Dear #EvanKlinger: Open Letter № 2
This is my second open letter to Evan, his parents, family, friends, colleagues, employer, and the entire world. I recommend reading the first open letter I wrote to learn the history of this virtual vendetta. You can find the first letter here.
Dearest Evan,
It has been 4 months since my first letter to you. Evan, you failed to respond. I’m surprised because, as I mentioned in my last open letter, you seemed so eager to make sure I didn’t miss you during our first encounter. Why the reticence now, Evan? While you ponder your reluctance to talk to me about what transpired between us, I’d like to share a few things with you.
It’s no coincidence that I’m publishing my second letter to you 4 months after the first one. The number 4 is considered in a few cultures to be unlucky. Allow me to provide a screenshot from Wikipedia to help you understand why:
If this screen capture is to be believed, it would appear as though people from different cultures avoid the number four because it sounds similar to the word for death. Are you a very superstitious person, Evan? I’m not. People sometimes convince themselves that I am because my artwork utilizes superstition and coincidence to highlight the way people’s unexamined fears affect their decision-making. However, I am not superstitious, which is precisely why I’ve decided to write you a total of 4 letters, one posted every 4 months. This is my second letter.
Why 4 letters? Why 4 months? There are two reasons behind why I chose this strategy. First, it’s gimmicky. Gimmicks help people remember, and I want you to remember. The 4 open letters will be vehicles for information I want to share with you, our local community, and our broader, global community— information I’d like everyone to retain. Therefore, you shall receive 4 letters spread out over a year, one posted every 4 months.
The second reason behind why I chose this strategy is because I would like you to think about death. Why do I want you to think about death? I was hoping that it might lead to examining the way we choose to live our lives. Do you think prompting people to remember that they will die one day might push people to reflect on how they’ve chosen to live?
I wish I knew your answer to this question. Why won’t you respond to me? Why won’t you talk to me about what you chose to do? What are you afraid of? How often do you engage in disrespectful, stupid behavior and then refuse to examine the impudence of your actions? Don’t you think your behavior is worth examining or is yelling at law-abiding mothers, committing cultural erasure, and calling people “niggers” so commonplace to you it’s not worth a second thought? Who taught you that this was okay? I wish I knew your response to the last question I just posed.
I can’t be that frightening, Evan. I like to think I’m easy to talk to. Plus, I’ve been practicing having discussions with individuals I may not necessarily agree with and yes — let there be no doubt about it — all this effort is for you. You, Evan Klinger. Are you familiar with Eron Gjoni of GamerGate fame? Surely you’re familiar with James Damore, author of the notorious Google memo! Well, these gentlegamers have been helping me sharpen my dialectic.
I have so many questions for you. As a parent, I’m extremely curious how your parents broached the topic of our encounter. Did anyone bring it up during the holidays? Do you think anyone will mention it during the upcoming holiday season? When I accused you of not being from California, you mumbled something about being from here. Where were you raised, Evan? Where were you raised that behaving the way you chose to behave is considered acceptable? I just want to learn and understand.
I’ve learned a lot about trust this year. I’m still learning a lot about trust. I think we all are — Americans and all the other inhabitants of earth. Trust and privacy are topics that seem to be ubiquitous since Trump began campaigning in 2016 — nay, trust and privacy are topics that have plagued human minds since before the invention of writing. We were sure to memorialize how much it plagued us as soon as writing was invented.
One of the things I learned about trust this year is that people may become more open when you make yourself more open. So, with this in mind, I offer to you, Evan, this story I recently made public based on real events in my life. I hope you choose to read it. I hope it makes you open to meeting me, and when we meet, I hope you choose to offer a salutation before you begin calling me a bitch.
While you gather the courage to speak to me, Evan, I invite you — AGAIN — to join me in building a better world with Kekcoin. How is Kekcoin doing this? Through memes. Yes, you read that right — through memes. With our memes combined, I know we will be able to create rippling cultural changes in academia, tech, and the arts industry. We hope to instigate and inspire as we bring media literacy and financial literacy to the masses. I invite you to read more about the Memechain.
I’m going to attempt to organize the first Kekcoin Conference. I envision an arts and music festival merged with lectures and panels that involve the finest minds in academia and industry. Maybe we should even schedule public debates, Ancient Athens-style. I want the conference to be a sort of metamodern, decolonized Agora, stripped of any connotations that may have been imparted by any second-rate political philosophers in the 20th century. In the meantime, I’ve contacted Matt Furie, creator of Pepe the Frog, in an attempt to collaborate on something as we ramp up towards the 2020 election. Campaigning should be in full swing by early next year, the beginning of 2019. I hope you and I will have engaged in a handful of conversations by then, Evan.
The third and final thing I’d like to offer you, Evan, is an invitation to explore a website I had hoped to have up by November 1, a day after I had hoped to complete and publish this open letter to you. I had originally wanted to post this letter to you on October 31st. Life doesn’t always go as planned, but I’ve been taught it’s always better late than never. I am determined to show up, even if I’m not as prepared as I’d like. So here I am, posting this letter to you on November 2 instead of October 31. My website will go live on 11/11.
BahayPinay will be a repository for the recipes passed down to me from my father and mother, which were passed down to them from their parents. I shall share my family’s stories — tales from the Philippines, tales of my parents’ and my own immigration, of our efforts to carve out a life for ourselves in America, and finally my own stories and wisdom gleaned from my life growing up in Glendale, California, moving away from my parents, trying to eke out an existence of my own, making sense of my cusp identity, making sense of the different stages of motherhood — through food. By sharing my family’s stories through food, I hope to preserve my family recipes for my children and my children’s children, should they choose to bear them. I shouldn’t have to, but it appears I need to help humanize immigrants — especially child immigrants, which is what I was. I shouldn’t have to help humanize humans to other humans, but here we are. This is America. This has always been America.
BahayPinay is the name I gave to my fictional restaurant for which I made a mock-up to-go menu (or takeaway menu, for some of our non-American friends) during a desktop publishing course I took in high school. Eventually, as I learn to manage all my projects more masterfully, I hope to briefly run a pop-up restaurant featuring my favorite recipes. Admission to this experience will be limited to those who have in their possession a specific cryptoasset, which will eventually be issued by yours truly. Where? When? How? The details are being ironed out. More research is required. I’ll have one reserved just for you, though, Evan.
My third open letter to you will be published by February 28, 2019, but I hope you choose to meet with me before then. I actually hope you’ll go on a bike ride with me. Will you?
See you later, Space Cowboy,
Paula G. Nuguid
