Flux

by Jinwoo Chong

I would if I could, which—I realized—was a very polite thing to say. Even if saying it hasn’t helped anybody with anything, ever, and never will.

And it’s that thing I’ve imagined happens upon realizing somebody has seen you for who you really are despite your best efforts. The feeling of being given just a split second to make the choice—in or out—before any of it becomes real.

And the idea that we should just dissociate from something that big, like a show, with so many moving parts and other actors and writers and producers who are probably really proud of what they did there and what it means to so many people, doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not fair to everybody else. The people who made it or the people who watched it. It means so much more than the one actor, even if it’s his face on the poster.

It’s funny, the way that sparks create flames create wildfires, bringing it all down, changing landscapes, altering the ecology from a single step, a single motive and action that, at first, don’t appear to mean shit. There’s a word for that, I forget what it is.

Try the one percent. Try the one percent. Try the one percent. One in ten American households were food insecure. Marches had happened all over the country over the last year in which the words “Try the one percent” had been written on placards, chanted for hours in the street. “Try” meant something hopeful, “sue,” “litigate,” “prosecute.” The wealthy hoarded food, land, energy itself, and it would continue to get worse. The outages would continue unless something was done. “Try the one percent” meant “take the motherfuckers to motherfucking court over this bullshit.”

I don’t think you can accurately estimate the level of comfort you operate at. Nobody can. I think you get so…comfortable, that deep down, you will accept any truth they tell you that lets you keep existing the way you’re accustomed to.

But that was the thing about memory. It often obeyed the capriciousness of a mind trying to hide from guilt, but one, always, had to live with the deceit.

Nobody has ever closed the loop, that’s for sure. When you do, you’ll be the loneliest man in the world. And nobody, not you, not me, not anyone, can change that.”

“When you close the loop, you eliminate the precedent that allowed the commute to occur in the first place. You’re talking about two points on a line, except that the difference here is that one point not only led to the other, it is responsible for the second point’s existence through direct action. What happens when you sever that link? One goes on, one doesn’t? Both go on? Neither? Read every book ever written with some hokey plotline like that, they’ll never agree. What you’re dealing with is an exercise of the imagination.”

A question that, if he answered it, might just prove it all, might just allow him a chance at something he never had. As he walked away from a life he was not a part of and no longer could be, just one question: what was going to happen next?