Theresa, Once and For All, in Arcadia (hopefully a final review)

By this posting I hope to lay the question of Theresa largely to rest. I can at least present a picture of Oppermann, Theresa (I think I still remember her hot breath in my ear from that moment) and Ayres looking into the blinding brightness of the flash photograph. I think I had a relatively insipid or entranced look on my face. Oppermann was by contrast ecstatic. Once again the image is from Bemis Hall at Colorado College.

January 1988 was when I met Theresa. I had had a girlfriend previous to this but no one who was willing to really meet me with the desire that Theresa had in that moment. This was an important relationship for me. Definitely not the last, but in many senses definitely the first. I have discussed that Theresa confronted me on several issues that were important: she would not let Oppermann and I rest in our Artemesian love of the beauty of philosophy. And in this point she provided an abrasive but singularly important independence of the feminine counterpoint to my philosophic position. I thank her for being someone who fought with me well. And she and Oppermann did not get along. Oppermann regarded Theresa as a phillistine. Theresa was definitely at her most beautiful that I remember at this time of first meeting her. I think that she introduced me to Joni Mitchell's Blue album: and to this day this album for me stands for her. It must be said that the last time I met Theresa in Los Angeles in the mid 1990's she was wearing pastel and engaged to be married to an attorney. There was something about her that was "in recovery" - she had been through some nasty spots with drinking, I hope it can just be written off as the folly of youth. We all walk so close to that possibility: once again: "there but for the grace of God..." and so on... My last conversation with Theresa by telephone broke off any hope of communication: she said I sounded too crazy (and indeed, to be fair, reflecting I might have been acting like an over affectionate idiot on the phone, not respecting boundaries): I told her that she was too "sane," conveying how hurt I was at her condemnation. That was that. That was the end of that. I still prefer to see Theresa peeking out from some trees in the Colorado winter snow. It is enough to remember and to forget her for that.

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Oppermann and the Raphaelson Factor

Here are a couple of offerings of Oppermann and Raphaelson probably in January through May of 1988: again the faces are over-exposed and we are left to fill in the tiny pieces of remembrence and memory.

Because this is the best image I have remaining of Raphaelson I include it here. We can only surmise that the issue of Lisa Lane literally floating above his head speaks to the problem developing in the arena of Liebenstrauss to come the following winter.

Oppermannian Greatness in Arcadia

I just found this photo on a contact sheet from times that were directly arcadian. An evening where we were all drinking wine with Lisa Lane, Paul Raphaelson, Cresswell, Theresa, and myself. This image I think is great. Almost as great as Wolfgang Ambrose who is fucking great. There is something of the young Dylan also to this image.

This is Oppermann in Praxis: and praxis intends a presence or intimacy of self. I have to start this series with this image of Oppermann in true praxis, with the true Dionysian wine: there we see the European Intellectual Aristocracy, still in the unknowing stage, nevertheless suprisingly Chic for now what ammounts to a middle aged Dude. I think that Oppermann is truely

"drinking Nietzschean wine from Kantian vessels"

for the first time: he was probably beginning to read into Heidegger at this time. I attribute this saying to Harvey Rabbin: Oppermann tells me to stop attributing great sayings to Harvey Rabbin, but that will be another 20 years... I am just glad I can still remember a fragment of where all these potentially great things came from.

There is an issue of metonymy here: all these images are largely "Over Exposed": what we have left are the fragments, the tessera of images from which to construct the whole. I would not wish at all to return to the Arcadian: I was too impoverished to fully appreciate these times. However I would say that the fragmentary re-constellation of these shattered images is part of the intense great tapestry of the terrifying "negative" turning and turning of the present moment.