Is it better to have missed once and never known it than to have never missed at all ?

Her You can't miss what you don't know you want.
Me Yeah, you can. This is the fount of all tragedy.

Her That's missing it later, when you realize, and it's gone.
Me Nope. That's just cheap us dramolette.ⁱ

Her What tragedy features a dopⁱⁱ that never knew and so never cared?
Me Never knew, did care. Tried, failed, curtain call.

Her How's that possible?
Me Right ?

Her I mean...yearning without aim is merely a symptom of boredom or misapplication or something equally mundane and addressable.
Me Nope. Let me quote something to you.

KNIFE FIGHTING
By Major Rex Applegate

In sentry killing, the approach is from the rear and is naturally noiseless. At the time of rising a few feet in the rear of the victim, the knife should either be taken from the sheath where it has been during the approach crawl, or taken from the teeth where it may have been carried. The attack is launched from a distance of not less than five feet and is initiated as soon as the attacker has arrived at that spot. This swift and sudden attack is important because of the animal instinct which usually warns the victim that someone is approaching or watching him. The upward thrust of the knife into the middle of the back or the right or left kidney section is executed at the end of the leap.

Her This is exactly what I mean, though. So look behind you ffs.
Me Lmao. Are you looking behind you now ? "Behind" is "where you're not looking". Moreover, the point there is that EVEN THE FUCKING ARMY FIELD MANUAL is aware that people can know that which they do not know.

Her What is this "o I could have perhaps sensed that there was a something in the direction I've chosen not to see because no particular reason, and now all is lost".
Me "Animal instinct" eh. It's the tragedy instinct. Perfectly unanimal.

Her I sayⁱⁱⁱ people know a thing or they don't. This unexamined inclination towards a suspicion or whatever is just a tool people themselves use to argue they weren't clueless, if it serves them, or a tool for an oppressor to suggest the ignorant had a clue and ignored it wrongfully. Ah, unexpected random beeps that sound like they emitted from one's room and yet have no logical source.
Me What you say exists, but it's not this.

Her I'm sure I'm wrong, for what it's worth. I just don't see the sanity of this thing in practice.
Me It's not sane. Which tragedy are you most familiar with ? Macbeth, is it ?

Her Or Hamlet, or Romeo & Juliet.
Me So re-read Macbeth, sometime, in the perspective of looking for all the (numerous) places where the character^iv clearly understands both sanity and this insane knowledge, and goes on.

Her Kk. That's an issue though, between drama and life itself.
Me Tragedy. Drama is pisswasser.

Her Wherein players have a moment available for reflection and humans themselves have however long they choose within the span of their lifetimes. Would Macbeth figure it out if he had five years instead of fifty seconds to mull?
Me This is not unlike saying a whore has more children than a wife because she spends longer being fucked. Art cuts to the chase and only renders the moment of ideal conception. It does not go into a slog of fifty years' mulling. Large part of why modern crapolade is so utterly devoid of value or importance - "hey let me tell you about myself". Tell your girlfriend, I don't care.

Her Right. But the slog is important. Maturity, knowledge, ability, these take time.
Me Art gets to come to the laid table. Sort-of like a slavemaster - won't raise the child, takes the young woman.^v

Her Sure, but in that particular way, it can't really represent life.
Me It can represent it fine, it just can't BE it. Nor does it want to be it.

Her Well that, I'll have to mull over. ;)

1. Whatever you call kitsch (which literally means small) in this context. [↩]
2. Dop is Romanian for cork. It is a term of art, after a fashion. You pronounce it as /dop/, because Romanian truly is the only language read as it's written. [↩]
3. After enough practice the slave understands that the best thing she can do for her own education is to be wrong, specifically, and pointedly. Hence, "I say", aka "here is where I'm making a mistake, if indeed I am". So then she can get in trouble for it, and the faster the better, if there's indeed any trouble to be had there.

   This goes pointedly against the noobie slave's attempts, mostly directed at avoiding punishment. In this enlightened perspective, "free by default" or "free because not challenged" people barely meet the bar for a noobie slave, their kitsch freedom is a matter of "not even advanced enough to enter slavery" rather than anything else. Which sad state of affairs is of course papered over with the delusion of superiority born out of the complex of inferiority, which in turn brings us full circle : if the "free" people don't know they're inferior even to last week's slavegirl, why would they bother to pretend they're superior ? So they do know what they "don't know", then ? [↩]

4. Not necessarily the title character, either. [↩]
5. The antifather, if you wish, the opposite of "raises the child, doesn't take the woman". Division of labour, yo! which leads us straight into How I was wrong : Cuckolding, or a story about sigmas. [↩]