epershand

The Sunday after I turned 21, I got phenomenally wasted, on vodka and cranberries. I didn't really have a particular reason for it--I was hanging out in militantgeek and empress_elle's dorm room and we were watching tv and I just kept drinking alcohol and I woke up stark naked in my own bed the next morning with no idea of how I'd gotten there and stumbled out to my 8:30 Latin class.

I later pulled bits and pieces of what had happened that evening together from Dani and El's stories and mockery--I'd thrown up at some point and apparently went on and on about exactly how physically attractive oliviacirce was. (We'd been together for almost exactly three months at that point. Bless!) But that's it, that's all I have of that evening, just a few stories and a vague queasiness about the thought of vodka and a desire never to repeat the experience.

Except... last night I repeated the experience. Again, I'm unsure why. Well, I know why I started drinking--I was getting all the chametz out of my apartment, and that was *good booze* and I hadn't found a pesach goy to sell it to in time so I'd might as well drink some of it before putting it out on the curb. And I know that when I start drinking I often *keep drinking*--the feeling of being drunk gives me this unpleasant itch, it's precisely the opposite effect of my ADD meds, and I can't hold still, I have to get it out by moving around a lot or talking loudly and fast. Or I have to deaden it with more alcohol. But I don't know why, in what was a pretty conscious echo of the previous Sunday, I kept drinking past the point of oblivion, why I drunk to the point of blackout for only the second time in my life.

And once again there's a gap in my head where a period of wakefulness was. But unlike the first time, I have transcripts of that missing hour or so. My skim from this morning tells me that they are pretty much the most humiliating set of chat transcripts I've ever taken part in, and I'm both horrified and captivated by their existence. I want to run away and hide and never know that those conversations happened (or really, for those conversations never to have happened). And yet the idea of them just sitting there haunts me. It's like a scab I want to pick at, equal parts painful and captivating.

And it's nice, having the capability of filling in those gaps of my consciousness, but at the same time it's existentially terrifying to look at a screen and see words that claim to be from you, but are timestamped an hour after you thought you'd gone to sleep. A variation on Berkeley's tree keeps running through my head--if a conversation happens but everybody is blacked out for it, did it really happen? But the gchat archives are just sitting there, just like Berkeley's all-knowing, all-seeing G-d tracking every tree in every forrest.

Chag sameach, to my friends who are celebrating. So far my Passover experience has been a lot more Noahide than Moshianic*--here's hoping I make the progression this week.

* Evidently the correct adjective for "of or relating to Moses" is "Mosaic" but I reject it for its resemblance to a noun I associate largely with the Byzantine Empire and an out-of-date web browser.

Dear Self,

Maybe sometime when it is not 2am and you are more awake, maybe you should post about your secret obsession with Yom Kippur in re: defining holiday of being a diaspora religion and not an Israel-based religion?

Here are some things that excite you:

- Avodah, and the decision to replace a ritual animal sacrifice with an extended description of the ceremony as it was practiced when there was still a Temple. Imagining the poor sages circa 73 CE trying to figure out how they were even going to pull the holiday off without a temple to celebrate it in. The fact that nearly 2k years later we're still living with their alternate solution. The reality of, as a 21st century American, having this annual time when you find yourself on your hands and knees while reading a summary of the way your holiday was celebrated when your religion was still in the hands of priests and they were still sacrificing animals and driving other animals off of cliffs to send them to Azazel.
- The number of repetitions of praying for a speedy return of the Temple of David in Jerusalem in our lifetime in spite of the total political awkwardness of doing such a thing.
- "Next year in Jerusalem" as metaphor vs. the reality of one's ability to celebrate in Jerusalem. How incredibly weird it is that Israel as a Jewish state is a reality--so much of this liturgy was written in a world where it was only a dream, but now when you're saying the prayers you also find yourself thinking "That is a TERRIBLE idea. We are a diaspora people now, that is our identity. This religion we had before, that we're talking about? Isn't really the one I'm in."
- Aargh, I can't find my gchat conversation with eccentric_hat where we were talking about the physical reality of Israel vs the metaphorical reality and the "[academic word] of specificity". This is frustrating me. Instead I have found this conversation:

Marjorie: it is so hard!
nobody appreciates his work
me: fact
he was a busy man
people get all huffy because he didn't pay attention to Jesus, but he had a LOT to do
Marjorie: dude, that was NOT HIS JURISDICTION
or something
I can never keep that straight
Pilate and Herod were both like "you deal with this"
me: it is the classic leadership situation where when there is a situation that doesn't technically fall in anyone's jurisdiction (like the Savior of Mankind being killed by his own people) and everyone tries to pass the buck
Marjorie: exactly!
then they say the people wanted them to do it and call it a day
me: exactly!
and then for some reason they get ::blamed:: just because they are overly fastidious with their personal hygiene
Marjorie: "what, you never saw a man wash his hands before?"
me: "it's something people do sometimes. think of it as a mikva, except JUST FOR HANDS"

Which isn't really related, but made my up late and kinda drunk and before-that-I-was-fasting self giggle. Anyway, the point is, we've got all these place metaphors but the metaphorical stuff that happened there actually happened and you can go to them. This was the conversation we had when I was sort of freaked out about having been to Goliath's tomb and the place where Jesus turned loaves into fishes or whatever.
- Dude, your inability to keep track of loaves and fishes says that you should probably just go to sleep now. It's better that way.
- But also there's that thing with the animal sacrifice and how you're kind of not sure about it, because the Christians have replaced their animal sacrifice with metaphorical human/deity sacrifice with the transubstantiation and such, and the Jews have just replaced their animal sacrifice with an elaborate description of all the things that the High Priests did back when we had them and a place to keep them. And I like my religion with its doctrine of works and all, but still. It makes one think.