update from sparkleup
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@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past</div>
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<p>All stories are perforce interpolations within real events.</p>
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<p>The story of identity, the story of coming to terms with existing in some particular way, is as a much an interpolation into the whole of us as anything. I am trans, yes, but that is not the story; that is the identity. I am who I am specifically because I did what I did, I learned what I learned, I changed how I changed. No amount of academic language will change that, no overanalysis of this or that will make me be anything else.</p>
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<p>“If Matthew died on September 6th, 2012,” I asked myself some years ago, “Was Madison born then?”</p>
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<p>That date, September 6th, had nothing in particular to do with gender. The answer was no, after all. Madison was born some two intercalary<sup id="fnref:intro-intercalary"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:intro-intercalary">4</a></sup> 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.</p>
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<p>That date, September 6th, had nothing in particular to do with gender. The answer was no, after all. Madison was born some two intercalary<sup id="fnref:intro-intercalary"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:intro-intercalary">5</a></sup> 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>If Matthew died in 2012, why was I not born then?</p>
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@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past</div>
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<hr />
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<ol>
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<li id="fn:intro-approaches">
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<p>The Book of Job, out of all of the books in the Hebrew bible, is buried deepest under layers of guesses. Even in the Christian bible, the only book that comes close is Revelation. Perhaps it is the dire nature by which both approach the world. Job takes a look at the world, heaves a weary sigh, and says, “I suppose this is it. This is the lot we have been given in life.” While Revelation looks at the world and growls deep in its throat, a sound coming from the belly, and says, “This must not be it. This cannot be the way in which the world works.”</p>
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<p>The Book of Job, out of all of the books in the Hebrew bible, is buried deepest under layers of guesses. Even in the Christian bible, the only book that comes close is Revelation. Perhaps it is the dire nature by which both approach the world. Job takes a look at the world, heaves a weary sigh, and says, “I suppose this is it. This is the lot we have been given in life.” While Revelation looks at the world and growls deep in its throat, a sound coming from the belly, and says, “This must not be it. This cannot be the way in which the world works.”</p>
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<p>Or perhaps it is the way in which they view death. While Job looks on death almost fondly, REvelation reiterates the Christian sentiment than death has been defeated using the genre of apolcalypse (that is, a revealing, a pulling back of the curtain). The world that was is no more, and as there is everlasting life beyond it, it is worth considering only in that context and otherwise only worth discarding. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:intro-approaches" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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<li id="fn:intro-symbols">
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@ -50,15 +50,20 @@ forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past</div>
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<p>God, holding court with the sons of God, greets the Adversary<sup id="fnref:intro-adversary"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:intro-adversary">3</a></sup> 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)</p>
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<p>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?”</p>
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<p>And God does it. He does it! He gives Job up to the Adversary, and of course, all that Job has, all that he’s gained and all of his offspring, are destroyed. Cattle and she-asses? Felled by the Sabeans. Camels? Stolen by the Chaldaeans. Sheep? Burnt up by none other than the fire of God Himself. His men are dead. His sons and daughters are dead, crushed beneath the walls of a house torn by a sudden wind.</p>
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<p>Job, pious as he is, does not curse God. He tears his clothes, bows down, and blesses Him.</p>
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<p>Job, pious as he is, does not curse God. He tears his clothes, bows down, and blesses Him.<sup id="fnref:intro-bless"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:intro-bless">4</a></sup></p>
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<p>Once more, God says to the Adversary that there is none more pious than Job, and once more the Adversary jeers, “Skin for skin! A man will give all he has for his own life. Yet, reach out, pray, Your hand and strike his bone and his flesh. Will he not curse You to Your face?” (Job 2:5, Alter)</p>
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<p>Yet again, God gives Job up to the Adversary — “Only preserve his life” — who strikes Job with a rash from head to toe, leaving him to sit among the ashes and scrape at his flesh. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:intro-symbols" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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<li id="fn:intro-adversary">
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<p>This is the translation of the phrase in Hebrew, <em>ha-satan</em>. Alter notes that it wasn’t until much more recently that this was refigured as specifically Satan: “The word satan is a person, thing, or set of circumstances that constitutes an obstacle or frustrates one’s purposes.” \parencite[466]{alter} The Jewish Publication Society concurs. (Job 1:6, JPS) It is a job title more than it is identity. In fact, the transition from the Adversary to Satan himself is fraught. The specifically academic New Oxford Annotated Bible (NOAB) retains the New Revised Standard Version translation as Satan qua Satan, but acknowledges in translation footnotes each time the term <em>ha-satan</em> shows up that this is “Or the Accuser; Heb. <em>ha-satan</em>”. \parencite[736]{noab} <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:intro-adversary" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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<li id="fn:intro-bless">
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<p>Even Job’s wife seems to sigh: “Do you still cling to your innocence? Curse God and die.” (Job 2:9, Alter)</p>
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<p>There is a difference in interpretation, here. On the one hand, Alter suggests that Job’s wife is being sardonic here, saying, “Job’s wife assumes either that cursing God will immediately lead to Job’s death, which might be just as well, or that, given his ghastly state, he will soon die anyway” \parencite[469]{alter}. Might as well curse anyway, eh?</p>
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<p>The editors of the NOAB take a more sympathetic view of the exchange. Job’s wife is seen as far more sympathetic: “The outcome of all Job’s piety has been to rob his wife of her ten children, her social standing, and her livelihood.” \parencite[737]{noab} Curse God, then. Who else could be responsible? How can you continue to praise after our ten (admittedly unnamed) children have died? <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:intro-bless" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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<li id="fn:intro-intercalary">
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<p>Between the <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:intro-intercalary" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<p>Between the two halves of the fable — Job’s fall and God’s reinstatement of him — lies an intercalary period of at least a week <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:intro-intercalary" title="Jump back to footnote 5 in the text">↩</a></p>
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</li>
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</ol>
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</div>
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