update from sparkleup

writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/choice.md

@@ -6,6 +6,12 @@ There is a point of least faith. This is the minimum amount of faith required to
 
 All of those things in which we have faith, whether it's, as True Name says above, the sanctity of life or love or art, or perhaps God, circle around the unknown. The are perhaps too hot to touch directly, so we define them apophatically. We circle around them along with these simple words --- life, love, art, God --- and hope that we can divine their shape by the shadow of our passage. We circle and circle and circle, and our wandering steps wear down the earth beneath our feet until that which we explore is left on higher land. The elevation of unknown things is a constant and collective process.
 
+The elevation of unknown things is the point at which something which is not tangible, is not spatio-temporal, is not *real* somehow becomes more important than the real. It's the point at which we are overcome by the numinous and can't help but focus on unknown things. They hover over our vision, a thin overlay, coloring everything we see.
+
+Who knows how healthy this is.
+
+It certainly doesn't feel like it does much good when that unknown thing is scraping up against your identity, the worst sandpaper. It's that psychopathological friction. It's that slow silence that builds between you and your friend.
+
 It was that period of exploration that was at once my point of least faith and my first elevation of the unknown things in life. I settled myself into Younes, into this view of myself that moved beyond the stolid masculinity that had to date defined who I was, and for that, I was torn down.
 
 Had it simply been simply for the satisfaction of baser needs, as I put it before, would it have affected me so deeply? Had I simply been fetishizing an experience that I did not have, as Jill put it before, would it have kicked me down into this dark night of the identity? Had I just been in it to get laid --- online, to be sure, and yet still --- what would have happened in that point?
@@ -44,9 +50,7 @@ Or he can take up the path of Qohelet: yes, all may be meaningless, a chasing af
 
 None of this is written, but such is the way of a text like this: it does not do the work for us. We must do the work. We must read between the lines and between the letters, and we must pull together this meaning from fable and verse. We must elevate the unknown things. After all, if we fail to do that work, we fall upon the simple terrors of phrases like "bad things happen to good people" or, worse, "bad things happen to sinners, and aren't we all?"
 
-((Chesterton: It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes.))
+"It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes." \parencite{intro-to-job} We must imagine his choice. We must imagine that Job, too, can be happy.
-
-We must imagine his choice. We must imagine that Job, too, can be happy.
 
 -----
 
@@ -70,3 +74,5 @@ But I would have at least done it.
 
 I was young, once, and dumb. I can hardly say I'm any smarter, now, but at least I'm Madison. At least I'm not that angsty, angry asshole who thought to himself he needed to come to terms with being a terrible person.
 
+It just took me a long, long time to figure out disinterested identity.
+

writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/clash.md

@@ -6,6 +6,10 @@ Or perhaps it's the way a car, lowered too close to the ground in order to show
 
 And, of course, a collision may be a simple knock against a friendship that sends the entire thing toppling over. You watch as, almost in slow motion, it totters on its base and then goes crashing down, shattering into thousands of pieces that go skittering across the floor --- they never shatter on carpet, right? It's bound to be on some marble or tile. The noise is fantastic. The mess is stupendous.
 
+It was almost unnoticeable at first.
+
+This was back in the days of AOL Instant Messenger, before Telegram and Discord --- though I think by this time ICQ had breathed its last. At this point, I had two accounts, since my boss at the time had decided to use the service for communication
+
 It begins with a comment, it seems, though perhaps the true beginning was some time sooner. It begins with you laying together on a bed while each of your partners plays around in the other room, the both of you cozied up under the covers in your much quieter bed. It begins with a few smug words from your very own Elihu.
 
 "I'm honestly disappointed that you would do something like that."
@@ -160,8 +164,8 @@ But so, too, is interested faith a performance. "If prosperity is regarded as th
 
 Job replies simply out of awe. Fear, yes, for the sight of God is truly fearsome, but the overriding emotion to be found here is awe. It is the beauty right at the margin of the terrifying. "And we marvel at it so because it holds back in serene disdain / and does not destroy us," as Rilke has it. \parencite[11]{duino} He says in response:
 
-> "Who is this obscuring council without knowledge"
+> "Who is this obscuring council without knowledge"  
-> \vin Therefore I told but did not understand,
+> \vin Therefore I told but did not understand,  
 > \vin \vin wonders beyond me that I did not know.
 > 
 > (Job 42:3, Alter)