rejecting redemption

Abandoning one temple and erecting another. These new gods also must be betrayed. We must murder our self-created gods as well - the form of highest respect. The only valid temples are the ones that have blasphemy carved into every stone with which they are built. No, I know no allegiances. What's that you say? That I'm fooling myself? That I'm inevitably entangled in webs of affiliation to which I pay homage? Perhaps. Even so, it's a lie worth believing in. What's that? Will I be grovelling again at the steps of this temple tomorrow? Most probably. But at least today, now, I have demolished it to rubble. For one moment I have tasted divinity - that frightful fiction. If only I could believe my words. To make the stone bloom, as Celan would say. Moses' heroism was in striking the rock instead of speaking to it, as God had commanded. For this, he forfeited the promised land. He refused to pray to stone. His prayer came in the form of a fist.

"You still think you are a truth-teller
You still think your name means something
You still think the wounds on your body are bleeding
For one night, try to forget..."
-Jason

midrash

And he arose that night and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed over the ford of Jabbok. He took them, sent them over the brook, and sent over what he had. Then Jakkob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jakkob's hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, "Let me go, for the day breaks."
But he said, "I will not let you go unless You bless me!"


And Jakkob sent his family and companions over the ford of Jabbok.
Then he was left alone to do battle with his God. And he wrestled with him through the night. When he saw that he could not overcome him, he touched the socket of his hip and wounded the divinity who then released him from his grip and walked away, forever after limping…

But when dawn finally broke he would not release the struggling god who had wounded him. No, he clung to him with all his might, this divine suffering, until one could not tell where the wounded man ended and suffering divinity began…

And when dawn finally broke, Jakkob walked away limping. But Jakkob did not continue across the ford of Jabbok. He returned every night to that same spot where he had been wounded, and waited for the man to return…

Jakkob, alone at last with his demons, grapples with himself in the deafening darkness. Finally, as the shadows begin to recede, he strikes out selfwards, inflicting a mortal wound on his past…

"Only he who has 'died' of being merely a man, will ever be other than a man"
-George Bataille

"We donot understand ruins, until we ourselves have become ruins."
-Heinrich Heine

'I don't believe in God, the bastard!'
- Samuel Beckett