Convenience Exercises

 

For now you say nothing; as mum as a closed up peony, an inward-facing sphere.

In 10 months you will assure us you are that sensitive to the consequences in a carefully casual social media post that is vague enough to be about something else entirely. In 3 years you will mention the events that unfolded, tragically, offhandedly, in an essay for a major magazine, to make sure everyone knew you were watching. In 5 years, you will point to a letter you sort of signed or one statement that could go either way, as being definitive. In 10 years, when your silence begins to look damning for your nice liberal reputation, you will conveniently write something about protest and allude to—but not specify any—involvement. In 15 years, when the put up a plaque outside the library or the student center, you will graciously agree to lend your public presence, and a give a reading. Everyone will applaud your foresight, your humane attitudes, your attendance to “notions of care”.

I wish I could say that in noticing the convenience of your silence now, it meant something. I wish I could say we lived in a world where it did. But there is no conscience, only a strange sloshing accounting of social position, a vying at things. 

In 25 years, when there is a revival of the same position but in a mainstream popular film, you will sell a very successful memoir that recounts in great detail, the events you did not want to bother to witness, that you were in fact, careful to avoid associating with at all. 

The blurb will read:

“Searing. Necessary. Urgent.”