5.4 KiB
What Right Have I has a fucking meltdown.
She was doing something — perhaps this sort of rabbinical debate type thing (From Whence is a rabbi) — with a fork who disappears and is already dealing with a lot of overstim and the like. Her overflowing is specifically either religious ecstasy or anguish.
((Some debate over halakhah on the System))
There was a rhythm to this. There was a rhythm to the movement of debate, to the back-and-forth nature of arguing about the way that life flows, ought to slow. It was and ever has been a wrestling with God. With each other, yes, for there was back-and-forth, but it was ultimately a show, a performance that took the form of a debate in order to wrestle with God, with Adonai, Elohim, El-Shaddai?.
That was what they were, was it not? The people of Israel? Not just that ancient state, Medinat Israel. Not the land, Eretz Yisrael. They were the people, Am Yisrael, the people of Israel who was Jacob. Jacob, who wrestles with God, yes?
And yet it was too close to that — to actual wrestling — for What Right Have I. It was too contentious, too intense. She had been, as she ever had been, brought along to provide the view of one who had read and reread and reread again all that she could, who had large chunks of the Tanakh memorized, who had buried herself in commentaries and commentaries on commentaries. She had memorized thousands of stories from the Talmud just as she had whole books from the Tanakh.
And yet it was too much.
She had long ago requested that these discussions take place in one of the smaller rooms of the synagogue, that they take place among soft cushions and softer wall-hangings, take place around a circular table with no corners to fiddle with, take place with enough space that she could pace.
She needed that. It was not a want.
She needed to be seen, to be perceived as an entire being who was an integral part of their ceaseless debates, and yet as someone who did not need accommodation. She was an entire person, not most of a person for which they must find a way to fill in the rest. These were not accommodations that they needed to make for her to take part, they were a part of her participation that this might be some fuller experience, some work that still would have been complete if it had taken part in a noisy, brutalist hall or out in some park.
Could she take part in those places? Yes. Probably. Could she have provided a completed task that would stand up to the test of time? Probably. Ish.
But could she provide insight that would shine with the sages if they would only do this in a place where she could pace among soft things, where she could fidget and tic, where her little chirps and yelps and twitches would be at least glossed over and at best taken as a sign — a rainbow! A raven! A plague! — that the topic had veered or become mired in stress rather than remained within the soothing track that we had laid out for ourselves.
From Whence Do I Call Out, her down-tree instance, was tightly in control of herself. She was more tightly in control than anyone else What Right Have I had ever met, never mind just among the Odists.
She was sure that the True Name of yore had probably been yet more in control, and yet she had never met her. She had been no one. She was still no one. She was that part of From Whence that needed out of the cage of control. She was the part of her that loathed the social interaction inherent in being a rabbi. She was the part of her that rankled when confronted with this desire to mask and thus appear a confident spiritual leader.
What Right Have I was the part of her set free.
She was the part of her who could give up that life of leadership and sink down into the comfort of texts.
She was the part of her that splashed about in that collection of neuroses that had been bundled up in Michelle Hadje, that collection of identities and desires that reached for ever more, the bits that had been left behind that had not been crushed to a fine powder by whatever forces within the Western Federation there were that had deemed them nobodies to have been transitively lost.
"What Right Have I?"
She squeaked and jumped at the sudden intrusion of words. "Ah...yes?"
"You were chirping," her down-tree instance said to her, smiling. "I was wondering if you had further thoughts, my dear."
The skunk shook her head, then bowed to From Whence. "My apologies. No, my thoughts had wandered."
"Do you think we have had enough of this topic, then?"
She shrugged.
"A verbal response would help me better move forward one way or another."
"Ah, sorry." She shook her head again. "No, ah... Yes. I am sorry, Rav From Whence, Rav Sorensen. I think we have had enough of the topic."
Both of them sighed, nodded, and reached their arms up above their heads in unison to stretch. She hid a secret smile at the synchronicity.
"Fair enough," From Whence said, pushing her paw up through the front portion of her mane and ruffling out the already mussed white fur there.
Their outward appearances had remained much the same over the years. They were both still skunks, they both remained short and soft. Where they diverged were mostly choices of fashion and identity, with From Whence falling into comfortable pantsuits and a calm competency, and What Right Have I heading into...whatever it was that she had become. The baggy Thai fisherman's pants and loose linen tunic belted around the middle, the kerchief tied around her head that kept the larger part of her mane wrangled back.