, undedicated dilettantism is all this has ever earned me.

I write you because I believe that I have somehow changed between the last posting on the "Oppermann in Praxis" web-log and the current one. How much longer will the change last? How much longer will this inspiration last before once again it is dormant? stand-off-ish? Unpredictable? Say, another twenty years?

Be that as it may, I have resigned myself over the last year to reading and occasionally writing on your weblog as somehow more Ayresian than the Ayres weblog of Oppermann: if such distinctions can be maintained with any reasonable cerebration.

How then has Ayres changed? He has grown a little older, that is all. He still has put off harboring any thoughts of going into a monastery. (Good, good, we know all that.) Ayres has begun to let his hair grow out again (but that is all old stuff, Oppermann has endured these things before).

So Ayres has not changed much then? When we think of it, old habits die hard, particularly the habit of being oneself, as finite, limited and uncreative as that might seem.

So what is this motivation to write, more of the same? I have changed only as a Walser has changed, which again would be, not much at all: still thee same damned bowler hat and the pinstripe slacks and walking cane, or dudeish equivalent. No news there.

Perhaps I found a cache of humor in Walser, that is all, and that would be a sign of Ayres' changing. (I am so sick and tired of myself among so many friends who all wish to be seen by their friends as changing: we aren't changing at all, it's so pathetic!) Change only happens from without: and then when one is changed, truly, it means in it's essence: one can't have the same friends any more.

So then I am writing this out of obligation? Heck no!

I do not have the pretense to claim I have the arduous spiritual discipline of, say, an Oppermann, to devote the last year of his life to an extremely consistent web-log (Come on Ayres! Where's your backbone! Where's your spine!) I am not a spiritual web-log persuer: I am a televangelist johnny-come-lately to the scene: that is all, that is really all I can stand!

Rather, Oppermann writes because Oppermann is Oppermann. Ayres writes because Ayres is Ayres. That much we will get straight, though a document on friendship: "The Road Goes Even Further" is something we will have to continue to write together whenever possible.

Oppermann is breaking off to write a writing: The writing is not his writing when he was faced each day with the cackle of six or seven dozen college kids. (We were once those, and we called the days "Arcadian," but Oppermann looks at the dither of all that late teen-age sonambula with disgust). (You'll correct me quite vehemently, I hope, if I'm wrong).

Maybe I am writing this letter because I simply Owed Oppermann the time. That is a frank admission of a debt of soul, not an obligation to my own pointless spiritual rubric to nothing (and I really mean "nothing"): but an empty lament. I haven't changed. I'm still the same. (which is actually quite boring!) I Owed Oppermann because I love so much of what he is, and I just needed to spend a part of an evening in thought, hopefully laughing with him at my own dithering turn-around-speeches in this letter. It should look almost like Sebald, except I didn't go anywhere, I stayed home: ergo it's more like Walser.

Oppermann should be the man to go around with international speeches! First he is here, and then there. Damn well should be, or will be, everywhere. I know, enough, enough.

Anyway, there is so much more I would have liked to say. I would still say that my chapter on Hölderlin will have to contain extensive documentation around the Oppermann post-cards from the Hölderlin museum. My book, however is still to be published at a far-off date.

Oppermann seems nascent: like a leopard about to give birth: about to be published and punished! About to be sent to the "pen." About to be discovered by his own return ...just as he is set to depart! Pure astonishment!

With heartfelt friendship,

Ayres