[b]Viet Thanh Nguyen
But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backward in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles.[/b]
Of course he’s only paraphrasing Nietzsche.
But to a bureaucrat paper was never just paper. Paper was life!
Or, at the very least, it pays the bills.
Every paranoid person is right at least once, said the tall sergeant. When he dies.
On the other hand, is anyone here planning to live forever?
Really ingenious, he said. He had a Minnesotan’s admiration for resourcefulness in the face of hardship, bred by generations of people one very bad winter away from starvation and cannibalism.
Somewhat exagerated perhaps. But, sure, maybe not.
I was no more than the garment worker who made sure the stitching was correct in an outfit designed, produced, and consumed by the wealthy white people of the world. They owned the means of production, and therefore the means of representation, and the best that we could ever hope for was to get a word in edgewise before our anonymous deaths.
That’s how it works in a world owned and operated by nihilists whose lives revolve almost entirely around “show me the money”. Civilization some call it.
For a long time I felt bad. I wondered why I didn’t want to learn Japanese, why I didn’t already speak Japanese, why I would rather go to Paris or Istanbul or Barcelona rather than Tokyo. But then I thought, Who cares? Did anyone ask John F. Kennedy if he spoke Gaelic and visited Dublin or if he ate potatoes every night or if he collected paintings of leprechauns? So why are we supposed to not forget our culture? Isn’t my culture right here since I was born here?”
Let’s just say you can take this too far.