diff --git a/writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/intro.md b/writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/intro.md index 5b88b0eb..0324393f 100644 --- a/writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/intro.md +++ b/writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/intro.md @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@ -> Job puts forward a note of interrogation; God answers with a note of exclamation.[^intro-approaches] Instead of proving to Job that it is an explicable world, He insists that it is a much stranger world than Job ever thought it was. +> Job puts forward a note of interrogation; God answers with a note of exclamation. Instead of proving to Job that it is an explicable world, He insists that it is a much stranger world than Job ever thought it was. > -> \parencite{intro-to-job}[^intro-thesis] +> \parencite{intro-to-job} I've heard it said that "forgiveness is releasing the hope for a better past," \parencite{wakefield} but it's more complicated than that, isn't it? That quote itself is more complicated than that: @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ before they realized forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past ''' -Primed as we are to take text out of context, wrap our own needs around it, and pretend that it is in all ways applicable to all situations (for did I not already ramble about mistaking accidental, individual symbols for universal ones?),[^intro-symbols] it's so easy to misremember that the better past we hope for is just some dream, some thing we cling to long after the us that lived that past has died. +Primed as we are to take text out of context, wrap our own needs around it, and pretend that it is in all ways applicable to all situations (for did I not already ramble about mistaking accidental, individual symbols for universal ones?), it's so easy to misremember that the better past we hope for is just some dream, some thing we cling to long after the us that lived that past has died. Who knows if I was the go-to person, the punching bag for my Elihu, the object of her simple angers? Who knows if she remembers me? She cut contact, without telling me, without telling me why, and who knows if she even knows the reason? @@ -25,11 +25,11 @@ The story of identity, the story of coming to terms with existing in some partic "If Matthew died on September 6th, 2012," I asked myself some years ago, "Was Madison born then?" -That date, September 6th, had nothing in particular to do with gender. The answer was no, after all. Madison was born some two intercalary[^intro-intercalary] years later. Matthew's death had nothing to do with gender — he died when his friend died, when Margaras hit that barricade at fifty miles an hour. +That date, September 6th, had nothing in particular to do with gender. The answer was no, after all. Madison was born some two intercalary years later. Matthew's death had nothing to do with gender — he died when his friend died, when Margaras hit that barricade at fifty miles an hour. Matthew died and then I don't remember what happened. I suppose there was a few years of fumbling around, poking and prodding at various parts of his body in the hopes that something could be salvaged. The hair, maybe? Or the softness of skin? Perhaps he could simply be recycled into something new, the same lump of clay molded and remolded into something new until some fresher breath of life was breathed into it. -If Matthew died in 2012 and Madison wasn't born until a few years later,[^intro-fractions] if I don't remember those in-between years, then I keep questioning whether or not I actually existed then. I suppose 2013 involved dealing with the tic, and I guess we moved in 2014, but both of those stand-out events feel as though they happened to someone else, someone not Madison. +If Matthew died in 2012 and Madison wasn't born until a few years later, if I don't remember those in-between years, then I keep questioning whether or not I actually existed then. I suppose 2013 involved dealing with the tic, and I guess we moved in 2014, but both of those stand-out events feel as though they happened to someone else, someone not Madison. If Matthew died in 2012, why was I not born then? @@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ The framing for The Book of Job takes the form of a fable, a set of universal sy Job is a prosperous and pious man living in the merry old land of Uz. He is wealthy in livestock and in family, with his 7,000 sheep, his 3,000 camels, his cattle and she-asses, his slaves and his ten children. His seven sons love and respect each other, and he loves them all in turn (though he does seem a tad suspicious of their piety, making sacrifices in their names on their appointed days). -God, holding court with the sons of God, greets the Adversary[^intro-adversary] and asks where they have been. They respond that they have been roaming the Earth, to which God replies, "Have you paid heed to My servant Job, for there is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and shuns evil?" (Job 1:8, Alter) +God, holding court with the sons of God, greets the Adversary and asks where they have been. They respond that they have been roaming the Earth, to which God replies, "Have you paid heed to My servant Job, for there is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and shuns evil?" (Job 1:8, Alter) And here is where we first run into trouble, for now is when the Adversary, the Accuser, shoots back, "Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not hedged him about and his household and all that he has all around? The work of his hands You have blessed, and his flocks have spread over the land. And yet, reach out Your hand, pray, and strike all he has. Will he not curse You to Your face?"