EXHIBITION ESSAY
A Sea of Despair and Delight: A solo exhibition by chi too
4—19 March 2023
The Weather
by Ellen Lee
I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that I’ve started to love you a little less. The good news is that I’ve started to love you a little less incrementally, by halves, so if we follow Zeno’s paradox then that means that I’ll never stop loving you. And if you’re a glass half-full type of person, which half the time you are, then you might be able to see this in a positive light.
If I stay a little longer at this table, calculating to an infinitesimal degree how much love I still have left for you, then I’ll get home a little later, and we can prolong our fight a little bit longer. But I can’t leave too late, because I’m running out of cigarettes, and the 7-Eleven closes at midnight, and since we will fight regardless of what time I get home, I don’t want to be without cigarettes. There is a 50/50 chance that our fight will last longer if I come home later. In the 50% chance that the time I get home doesn’t affect the duration of the fight at all, there is a 50% chance that if I time my return just right you will have already entered a stage of deep sleep that won’t be disturbed by my getting into bed, by the time I get home. However, by that time I’ll be so oily and sweaty (from crunching numbers all day) that I’ll need to take a shower, and even if you’re in deep sleep there’s a 50% chance that you’ll be woken up by the sound of me showering. If I can get the timing just right, there’s a 50% chance that I’ll be able to wake up before you do (since I only need half the amount of sleep that you do), and you won’t discover that I slept next to you without showering. At this rate, we could delay the fight as far as tomorrow morning.
But if that’s the case, then you’ll be twice as angry in the morning. And I just don’t think I’m nimble enough to be able to time the whole thing just just right so that I can shower, dress, defecate, and be out of the house before you even wake up. I mean, I could, but the chances of that are slim. It does mean, however, that I’ll need twice as many cigarettes to see me through your double anger tomorrow. But if I leave this table too late tonight, just making it in time to get to the 7-Eleven, then I’ll inevitably get the late shift cashier, who for his own reasons accepts cash payments only, and right now I don’t have enough cash for two packs of cigarettes, which is the amount I’ll need if we fight tomorrow.
There’s a 50% chance that I’ll be in the shower by the time you wake up and, if so, then there’s a 50% chance that you won’t realise that I went to bed without showering. There’s a 0% chance that I’ll be able to stay in the shower forever and a 100% chance that by the time I get out you’ll be sitting at the dining table, glowering at me, and you’ll say, “Are you avoiding me?”
“I had to work,” I’ll say, in a half-hearted attempt at nonchalance, while I towel dry.
There’s a 50% chance that halfway through that sentence, you’ll start talking over me. “I had to work,” you’ll repeat, in a gross, whiny mimic of my voice. “You got so much work, is it,” you’ll scream, and on ‘work’ you’ll shove the stack of books on the dining table onto the floor. But there’s a 50% chance that you won’t have picked up the books yet from when you shoved them to the floor yesterday (i.e. earlier today), out of spite, so there might not be anything for you to shove to the floor now.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
I’ll be late for work anyway, but the chances of me arriving later than usual or as usual are 50/50. Although, there’s a 50% chance that I’ll have smoked through my second pack of cigarettes by the time you let me leave, so I’ll have to stop somewhere to get a new pack, so maybe it’s more like a 70% chance that I’ll arrive at work later than usual.
It’s possible that if you’re twice as angry at me in the morning, then my love for you will have decreased by a greater increment. Which would really mess up my calculations.
* * *
If I go home now and let the fight happen tonight, there’s a good enough chance that you’ll wake up in a halfway-neutral mood tomorrow and you’ll indulge me when I propose to call in sick to work, and for us to take a day trip to the beach.
There’s a 50% chance that you’ll get bored and start a fight halfway there. But in the 50% chance that you’re quiet throughout the entire ride, there’s a 50% chance that we could arrive before noon. As the waves flow and ebb upon the shore, they will take something with them and they will leave something behind; there’s a 50% chance that the amount they give and the amount they take will be the same. Broken shells, shards of plastic, pieces of driftwood. A piece of you and a piece of me, in a rolling wave of arrival and departure. If we go all the way we’ll end up right back where we started. But if we only go halfway, we could pretend we’re still moving.