i’m becoming increasingly obsessed with the ancient conciliar formula of the trinity and the demand the fathers made to understand ‘hypostasis’ as ‘prosopon’ (person) instead of substantia. […] the trinitarian prosopon, however, is irreducibly relational. there is no subject, no substance of self, for person can only be understood in terms of relationship. augustine indeed finds this when he turns into himself and cannot find himself, but that deepest of revelations didn’t hold somehow. terms like ‘father’ and ‘mother’ are incomprehensible without children. or ‘i’ without ‘thou.’ ‘father’ and ‘mother’ do not demarcate substances, they name relations. how much would ethics change if we ditched the notion of substantia from our notion of prosopon? if i am irreducibly relational. if i am ontologically composed of others. every act of violence is suicide.”

 

That last sentence has become a chorus in my head. Every act of violence is suicide. Every act of violence is suicide. All ethics are relational and there is no such thing as the individual.

 

We are made of each other. Okay.

 

But my favorite message is one that has no thread, and I can’t remember what preceded it in life. You sent it to me one minute before midnight on January 20th, 2008. The subject line is “happy day.” And the message, in its entirety, is: “happy happy day. j.”

 

And that should be the final word.

 

Oh happy, happy day.