#Work: Nothing Is Ever A Coincidence #Opinion: If you are reading Unsong in any other state of mind you are Doing It Wrong

I choose to believe he liked this for the last tag.

Anyways, since the Sephirot came up in Unsong, and we’re less than two months from Pesach – @slatestarscratchpad, is Unsong gonna do anything for the Omer, or should we start pre-writing microfic as a fandom?

Anyways, vague unsorted preditions/hopes about Unsong:

• Shem HaMephrash won’t be first used until chapter 18. Yeah that’s a long way away, but it’s about bringing things to life, and 18=“chai”=life is a very VERY common thing in Judaism, any Rationalist-sphere has been exposed to it ish when Eliezer donated 18,000 after his brother’s death.
• The Urim v’Tumim will come up. Seriously, you think there’s gonna be kabalistic modern-tech AU which DOESN’T use the freaking rock/metal-based weird-symbolism-heavy light-up-thing-which-gives-information?? (Computer. I mean it’s analogously a computer there.) Plus, the protagonists name is Aaron.
• Elisha ben Avuyah. This is more of a hope, because Elisha ben Avuyah is COMPLETELY #aesthetic, but also, like, he was also called “Acher”/”The Other”, fitting imperfectly-and-therefore-perfectly with the A-R-N theme which we are given is significant.
• …
• … probably other stuff. I dunno.
  

[Yesterday was the second day the Omer]

Harmony within Kindness

Ithaca was started by accident. That is to say, it was totally, definitely, 100% kabbalistically predetermined by the Writings and the Sefirot and the N-Fold Symmetries of Adam Kadmon, as opposed to, say, something completely banal and vapid, like Erica and her new boyfriend needing a place to stay.

… So Erica had just picked up a boyfriend, and they needed a place to stay.

That was basically the entire content of the letter she sent, along with the socially requisite “Hey cousin”, “So glad you got into Stanford”, and punctuation. It had been ten years – 7th grade, when she moved to the Bay – since Ana had seen Erica for more then a week at a time. She was ecstatic.

It was initially just the three of them, and chores fell into place like magic. Erica loved cooking, while Ana thought best with her hands occupied. Eli payed attention to the numbers when they started creeping up. Erica actually had the sense, confidence and practice to go out of the house and get food. Eli was a good hand with a broom. Ana, through her parents, provided the rent.

Eli and Erica were already knee-deep in Unitarianism – they had met through it, after all – and Ana was studying Kabbalah. The only people who study Kabbalah who don’t actively hold at least a few Unitarian beliefs are the idiots who think they can make the new Gogmagog. The house quickly became a firestorm of theodicy, and the theodicy quickly christened the house. (”Manischewitz is kosher, right Eli?”, Erica had asked. “You know I don’t keep kosher, and Manischewitz is barely wine”, he’d replied.  He didn’t win that argument.)

It was, as they say, bashert – a match made in heaven. Ana provided a baseline Kabbalistic mind that saw through to deep, powerful insights into the underlying nature of names themselves. Erica provided enough energy to run a revolution herself, and brought more and more people into the house and into the movement. Eli, somehow, kept them and their immediate aims and ambitions grounded in something vaguely resembling reality.

And like all good matches, it caught and burned.

Ana’s parents had given just one condition: “I know how you two can spend hours yapping away about any topic beneath the sun, so Erica – it’s your duty to make sure Ana stays focused on her studies.”

It was about four months before Ithaca was the third-largest Unitarian meetingplace on the West Coast.

[Today is the day we begin counting the Omer]

Kindness within Kindness

She wandered in search of a library, …

Ana hadn’t even meant to stop. She hadn’t had much luck – there had to be a library somewhere nearby! – but she was basically just wandering. Giving the money had been basically an instinct.

A nearly-empty cup, someone needing anything they could get to live. Acting by themselves, her hands found a dollar and a handful of coins. $1.80 – Chai, as traditional – and dropped them in as she went by. ($103.62, her practical mind subtracted.) Her eyes kept scanning the buildings, and her feet kept walking.

“Why?”

She turned around.

“I don’t mean to bug you or anything. Just… why such an amount? It’s round – it can’t have been an accident. What does it mean?”

“Oh,” she said, distracted and a little surprised. “It’s 18 – I mean it would have been 18 if I had enough– that is, was confident enough in– 18. it’s.. yud, and chet. 8 and 10. Hebrew. Chai. Life. It’s a Kabbalistic thing. I was wishing you. Chai.”

He laughed. “Well, thank you, then. I’m not sure I need all of it, if you don’t mind. I’ve already had much of my life – and besides, with my eyes I’d lose the small ones.” He fished them out of the cup, “And it gives me something to give back to nice young people.”

“Oh… okay,” Ana replied, and – somehow – managed to catch her coins that he tossed back. Two dimes, and then two nickles. $0.30, her practical mind counted. Lamed, her Kabbalist’s mind responded. Or gimel, given the context. It echoed without meaning.

“And if you’re looking for a library,” the man added, “there’s one right behind the corner there.”

“Oh. Oh. Thanks.” She walked.

It was only afterwards, standing in front of the doors of library, that she re-parsed the coins – 20 and 10, 2 and 1, bet and  aleph – bo, come.

Come where? Inside what? She supposed she would find out.

She walked inside and focused on the task at hand. She would never – consciously, at least – subtract the coins off, and realize that of the 18 the man had kept 15, the name of God, as his portion.

… and found one gratifyingly quickly.