Mike & Sally

Mike and Sally are coming to town. I have no image of them. One is Austrian, one is African American. Both are Oppermann's friends. They are coming to regale him because both are his friends, and both were with him at law school at the University of Washington, where Oppermann had to learn once again that education in academia is not the way to anything but a pain in the head and possibly later a divorce from your soon-to-be-ex american wife.

Oppermann showed me his law school once, I believe in the first visit that I made to him in 1999 or thereabouts. He showed me a rather mean gray concrete (Beton) place where he and Mike and Sally (whose name is Anatole in reality, but Oppermann insists on calling him "Sally") would stand outside (there was no place for sitting) and every now and then talk and smoke cigarettes (I am not certain if Oppermann smoked during law school).

Law school for Oppermann seemed like merely a necessary contingency, sort of like a bowel movement. It had very little to do with his paideia, which at that time he took well into his hand, and in a sense at this time I am taking in hand here in this web log.

Oppermann did meet Lou Wolcher to my understanding in law school. Wolcher, like Fuller before him, was impressed with Oppermann's status as being a member of the "European Intellectual Aristocracy." And Oppermann did write an excellent essay on Anaximander, Heidegger, Rhythm and Restitution, which probably will be the most thoughtful essay that Wolcher will ever encounter from a law school student... except maybe an essay from someone who is not too self-righteous but somehow has survived the effect of genocide and wishes to do everything in their power to halt the effects of the unconscious genocidal instinct of our American culture.... something like that might exceed Oppermann's question of justice, but not by very far, because in point of fact as an intellectual Oppermann is appalled by this sort of thing, as indeed every self-respecting German intellectual has to be after the catastrophe that happened in Germany in the form of National Socialism.

Mike and Sally are coming to visit Oppermann because shortly Oppermann will be disappearing from the United States to seriously take up his Dasein in Germany. At that point Oppermann will open himself to a language (German) which in its stranger moments feels fully alien to me. Oppermann shares German with the Austrian German of Anatole, and Oppermann likes to make fun of Sally for this. Nevertheless I would have to say that the likes of the Austrian singer Wolfgang Ambrose is rarely discovered in any condition: I took a liking to him immediately after Oppermann sent me a cassette tape of his music in 2000 or so. Oppermann has promised some digital Ambrose to me but is yet to be forthcoming.

Both Mike and Sally have their own shadows: principally round the small animal of the body. This makes them at times pityful, and at times kinder, and possibly more understanding of their fellow human's stupidities than the likes of the harshly puritanical Ayres. They may collectively enjoin Oppermann to have lots of "FUN" despite himself. This fun will unfortunately not involve otters (see the previous web-posting on fun and otters) or tapirs (Hah! I have finally responded to Tapirs, who are fun, but whom require an intimacy with a given woman that Oppermann will not obtain in the forseeable future). I hope that Oppermann will actually concede to his friends and allow himself to be abashed by his own small animality: and I hope this same small animality will not tear him apart (as so likely it does in Ayres's instance).

Anatole (Sally) in my imagination occupies the same place as Donald Theodore Kerebotsos in "The Big Lebowski." I imagine Mike and Oppermann telling him frequently, "Shut the fuck up, Sally." If Sally does not understand this reference, they must, as they probably will, drink beer and/or other sorts of barley water and watch this film repeatedly, and flush if necessary, until it all comes clear. I just heard of their upcoming plans this weekend... Oppermann told me with a kind of tenseness, because he is having to sew up a lot of loose ends before setting off home to Ravensburg. He may have a few unruly nights to go before he gets there. I can only wish him well from a distance, and know that at least in those moments he will not be a ghost, he will take on some substance of his own life, even in its wan recognition that he cannot write, as he goes with the wisdom, and the wisdom says, suddenly, "Shut the fuck up, Sally!"

(With apologies to Anatole)