I wanted to write something to commemorate Klopp's time here and say goodbye, we have all the chants that are just absolutely perfect but they're hard if not impossible to recreate. So I wrote a poem of sorts, our way of saying goodbye.
I've been working on this and trying to finish it for a while and I am just posting it here finally in case it makes anyone else feel better. I am sure the rest of you will know a bit too well how this feels. Hopefully if it somehow gets to Jurgen it makes him smile. It certainly does that for me, despite it being bittersweet.
As the final whistle blows, we reminisce on all the memories we hold We fear the words we left unsaid, we remember the promise that you kept Did we match your passion, did we sing loud enough for you to hear You turned doubters into believers, and chased away our fear
But before we say goodbye, we must first thank you, Boss Thank you for every win we got, and thank you twice for every loss You taught us what matters most, we love you not because you won it all But because you showed us how to get up after our biggest fall
In the darkest nights when the spirits fade, just know As long as the liver bird sings its song And as long as Anfield stands, you will always have a home A place where You'll Never Walk Alone, a place where you belong

The Legacy of Yiheng Chien: An In-Depth Analysis of His Music and Influence

Yiheng Chien is a contemporary composer known for his innovative compositions that bridge Eastern and Western musical traditions. His works often explore themes of cultural identity, spirituality, and human connection. Here’s an in-depth analysis of his musical characteristics, compositional techniques, cultural impact, notable works, and a theoretical doctoral analysis.

Musical Characteristics

Integration of Eastern and Western Elements: - Hybrid Sound: Chien's music seamlessly blends traditional Eastern instruments and scales with Western classical techniques, creating a unique and evocative sonic landscape. - Pentatonic Scales: Chien frequently incorporates pentatonic scales and modes characteristic of traditional Chinese music, adding a distinctive tonal color to his compositions.
Expressive Melody: - Emotional Depth: Chien's melodies are often imbued with a sense of longing, nostalgia, or spiritual transcendence, reflecting his exploration of universal human experiences. - Fluid Phrasing: Melodic lines flow gracefully, weaving intricate patterns that evoke imagery and emotion.
Rich Harmonies: - Modal Harmony: While rooted in traditional tonal harmony, Chien's use of modal inflections and extended harmonies adds depth and complexity to his music. - Chromaticism: Occasional chromatic passages create moments of tension and contrast within the harmonic framework.
Rhythmic Diversity: - Syncopated Rhythms: Chien incorporates syncopation and irregular rhythmic patterns, drawing on both Western and Eastern rhythmic traditions to create dynamic textures. - Pulsating Rhythms: Driving rhythms and pulsating ostinatos often underpin his compositions, propelling the music forward with energy and momentum.

Cultural Impact

• Cultural Fusion: Chien's music serves as a bridge between Eastern and Western musical traditions, fostering cross-cultural dialogue and understanding.
• Representation: As a Taiwanese composer, Chien's work contributes to the global recognition and appreciation of Taiwanese and Chinese musical heritage.
• Education and Outreach: Through performances, workshops, and educational initiatives, Chien promotes cultural exchange and collaboration in the contemporary music scene.

Notable Works

1. "Echoes of the Mountains": A symphonic poem that evokes the majestic landscapes and spiritual traditions of the Taiwanese mountains.
2. "Dreams of the River": A chamber music cycle inspired by the poetry of classical Chinese literature, exploring themes of love, nature, and the passage of time.
3. "Beyond the Horizon": A multimedia orchestral work that combines live performance with visual art and electronic soundscapes, offering a multi-sensory experience.
4. "Songs of the Soul": A choral suite based on ancient Taiwanese folk melodies and Taoist chants, celebrating the spiritual heritage of Taiwan.
5. "Journey to the East": A concerto for erhu and orchestra that showcases the expressive capabilities of the traditional Chinese instrument within a contemporary classical context.

Doctoral Theory Analysis

Introduction Yiheng Chien's music represents a unique synthesis of Eastern and Western musical traditions, characterized by its expressive melodies, rich harmonies, and cultural resonance. This analysis explores the theoretical underpinnings of his work.
Integration of Eastern and Western Elements - Modal Interchange: Chien seamlessly blends traditional Chinese scales and modes with Western tonal harmony, creating a harmonically rich and culturally resonant sound. - Timbral Exploration: His use of traditional Chinese instruments alongside Western orchestral forces expands the sonic palette and cultural depth of his compositions.
Expressive Melody - Mimetic Phrasing: Chien's melodies often mimic the contours of spoken language or natural sounds, imbuing them with a sense of organic movement and emotional resonance. - Narrative Arcs: Melodic lines unfold with a sense of narrative development, evoking imagery and emotions that transcend cultural boundaries.
Harmonic Complexity - Modal Borrowing: Chien's harmonic language draws on both Western functional harmony and Eastern modal traditions, creating a fluid and dynamic harmonic palette. - Polytonality: Occasional moments of polytonality or bitonality add layers of tension and ambiguity, reflecting the complexity of cultural identity and experience.
Rhythmic Diversity - Cross-Rhythms: Chien incorporates cross-rhythms and polymeter, reflecting the rhythmic complexity of both Western classical and traditional Chinese music. - Ritualistic Rhythms: Certain passages feature ritualistic or ceremonial rhythms, evoking the spiritual traditions and cultural rituals of Taiwan and China.
Conclusion Yiheng Chien's music represents a compelling fusion of Eastern and Western musical traditions, characterized by its expressive melodies, rich harmonies, and rhythmic diversity. Through his innovative compositions, Chien fosters cultural exchange and dialogue, bridging the divide between East and West and offering audiences a glimpse into the rich tapestry of Taiwanese and Chinese musical heritage.

I was looking at old pictures of myself as a young kid with Barney merch and it made me remember how I stopped watching the show as a kid. I never organically started moving away from it by watching it less and less, instead I stopped one day in kindergarten after hearing the “Joy to the World Barney is Dead” playground chant and assuming everyone suddenly hated Barney for some reason so I had to too. I remember being super upset about it because I freaking loved Barney, but still I turned my back on him like Peter.
Anyway there are a few other times I can think of as a kid where I didn’t grow disinterested in something but felt forced to abandon it due to age. I’m sure this isn’t an uncommon experience, but I wonder if it has a label for it of some kind. Anybody know?

The vipassana training is a great offering to the world and the visions and contributions of Goenka-ji are beyond wonderful. People who serve here out of dharma service and their willingness to help are admirable.
However, as a participant of the training, I’d sadly have to give a poor review. Whether the course is free or not, or the meditation technique itself has nothing to do with these feedbacks.
The way the training is structured is more like a military training than a learning experience. There are a long list of rules including no phones, no books, no journaling, no exercises etc., while I appreciate some of the rules like noble silence which helps attendants focus inwards, all other rules are rigid beyond reasoning. There, in my opinion, must be a middle way. Also I believe these should be suggestions or advices rather than rules. Goenka spoke so much about blind devotion this is kind of hypocritical.
I am not sure if this is universal across all Goenka’s centres however the people running this centre near Barcelona are like slaves to these rules, without ANY discernment. Speaking of attachment! You are not allowed to exercise, you are not allowed to skip meals or a dharma talk, or walk outside at this time. I felt like I was in a concentration camp where every move is being monitored. The manager came to my bed to ask why I am not having breakfast, and said I am not allowed to fast. I found this so ridiculous! I chose to listen to my body need, I don’t eat when I am not hungry. Then I had to go to the teacher to explain why i skipped breakfast! Man we are not in the kindergarten!
Honestly they are so rigid to following the rules I think they are just sheep attached to the idea of having control over people in the group rather than wishing the best for everyone’s learning process and seeing each person’s needs as they are, and accept each one has different needs. This entirely makes the whole experience torturous, and prison-like. If the goal of awakening/enlightenment is to see through the illusion and become the true self, I believe blindly following rules others impose on you without critical thinking is a huge obstacle. Since when exercising interfere with meditation? Yogis have been practicing asana for centuries to aid meditation. There must be some sort of explanation to these rules sadly these are not explained at all. I think they completely miss the plot. This is not the type of Sangha I want to practice with. Everyone behaved like sheep in there.
Everyone seems to be bowing down to the teacher Victoria whom I have no idea who she is and where this superiority comes from? Not to disrespect her but there was no prior communications about having a teacher and who this teacher is. The way I was told to interact with her was like asking me to meet the queen, look at her all the time and sit like this and that etc. Every little thing even non meditation issue has to go through her which I found ridiculous! Unfortunately, as a dharma teacher herself she has very little to no skill to hold space for my concerns. She sits on her dharma throne trying to fake compassion and brushes off whatever I had to say is the worst kind of compassion. She even told me I had signed an agreement to listen to everything she said, I had no idea where I signed this but this is so unbelievable coming directly from a dharma teacher. So much attachment to rules and her inflated superiority, so little equanimity and compassion and love.
regarding the Goenka’s material, I honestly think l it can be improved so much! I admire what this man has done to the world but man, precise communication is not his thing! He keeps on looping through same ideas with his word salad and fluff, some of the discourses are great but most of them are redundant! He could have covered so much more Buddha’s teaching in those 15 hours but it was literally the same ideas everyday. I have studied Buddha’s teaching for around 2 years now and I regret I didn’t learn anything new in this 10 day intensive course. The vipassana instructions are tedious and redundant, the off pitch chanting is a huge test to my equanimity! if I were to record some materials and use them globally for 30 plus years, I would put my effort to script it to perfection.
The female dorm is claustrophobic, with bunk beds facing each other where the space between can only fit one person. One person snores the whole dorm can’t sleep.
I hate to have to provide a bad review, i sincerely hope more people can benefit from this technique to step into mindfulness. If you want to rough it through 10 intensive days striping off all your freedom, repeatedly listening to Goenka’s off pitch chanting and 60% redundant and tedious vipassana instructions, this is THE place to develop equanimity. Otherwise there are better places to learn how to meditate!

Lately I've been shocked by the difference between Palestinian messaging and how it is understood in the west. In their original 1988 charter, Hamas clearly lays out their goal of annihilating Israel and Jews through Jihad (Islamic Holy War).

'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.' (Preamble)
'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' (Article 7)
'There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.' (Article 13)
'The day the enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In the face of the Jews' usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.' (Article 15)

The magnitude of this anti-Jew, anti-Israel, and self sacrifice ideology is such that it is a core part of Palestinian youth education and media. There are many examples, but here are just a few. The first two would be comical if they weren't so perverse and diabolical.
Farfour, the Hamas Mickey Mouse
Gazan Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony
Jews are barbaric apes
40 more minutes of Palestinian youth TV
This propaganda has real-world effects. Hundreds of Palestinian children have been used as suicide bombers. I'd encourage people to read through this page if any.
Hamas's actions are in line with their stated aims. On October 7, Hamas and Gazan civilians can be seen celebrating over dead Israeli bodies. One video shows Gazans cheering, dancing, and spitting on dead naked Israeli woman, reflecting the fact that systemic rape on Oct 7 occurred. Over 70% of Palestinians support the actions on Oct 7. Hamas has promised to repeat Oct 7 again and again.
We also see this ideology reflected in the Palestinian Authority's "Pay for Slay", a fund that pays West Bank Palestinians a stipend for committing terrorism against Israel.
The point of sharing these things is not to demonize Palestinians or make any sort of justification. The point is that in the west, we mistranslate this conflict into a framework that we comprehend and sympathize with. For most westerners, it's difficult to commiserate with religious fundamentalists and accept that they might want different things than we do (such as using billions of dollars in aid for terrorism instead of infrastructure). SJP would have you believe that Hamas wants to "decolonize" Palestine and Oct 7 was "resistance". Israel is the "white" oppressor, and Palestine is the oppressed--a framework we are all too familiar with. We assume that Hamas wants coexistence, when their words and actions have shown the opposite.
The "from the river to the sea" chant was created in the 60s and has historically been used by Hamas among other groups as a call for the annihilation of Israel. A variation of the phrase in Arabic is "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab". Yet in the west we associate the phrase with Palestinian "liberation", a concept that we can relate to. Consider the absurdity of someone waving a swastika and arguing that it's a Buddhist symbol for good fortune. But this is essentially happening at colleges across the US, of course along with intifada chants. The war itself is a different topic--I just wanted to elucidate how westerners downplay the religious and ideological, despite Hamas themselves displaying their intent to destroy Israel and Jews.

My almost six year old daughter has had signs of ADHD for years. She has struggled with sitting still to watch a tv show or movie, staying focused long enough to eat dinner, talking very fast and loudly, chanting the same word and laughing like crazy over and over, climbing all over us, etc.
She started kindergarten this year and at first, she was doing well. Around Thanksgiving/early December, we met with her teacher because our daughter was not staying focused on the instruction and would get upset and say the work was too hard and refuse to try.
We had a developmental evaluation completed by a psychologist and they determined she has ADHD combined type and sensory sensitivities. She started struggling more and more in school. She would climb under the table and cry if she thought the classwork was too hard and she started saying she isn't smart. We worked with a mental health doctor and started her on guanfacine.
We saw a small improvement in impulse control with the guanfacine but her struggles at school continued. The doctor prescribed her ritalin and it seems to be helping. She does great in the morning and midday but struggles in the afternoon. What os concerning to me is that her emotional responses have always been rough but in the past few weeks, she has become very reactive. She gets very upset over everything and is having full blown meltdowns with screaming at home and school. She wont let anyone talk to or touch her when she is upset. The school sends me messages or calls me at least twice per week.
I think some of it is from hungelow blood sugar since the Ritalin has decreased her appetite but its hard seeing her struggle more and more as the school year continues.
Anyone with similar experiences and/or advice? TIA

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

[Original source] [Wikipedia]
The above is from a 1993 study on how to warn people in the distant future about the dangers posed by a nuclear waste repository. This message needs to be communicated to people who stumble upon the site, and it needs to be done so non-verbally. As nuclear waste stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years, there will eventually be people who come upon the site who will not share a language with us. They will not share symbols with us. They will not share a culture with us. Yet they will be humans, and we are obligated to protect them.
I came upon this specific ... it's not quite a poem, but that's what Chelsea Weber-Smith of the podcast American Hysteria called it in her most recent episode, which I had the joy to listen to earlier this week. It's about the borderline-bonkers field of study (and one of my occasional obsessions) called nuclear semiotics, which analyzes this problem.
Coincidentally, I started my second playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom the day after listening to this story. As I descended the staircase, through the gloom, past the murals and to G-Do himself, I couldn't help but think... the ancient Hylians/Zonai had a similar problem to our civilization. There is a danger underground that must be contained, and people must be warned. It's interesting how some of the strategies they employ to convey this message are mirrored in the thoughts of nuclear semioticians, and how in other ways went against the most basic ideas of this field. In the end, did they fail? (Yes, the answer is yes) Will we fail to protect our own future people? (yes, but for different reasons)
Worth saying, they had it easy compared to us:

1. We know nothing of the people of 10,000 years from now. They literally had a princess from this future culture at their disposal.
2. All human languages currently in existence will be unintelligible to the people of 12024, more so than how Proto-Indo-European (spoken only ~6k years ago) is unintelligible to us today. Ancient Hylian, on the other hand, is basically Middle English.

They tried many strategies that nuclear semioticians have considered, some implemented better than others, with varying levels of success:

1. An "atomic priesthood", namely the Sheikah and the Royal Family. This is a group of people who are dedicated to the mission of preserving information about the threat across millennia, in the same way religious movements dating to the Iron Age and Classical Antiquity have managed to preserve the teachings of their founders into the present. We know Sheikah tech is seen in the imprisoning chamber, and the royal family pass down the story of the Imprisoning War. Unfortunately, this "priesthood" over the millennia proved small and unstable. Depending on how you place TotK in the timeline, the Sheikah and the royal line were nearly wiped out several times, reduced at one point to kindergarten teacher and a pre-teen pirate captain. Even if the movement survived, the message of "do not go below the castle" was eventually forgotten.
2. Physical monuments. There are three general threads of thought. One is to create some kind of frightening, ominous landscape that communicates "this is a bad place," like a forest of jagged concrete spikes. Another thread, as Weber-Smith put it, thinks that's some very American absurdity, and the best thing is to just hide it somewhere unimportant. Dig a hole in the Arctic, drop it in. Another (more interesting) idea is to make it the center of attention. Build a nuclear-themed amusement park, a nuclear temple, something people will tell stories of and preserve. No one wants to drill for oil on the Acropolis. The Hylians went and built a magnificent castle and their capitol city. It's not clear this helped since the original message was eventually lost.
   1. They appear to have communicated the specifics primarily in writing, and in a single written language: Zonai, a system so obtuse that not even the Internet can crack it. Correct me if I am wrong, but we see no Gerudo hieroglyphs, no Sheikah characters, no other text in the game in any other language warning about what is under the castle. Almost none of this text is near the castle. Much of it is in the goddamn sky. There is text immediately adjacent to the Imprisoning Chamber, on and around statues of Zonai. Zelda just takes pictures and keeps walking.
      1. (I am trying to find a source, and I cannot, but I remember tales of a warning in the castle itself, a very nondescript stela that's like "don't go under the castle." I don't remember what language it is in, but in any case it's not exactly in a prominent place) EDIT: my thanks to u/banter_pants who linked to some screenshots of the stela in question in the comments. You can see it here. Some important points: Link can read it, meaning it is not original to the ancient period, and it is in a space only accessible to the Royal Family and those associated with them. To me, this suggests a later addition related to the "atomic priesthood," preserving this secret memory. What's also really striking is the text really seems to evoke the quote I opened with even including the phrase, "If the site is disturbed..."
3. Written and artistic representations of the message. Nuclear semioticians seem to think this is a challenge. Many proposals that do include written messages would start with it being in multiple languages, with broad, general terms are the periphery of the site (Bad! Malo!), getting more specific as you approach the center (plutonium 1.4km down). There's art, like this, which might not work, as we can't guarantee symbols like ☢️ or skulls will mean the same thing to future people. The Hylians/Zonai just... well they didn't think about any of this.
   1. The statues closest to the source of the danger are Zonai, a race completely forgotten. They are not in a position warning people off. They just stand there, arms at their sides, conveying nothing.
   2. Of course, a discussion of art would be incomplete without talking about the murals... they're a bit too close to the problem. G-Do is literally in the next room. If he was nuclear waste, you're already losing all your hair. The murals are only understandable by people with specific knowledge of the Royal Family's lore. They do not depict useful information (eg. he's literally in the next room), only a legend. And the structure of the space it was in was so poorly constructed that literally the most important bits were obscured by rubble.
4. Finally, there is the physical barrier between the environment and the threat. You bury it in concrete, deep underground, somewhere without a lot of rainfall and earthquakes. The last thing that needs to happen is a bit of groundwater to start carrying plutonium into a well. You don't just leave this stuff in a ditch (unless you do). And yet... there is apparently a staircase directly to G-Do. He keeps spitting out calamities. People are getting sick from the emanation of energy/gloom...

I am not sure I have a point exactly. The lore nerds will rightfully point out that containment failed at exactly the moment it was meant to: ie. when Zelda came upon it and closed the time loop. True fact. I'm just stirring these tropes together. The ancient Hylians/Zonai tried to communicate a danger and how to deal with it to people in their distant future, ultimately showing us a bunch of ways that this did not work.
Us in the real world will have to hope nuclear semioticians have better ideas. Most of this stuff is sitting the parking lots of nuclear power plants as we argue about where to put it. Hopefully we put it underground with good signage before we have our own calamity.

FIRST CHAPTER
PREVIOUS CHAPTER
This product is a fanfic of the Sexy Space Babes/Between Worlds product of u/Bluefishcake and one I highly suggest you read. It was created with permission, but give the OG works some love.
Imgr gallery of Comissioned and Fan Artworks
I'm Back Bitches! Again!
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Junior Systems Engineer First Class Che’keero knelt before a semi-sparking control panel and sighed. She, and a large band of her fellow Engineers with Marine support, had boarded the pirate frigate with the singular goal of ensuring that the pirates didn’t scuttle their floating hulk and doom the slaves aboard to a, if they were lucky, a swift death in space.
The problem, of course, came with the pirate’s maintenance schedules and decisions to forgo certain… safety measures when it came to repair.
Like the panel before her. Usually a perfectly functional control system for the reverse-magnetic bulkhead doors that ensured void seals in power outages, some pirate at some point in their dumb, dumb life decided to fix the panel blowing a fuse… by ripping the fuse out and replacing it with a high density power cable. Which meant the entire thing was one massive shock hazard and actively sparking as the reactors deep in the ship flickered and surged due to damage.
Che’keero swore as an arc of electricity flashed towards her face after a tool that was not supposed to be magnetized, cheap dick WaDepth requisitions, caught a magnetic field, fusing the entire system shut and turning the formerly barely functional control system into nothing but pretty, decorative wiring and cheap solder. She punched the now utterly unfunctional control box and toggled on her radio. “Three-Two to Three-Lead, this door’s fried. You’ll need to bring in the cutters if we want to get to the rest of the ship. Might as well also bring in an inflatable airlock, I’m not liking how some of the metal strain sensors are flashing at me.”
A semi-synthetic voice replied back to Che’keero, “Three-Lead copies. I’ll be over there shortly with the stuff. Double check those sensors, I’m not getting the same readings, so let’s make sure something isn’t blocking errors from reaching me.”
“Copy that Three-Lead, Three-Two ou-” Something tapped against the back of her helmet and Junior Systems Engineer First Class Che’keero mentally swore.
“Now, now, lassie, how about you sit right there and don’t move.” A nasally, unfamiliar voice called out to her while tapping what a camera she set up to watch her back revealed to be a laser pistol to Che’keero’s helmet. “I think that you’re going to be our new best friend and way off this dead end ship.”
Che’keero paused, letting the situation settle in her mind, “Wait, what? Are… are you taking me hostage?”
“Yes!” The pirate replied.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you taking me hostage? This won’t work, none of the shuttles are jump capable and if you try anything, you’ll just end up jumped by marines. They specifically train to deal with pirates taking their engineers hostage. If you want to survive, you should just surrender and take the penal colony when it’s offered.” Che’keero mentioned, shrugging and continuing her inspection of the door.
The pirate seemed baffled at the sheer nonchalance of this response, the pistol slowly falling to merely point at her upper back instead of her head, “You… you really aren’t taking this seriously. I’m a pirate! I’ve killed people! I’ve killed boys, and you’re just sitting there like this doesn’t mean anything!”
“I mean… I wouldn’t say that.” Che’keero replied.
“THEN WHAT DO YOU MEAN!” The pirate screamed, the pistol moving away from Che’keero’s body by a fraction of an inch during an angry gesture.
It was at that point, a ceramic alloyed, carbon steel blade punched clean through the back of the pirate’s suit, slicing through their central nervous system and striking with enough force to shatter the faceplate of said pirate’s helmet on the way out. Muscles twitching, the laser pistol fired off randomly, missing Che’keero and slagging a chunk of bulkhead.
“I’m just buying time,” Che’keero replied cheekily.
“You really need to remember to check your cameras,” The semi-synthetic voice of Ventures Forth Bravely Into Great Unknowns commented as the ex-pirate fell to the ground and blue blood dripped from the long blade sprouting from her right arm and a toolbox hanging from her left hand. “This isn’t the first time you have been flanked, and this one wasn’t during training.”
“Look, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” Che’keero replied a bit testily.
“I’m sorry…” Ventures Forth prodded.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am.”
“Much better. Right, now what do we see in this- yeah you were right on it being fried.” Ventures Forth gently shoved the Junior Systems Engineer aside and took her place at the control panel. “Do a sweep of the strain systems. I don’t want this section of the ship breaking apart. Feel free to call up our hull patches. We’ve got plenty to share and this might have to be a lifeboat.”
“Aye, ma’am aye,” Che’keero replied with a crisp salute before rushing off to her duty.
Deeper inside the ship, Ventures Forth could hear laser fire, clashing of metal on metal, and cries for help.
The pirate ship was doomed, it was shattered and broken, but it was not destroyed. Not yet. \
And if she had her way, Ventures Forth Bravely Into Great Unknowns would keep it that way.
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Roshal stood still as her steward continued to clean the dark blue and rapidly congealing blood off her armored form. “Comms,” She called out, “Do we have any contact with the shuttle we sent to the station?”
“Negative, ma’am.” The comm officer replied. She wasn’t the same one that was present when Roshal left to fend off the boarders. At the unspoken question, the woman continued “Communication’s Mate Second Class Lev’tal, ma’am. My superior got a concussion when the pirate ship rocked our ship during boarding. Strap snapped, prior damage. I took over.”
Roshal nodded approvingly, “Good initiative. Send a message to the station, see if we can’t rai-”
“Ma’am! Contact!” One of her sensor techs called out, “Belay that, two contacts. First contact, nav point 782 spinward, possible bogey, cruiser weight. Unknown movements. Second contact, nav point 102 coreward, aerospace assets inbound. Small flight. Hard to determine numbers due to damage. No less than two, no more than five.”
“Focus on getting a hard contact on that possible cruiser. Weapons, what is the status of our anti-aerospace.” Roshal demanded, holding her sword arm out for the steward to scrub at a particularly clotted chunk of blood splattered over her wrist.
The weapons officer shook her head, “If we’re lucky, then we’ve got 20% coverage on half our sides. If we’re very lucky, I might be able to bump that number up to 35%. Not going to quote doctrine, but that’s not nearly enough to fend off a flight of Aerospace assets on a strike run, and that’s assuming they don’t hit us on an unprotected flank.”
Roshal nodded once more, “Sound general quarters and get weapons and tactical back online. Tell the damage control parties to not be distracted and focus on critical systems first. Engine room, report. Can you give me maneuvering thrust?”
The nearby ship phone chimed in with a staticy hiss, “Negative, ma’am. The shot we made with the spinal mount tripped breakers up and down the reactor room. This isn’t an engine problem, we need to make sure our reactor doesn’t blow up when we siphon power. Before you ask, emergency power is still flowing and none of their circuits tripped, but that means we’re down to life support, basic systems, and dockyard thrusters. It will take at least 20 to get the reactor in a safe state. If you want 10, send the chaplain down so we have someone praying for good luck. The fact most of our structural engineers are doing an EVA boarding to ensure the pirate ship next to us doesn’t go critical and render the entire exercise moot isn’t helping matters at all.” The engine room replied Roshal bit down a bit of annoyance at the snark, but engineers were always a finicky sort with authority. They were the first to remind uptight officers that while the Captain’s word may be iron law, it was their work that truly moved the ship.
“Confirmed, engine room.” Roshal instead replied. “Chaplains will be arriving shortly. Do what you can and inform me when you’re three minutes out from full power.”
The engine room didn’t even bother replying, just sending over the affirmative light as they got to work. Roshal approved of that. Sometimes, you just had to insult someone in order to get it working right.
“Captain, we have confirmation on contact. He’s an Alliance Karcharidon class Heavy Cruiser on intercept course. Energy readings are spiking… they’re charging their guns, ma’am!”
“Issue a hostile challenge and give me a firing solution with any gun still functional.”
“No response, ma’am. Hostile Karcharidon is increasing speed. Hard contact in 15 minutes.”
Roshal snarled, emotion breaking through her mask. “Of course, the pirates had one more vessel. Helm, fire our maneuvering thrusters, use the pirate hulk as cover. Weapons, get whoever’s left of our Interceptor flight to engage the enemy. Comms, get me in contact with the merchant fleet, tell them to evacuate. We’ll provide cover.”
“Aye ma’am.” The Communications Mate Second Class said with a shiver in her voice. “Sending-”
“Update on Aerospace assets!” Her sensor tech called out.
“Deliver!” Roshal demanded, cutting off the comms officer with a slice of her hand.
“Weapons fire. Definitely less than four contacts. Seems to be two grou- negative, only two contacts remaining- weaponsfire- one contac- IFF received, oh goddesses, IT’S RUNOFF THREE! FRIENDLY AEROSPACE INBOUND!”
//////////
Milk gripped her crash harness hard as Cookie slammed the Interceptor’s fusion torch clean past its safe thrust marker and into the red as g forces crushed her chest. “Last target down.” She reported after Cookie’s final laser burst hit something critical inside the final Aerospace fighter’s frame. “That’s 20 for 20. All enemy bogeys down. All standard munitions are in the black. Static drive is 48%, dump core ejected. All we’ve got left is our ASM and front laser.”
Cookie flashed back an affirmative signal.
“We going for that cruiser?”
Another affirmative.
“Well, I’m braced and ready on the release. Ready.”
“Ready.” Cookie spoke, his voice horse.
It’s funny what people think when their lives are on the line. Because charging towards a fresh enemy Heavy Cruiser, nothing but a single anti-shipping missile worth a damn, no allied support but the faint glimmer in IFF screens of their fellow flight doing the same… all Aoibhinn McDermott could think of was a poem she had read at least a decade ago or more at the Naval Academy.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
//////////
Ventures Forth Bravely Into Great Unknowns could do nothing but furiously swear as the basic sensor system her engineering team had restored on the thoroughly ventilated secondary command bridge of the pirate hulk revealed an enemy Heavy Cruiser bearing down upon their homeship.
“Weapons are trashed. We cored their reactor, anyway.” One of the tangential engineers reported, “Other teams are calling in. Things are worse where they are. We’ve found the slaves, though, luckily it was one of the few airtight bays. Also, have some more captives, but that really doesn’t matter right now.”
“No shit.” Ventures Forth replied, “Can we do anything?”
The engineer looked back to her, visor depolarizing so the Gearschilde can look into the black and yellow eyes of her Shil coworker.
“Pray.” The woman replied simply.
Ventures Forth Bravely Into Great Unknowns did just that.
//////////
Low chanting filled the engine bay as a small group of priests stood around the engine praying to whichever god that would listen to allow them one more shot. One more fight.
Around them, black handed engineers scurried, ripping out blown fuses and replacing them with soldered in high strength wire. A final measure of desperation. Sparks flew as engineers swore and chaplains prayed, power still remaining in circuits needing to be bled out before bypasses could be installed, turning every bit of solder and every ripped out fuse into a deadly gamble.
Already, someone was lying on the ground, no longer twitching.
They didn’t have time to check on their fallen comrade, the work was too important.
A clock ticked down. Four minutes elapsed.
//////////
Lieutenant Commander Cenywyn swore as she watched Runoff 2 die.
Their single Interceptor had mistimed a maneuver and had been caught dead in the middle of an Anti-Aerospace array, shredded in an instant. The only consolation she could take was that, seeing as the first shot went clean through the cockpit, they didn’t even notice they died.
“Runoff 4, stay in formation.” She ordered over the radio, “We’ll lead you in for the run.”
“Yes ma’am.” The hesitant voice of Junior Flight Lieutenant Griogill replied. She swallowed, “We’re- we’re ready when you are.”
“No fear, Lieutenant,” Cenywyn called back to the child she was leading to her death. “We’re pilots in the Imperial Patrol. We do our duty. No fear.”
A clock ticked down. Six minutes elapsed.
//////////
“Talk to me!” The last remaining senior engineer in the reactor bay called out to anyone who was able to reply.
Someone, she didn’t even bother looking to see who, called back “We’ve bypassed 60% of the fuses. Should be able to give ourselves a burst of combat power. No more than 10 minutes of it before the entire system overheats and we either die, or the reactor shuts off.”
“Any chance we can get more than 10 minutes?”
“Not before that Heavy Cruiser delivers us straight to the stars.”
“Fuck it, good enough.” She slammed her fist on the ship phone’s dialing button resting near the console the engineer had just ripped the last safety override out of. “Captain. We’ve got your power. You give us the word, and we’ll give you ten minutes.”
//////////
Roshal breathed in, breathed out, and nodded. 10 minutes of combat power before the entire ship shut down into uselessness. She’d done more with less. She couldn’t remember when, but she had. Luckily, this was a Patrol Carrier instead of a standard ship, so it was more than capable of combat maneuvers with nothing but RCS thrusters. That should give her some time.
Movement, movement was going to be the key.
“Comms, tell the engineering crews on the hulk that they are ordered to figure out anything that could draw the attention of the Heavy Cruiser,” She began, “Systems, break our mooring lines. We’re going to have to split from the hulk. Helm, prepare for maneuvers. RCS only. We are going to have to do this carefully. Engineroom, prepare for power activation, but hold until my command.”
This needs to be perfect, Roshal thought, A single mistimed action ruins it all.
A clock ticked down. Ten minutes elapsed. The Karcharidon had entered maximum weapon’s range.
//////////
He of Slender Tail shivered where he stood. The secondary command bridge was silent as Roshal began giving orders to fight. This was… this was insane.
They were in a ruined ship with nothing but a merchant fleet beginning to flee and a three thirds dead pirate hulk on their side against a fresh Karcharidon class Heavy Cruiser.
They couldn’t win.
This was suicide.
They would die here.
\ So why didn’t He of Slender Tail feel afraid?
He stood at his post, a secondary bridge console where he would relay orders to other departments, freeing up the other Watchkeeper to collate those orders, there was nothing he could do to help win this impossible battle, and yet…
And yet he felt heat blossoming inside his chest with every single order delivered.
“Mooring teamsss, you are to cut your linesss immediately.” He relayed to a crew of Shil scurrying around the ruined bulkheads, “Damage control, prepare for electrical firesss and arcsss.” He commanded, switching between teams instantly.
He didn’t feel fear. He could see his Watchkeeper shiver every time the sensors reported the enemy contact was still closing, but he didn’t feel the same.
What he felt… was indignation.
How dare this pirate scum threaten his vessel, his crew. How dare they ambush this valiant ship after they had fought so hard to win. How dare they.
He let his fangs fold out as he spat the next order, “Anti-Aerossspace teamsss, prepare your batteriesss for grouped fire. Gunnery calculationsss are on their way.”
How dare they stand up to him.
A clock ticked down. 12 minutes elapsed. Weapons fire.
//////////
Roshal swayed slightly as she could feel the ship beneath her feet move. Movement is life in naval warfare, movement is death. “Right RCS fire, bring us clear of the hulk. Bow thrusters, up twenty.”
“Aye, ma’am, aye, right standard and bow up twenty.” The Helmswoman replied.
“Confirmed. Next maneuver, give us rear thrust-”
“Torpedo!” The sensor operator called out in a shrill voice, “Two marks on intercept course! Range, twelve K and closing fast!”
“Decorum!” Roshal snapped at the panicking sensor technician. “Comms, order Runoff flight to divert and intercept those torpedoes. Rear RCS to full, give us momentum.”
Roshal turned away from the bridge as affirmations were shouted, and the ship began to move, “Engineering, prepare to activate combat power on my mark and prepare for hard maneuvers. Mark in five.”
//////////
Griogill swallowed bile and tried not to feel too thankful that the enemy vessel had fired torpedoes at their home ship. Being diverted from an attack run had a much higher chance of survival than striking through an AA bubble.
“Runoff 4 engaging far torpedo. Moving in for intercept. Bre’kas, give me lock.”
Griogill’s backseater muttered something, and a target lock appeared on the far torpedo as Runoff 1, their previous Drill Sergeants, dashed by in a hard burn and blazed away at their own target.
“Right. We can do this. We can do this. No fear.” The rookie muttered as the sight of her friends in Runoff 3 being turned to vapor echoed in her mind. “I can do this.”
The target locked. She fired. The torpedo detonated.
A clock ticked down.
//////////
“Mark in four.”
//////////
The Heavy Cruiser loomed closer as the comparatively tiny Patrol Carrier spat its defiance in the form of two Interceptors dancing between the stars.
As a pair of torpedoes detonated, four more were launched, the anti-shipping weapons built for this specific purpose. Destroying disabled vessels.
And so the last two remaining Interceptors on CAP dove into the fray, risking themselves against an ever approaching AA bubble in order to save their ship.
A clock ticked down.
//////////
“Mark in three.”
//////////
All Cookie could do was stare and push his meager aerospace fighter further on its nuclear thrusters as shimmering dots of torpedoes lanced out from the Heavy Cruiser attacking his new home.
He pushed his hand forward and felt the throttle once more push back against him, the lever pushed all the way past safe thrust and into the further setting on his console.
The Interceptor was fast. It didn’t feel fast enough.
And so he spoke the words he spoke once before, back when he’d had to listen to his backseater’s screams of pain and the rush of wind after shrapnel pierced his fuselage, and the hospital was so, so far away.
Father, I pray that you will not hide your face from me. Whenever I pray, Lord please hear me and answer me speedily in Jesus' name. God, I pray that you will grant me speed through your help.
A clock ticked down.
//////////
“Mark in two.”
//////////
The Heavy Cruiser shifted, engine flaring and it began to close the range. A single disabled ship on emergency RCS thrusters and a pair of Aerospace fighters was nothing it would have to deal with.
It fired a third spread of torpedoes.
A clock ticked down.
//////////
They took the bait. Roshal thought with a vicious grin.
“Mark in one.” She paused, “Execute.”
In an instant, power flowed through the ship, emergency lights flickered off as the burning red boarding lights returned their fiery glow. The entire ship shook as the main thruster came back online, and capacitors began to charge for maneuvers.
“Hard burn, full thrusters, right, on my mark.” Roshal watched as the Heavy Cruiser began to react to her movements, the enemy ship was alive, you needed to roll to broadsides to begin bombardment, come on come on…
Roshal watched as a torpedo flickered out of existence, Runoff 4 gaining another kill.
Come on, dammit, you don’t get put in charge of a Heavy Cruiser without- THERE!
The Heavy Cruiser flinched, turning her bow away from the no longer stricken vessel, preparing for broadside.
The Captain’s grin showed more teeth than smile. “Execute! Full right thrust!”
“Full right thrust! Aye ma’am aye!” Her helmswoman called out as maneuvering thrusters dead cold roared to life and physically threw the vessel to the side, causing everyone not strapped in on the bridge to rock as a barrage of fire flew past their former location, manual targeting systems in play since the automatic systems would still be getting warmed up.
“Full thrust forward, prepare to divert all power to secondary weapons. Weapons, give me a firing solution.” Roshal commanded, hand raised and pointed at the enemy’s display as if she were commanding from a tall ship.
A chant of “Aye ma’am aye” flowed out across the bridge as the weaponsmistress was silent before calling out. “Port side is up to 45% secondary fires and 32% point defense. That’ll be our best bet.”
Roshal nodded. “Make it so. Target their main weapons. Helm, get us that facing.”
“Ma’am. We’re getting a call from Runoff 3. They are entering the AO and are asking for a target.”
Roshal smiled, “Weapons, shift target. Aim for the anti-aerospace systems. Let’s give Runoff 3 the opening they need.”
A clock ticked down.
//////////
“Cookie, we’ve got a targeting path.” Milk called forward. “Putting it up on your HUD.”
“One second… I’ve got it. Moving to comply. Did the Captain give us a plan?” her front seater replied, causing her stomach to do funny things as the Aerospace Fighter maneuvered while under high thrust.
“Something like that. She asked for a munitions report and specifically about our anti-shipping weapon.”
Cookie paused.
“Ah.” He finally said.
“Yeah.” She replied.
“Well, let’s hope they’re able to open us up to a window of opportunity. Or this will be a short charge.”
“Not our place to question why.”
“Just our place to do and die.”
Time to target… three minutes.
Into the valley of Death, rode the six hundred.
A clock ticked down.
//////////
Two vessels, three Aerospace fighters, one chance.
Six minutes of power remained. All actors took their places on the stage.
One hundred kilometers, close enough to check the weld quality of hull seams, the two ships danced across from each other. Maneuvering.
Five minutes of power remained.
The Karcharidon Heavy Cruiser rolled itself trying to keep the vulnerable top deck away from the Patrol Carrier’s presumably still working main gun as Roshal’s vessel jumped to the side. Thrusters roared.
Four minutes of power remained.
Runoff 1 and 4 shot towards their formerly separated comrade, forming up behind them in a wedge. The trio climbed towards the sun as their captain continued to chase and harass the Karcharidon.
Three minutes of power remained.
Roshal spoke. The lances of her vessel fired. Laser blasts carved across the hull of the enemy ship as it rolled.
The rolling ceased. A helmswoman swore as a full broadside caught the Patrol Carrier in the flank. The port hangar pod was ruined, armor shattered and all inside exposed to hard vacuum. Those who could scream died the fastest. The Interceptors had their opening.
Two minutes of power remained.
Silent wings swept through vacuum as three Interceptors began their dive, their formerly speedy arrowhead shape giving way to an inverted t as their wings swept out for stability, the ASF dove and dove and dove.
Five Kilometers away.
The range was too wide. They had one shot. It had to be perfect.
One minute of power remained.
The Into Harm’s Way spat its defiance into the world, limited power drained to give her pilots a seconds more of time.
30 seconds of power remained.
Three Kilometers.
Hard Lock! Milk shouted from the back seat of Runoff 3. Cookie was silent. The range was still too wide.
15 seconds of power remained.
Two Kilometers.
The Karcharidon seemingly began to roll before the Patrol Carrier once more fired, its last remaining weapons spouting their defiance against the world. Deep in engineering, systems began to blow, wires that replaced fuses sparked power and delicate circuit boards shorted out into useless scrap.
The lights went out.
No power remained.
Roshal, in her head, began to count down as lances of light began to sweep across her ship. Damage control did what they could, but the beams began to cut like an overly enthusiastic shipbreaker.
Five.
One Kilometer.
Four.
Cookie’s thumb depressed the firing stud as the Interceptor screamed at him.
Three.
The ASF launched its deadly payload.
Two.
Three Interceptors pulled back hard on their sticks to avoid colliding with the deck.
One.
The thruster of the anti-shipping missile roared as it rocketed the point blank aerospace distance to target.
Impact.
The armor piercing tip of the missile punched into the upper deck plating of the Heavy Cruiser, classified alloys allowing it to pierce into the armored plating just enough to allow the shaped charge to open up a hole as momentum kept the weapon moving.
Within the frame of a single second, the warhead of the missile had entered the ship and, before the alarms even had time to sound, detonated.
A new sun appeared in the void for a split second as a plasma-fusion warhead detonated inside the Karcharidon heavy cruiser’s hull.
//////////
Roshal allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief inside her head as the emergency power lights flickered overhead and the gravity ever so slightly lightened. What was left of their sensor arrays showed the enemy vessel powering down. “Engineering. Good work, your 10 minutes were just what she needed.” She called out, picking up the ship phone.
There was no answer from engineering.
She signed externally before pointing at one of the marines guarding the bridge, “Find a crewmate in a void suit. I have need of runners.” The marine clasped a fist to her chest before leaving to execute her captain’s commands. “Comms, do we have any contact with the engineering teams on the pirate hulk?”
The Comms officer held up a hand, Roshal waited, “No, ma’am. We aren’t getting- wait. We’ve got visual on flashing lights from the hull. Apparently, something shorted, so they’re having to rebuild broadcast arrays. They can receive just fine, though.”
“Good, once we can maneuver, bring us broadside of them. What’s the status of the merchant fleet?”
Navigation spoke up now, “Still heading for the Jump Point. Should we send the recall order?”
“Not yet, we are still unsure if the area is safe. If we have any sensors remaining, begin sca-”
The mentioned sensor technician interrupted Captain Roshal, “Ma’am, new contact, signature unknown. Just jumped in from outside the starlane!”
“Give me details. Course, range, and speed?” She demanded.
“Signal confused, can’t get a lock!” Navigation called out, “Can’t tell if confusion’s from them or us.”
Not another one… Roshal sighed, “All forces prepa-”
“Ma’am, we’re being hailed.” Communications called out.
“On squawk.”
“This is Captain Al’yosha Cal’rada of Her Imperial Majesty’s Ship Spear of the Knyaginya, responding to Merchant vessel distress calls. Imperial Patrol Carrier, are you in need of assistance at this time?”
Roshal recognized the voice. A junior officer from her days in the Navy and a fellow Sevastutavan. The memory of the fresh faced girl when she’d joined her as an Ensign straight of the Naval Academy flashed before her eyes. “Captain Cal’rada. Your timing is impeccable as always.”
“Admiral?” Roshal could hear the shock in her old protege’s voice.
“That’s Captain, now, Al’yosha. I require your aid in ensuring the disabled vessel still glowing from an ASM strike remains disabled along with Search and Rescue teams for our sister Carrier.
“Whatever you want, you’ll have it, Admiral_… Helm! All ahead flank and plot course to intercept. Launch gunships and prepare to deploy Bluejackets. We’ll test our _Orcas’ teeth today!”
The line cut out a moment later than it should have, and Roshal nodded in approval.
“Captain, I still don’t have a read on new contact. What is it?” Sensors asked.
“A Drep’na inspired vision, come to life.” Roshal watched, feeling an odd sort of parental pride as Al’yosha’s experimental warship began closing the distance towards the Karcharidon at breakneck speeds. “A swift sailing vessel and ten carriage guns…” Roshal murmured the line from an old Vaasconian poem from the ancient Age of Sail. She had heard Cal’rada had succeeded in petitioning the Navy to build her dream-ship, burning every favor and passing out favors to any and everyone to see the program through. Now, there she was, standing on the bridge bearing down on a ship twice her size, but if the rumors were true, only half her guns.
“Ma’am, contact is still not resolving, but IFF confirms Imperial Navy designation. An Akula Class Attack Transport. I’ve… I’ve never even heard of this class.”
“Perhaps we shall hear of them more in the future. Fortune favors the active.”
“Contact is disgorging multiple signals, moving at speeds consistent with aerospace assets.”
“That is our signal we may disengage. Comms, inform the merchant fleet that the area is secure and to begin refueling procedures. Helm, get us alongside the pirate hulk, we have people to recover. Marine, get me a runner to the MP’s, we shall need the port hangar prepared for an old tradition the Navy has regarding pirate prisoners…” Roshal commanded. The fight was over, it was time to begin the cleanup.
//////////
So… that took a while. Sorry about that.
Turns out when a combination of writer’s block, decision paralysis and LIFE hits you over the head, it becomes a touch difficult to get your shit together long enough to write something down.
On the plus side, we are out of the “unplanned bits” and right back into the parts I have brainstormed, so I won’t be staring at a screen trying to think how to make things connect as much anymore. On the other hand, that means we are now entering the epilogue of book 1 of Top Lasgun.
Don’t worry, the story isn’t ending, I’ve got “three” books plotted out in my head, so we’ll see how that shakes out, but for the most part, this is where I start wrapping up plot threads, laying down threads for what comes next, and all that other good stuff.
So yeah, next chapter is going to involve everyone wrapping up what happened here, some fun little Military Justice, and potentially a bunch of plot. Also, I’m planning on starting a “rewrite”/edited version of this to go up on AO3, so keep an eye out for that. Early installment weirdness is a bitch and I’m not proud of what the older stuff looked like.
Well, I hope you have a wonderful morning, afternoon or evening whenever you read this and I will see you next chapter.
[NEXT CHAPTER]

I have difficulty with routine/time management at home. I am home from work around 4pm M-F. My husband handles the kids, school drop off/pick-up, most of the cleaning and cooking. I have a toddler and kindergartner.
I always struggle with when to do my kid’s homework and piano practice. My daughter is ONLY in Kindergarten but I can’t get consistent with her tasks. she has to read a tiny bit nightly, learn a new sentence-poem by memory every week, and study some sight words every week. We aim to do piano practice for 10-15m each day. However, we usually end up practicing piano 1-2x a week so her progress is super slow. We do her homework reading also 1-2x a week. It sounds ridiculous but I can’t figure out how to get consistent with this.
Usually by the time I finish work, she’ll be playing outside or be doing some screen time (educational stuff). And I want a little break after work, too. Then the kids want to play/connect, which I think is healthy to do after school so we do that. And then it’s just about dinner time.. after dinner often I want to do some chores/cleaning.. and then I’ll realize we’re out of time to do homework/music or I just feel tired. Keep in mind my husband does most the cooking so I don’t even have to do that.
On top of this, I have a self-paced course I’ve been meaning to get to for professional development but I keep putting it off because I feel like I have no time.
Should I make a schedule? I’ve never been good at sticking to that.. I don’t know ahead of time which exact day we’ll bathe the kids or which exact day I’ll wash my hair.. or which day we’ll end up playing outside for hours eally enjoying ourselves..

Full text: Im seeing all these threads Really .Iam a spiritual being ..!! So ive been chanting 31 years 2020 !! I dint let no oNe run out . Of sgi .Since the time I was excommunicatedI stood with President ikeda and show actual proof , Somehow I felt the oneness of mentor and disciple kind of like having a Jesus moment but you don’t always feel them right? But every time I chant in frint of the GOHONZON and with my mentor i get hugh results!! Actul proof . Fuck all the bullshit , The priesthood say we chanting to fake GOHONZON!! Thats crazy!! Do you know how many other sex of Nichiren diashonins is Buddhism there Is?? is and I’ll kinds of crazy stuff having a priest and have an answer to three part prayers????? it’s almost like you have to be a Buddhist monk!! Yes there’s a lot about president ikeda No worship !! but he actually wrote poems just because they might not be the best But they are powerful and some beautiful butore than Any other person on this thread anybody on this website it has something to say about this man is not done when he’s done he might have the most honorary doctorate’s but might not know a lick the science but he’s got it he’s got the most can anyone say that??????????? he actually took all those pictures even though some might be out of focus but he did that while fighting to have an organization of people who could chaNt together learning to chant And never give up !! and having an organization to use !! you supposed to use the organization!! for organization there for us -it’s not you have to follow and worship president ikeda ..Some peoples jealousy is overzealousness and maybe their inability to chaNt and bring forth the Buddha nature and great fortune just couldn’t stand up to idiot people in the organization organizations for the people not for the priest president ikeda !!! FORTUNE FORTUNE FORTUNE !!! Is all i have !! Chant over come laziness LMFAO !!!!
Source: Beaver Mac’s response on https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Soka-Gakkai-considered-a-Dangerous-Cult

Hi, this is my first post in reddit and subreddit Healthygamergg. Doesn't mean this post is less or more complex to read or write.
WARNING: HIGHLY DENSE NONSENSE IN STUFF HERE! AHH!! Warn!
Reason: Autism causes high levels of word jargon possibility. Some instances of the disorder will result in inability of capability of knonof of apwors. gjaaep[kf. I've been here for 15 years and english has been only language but no word knowledge! Thank ypb;./
At the age of 15, I have a ominous feeling of being internally old resulting into the feeling of 'too old for anything anymore', while also feeling that the world is not real, instead being virtual/digital or similar to the same reality-feeling dreaming, and that I am not real, instead being a controlled character (Playable Character) by an autonomous player, or a person from the future is using their dyson sphere (a device that covers a star for energy) to relive their far earlier, yet simple life like a dream. These two feelings, the first one like a depressive and anhedonic (without pleasure) symptom, and the second one looks like Depersonaliztion-Derealization Disorder, are not likely to be a normal feeling of a 15 year old. (Btw, the fact that this is my first post also doesn't mean you have less of an excuse to report in case of rule break. Teach me lessons! I am DERP!)
Here's a table of what might be my mental disorders (feel free to read only names, as critical amount of word stability is reductioned by matter multiplyed by speed of light squared minus energy):
Loading executive functioning...
WARNING! These words disintergrate into stupid soup sometime! I find it insulting to myself of the level of uncapability, so some of you may be annoyance at the level of un read!

Mental/Emotional Disorder	Amount of diagnosis (Any diagnosis listed here is worse representation of experience than experience of professional)	Likely linked Experience (sorry, no ability to show what disorder is doing)
Autism	Diagnosed with autism test by professional, mild presentation (powerpoint slide number two thousand and fininjps) !!NO WORDS!!	Constantly claiming they/I are more educated in autism than other kids who say autism or [other person] is so autistic. Commonly has a disconnect between thought of words and used words (I should use the words 'skill of communication'!). Rambling and poor writing skills (algj iaodyc9b!? ieeee??). Finds (meta jokes to be funny (Where am i?) )? Likely involved in the important process of random information hallucination and execution on nonsense.
ADHD	Diagnosed within autism test, mild and inattentive presentation. (Hypotheized to not be real by noone, but likely has a bad name) (My ADHD likely doesn't represent ADHD.)	Nonely applicability (N/A). Experiences the need of perfectionism while not perfecting anything. Stimulants have a minor effect on performance. Makes too many things to do and too little time for sequential follow through (~0 seconds of follow through per task)
Alexithymia	Semi-personal self diagnosis and trient-professional screener test from therapist that results were reasonably high. (this isn't even a disorder!?! Just a indicator of other disorders?) (Likely exists in me)	Ability to interpret emotions after possible emotions processed into one is not impaired, but difficulty with determining whether emotional state is null ("business as usual") or is somehow slowly accumulating with errors. Commonly results in "Ah, but i think about things in third person instead of say feelings" when talking to my therapist and in these current words.
Anhedonia	Personal, ominous, spooky, scary self diagnosis (skeletons). Likely mild persentation? IDK, i'm no good diagnonal. (Might exists)	(Context: currently using fluxotine (please go to lined professional for treatment plane), which likely increases energy, then confidence without directly affecting happiness.) Boredom! No likee gaem! Only want do good, fun work. No happy other! Still do videogame? Confusing gamer, good game! ERR10192: low writing process paios lnogs. Final word: BOREDOM!!!! End log of personality instance [redacted]. Note on the high levels of dislike in non-personally relative to or non-serotonergic activities, but dislike has not been able to be correlated with actual inability of action. This is likely on the basis that the dissasociative disorders don't allow acknowledgement of happy or unhappy, just unknown.
Major Depressive Disorder	Personal self diagonsis, (uh, uhm actually it's Mild Major Depressive Disorder). (as it's your major, huh? Depressive Disorder?) (Might exists due to unlikely remain)	Everything is just so dysfunctional! So stupid. The rock is stupid, the computer is stupid, etc. It's stupid because when I look at it as a tool, the few options for how to use it are too limited. Not even these disorders are smart, as they kind of just disintergrated for me when I lowerd my diassociation. Either that, or I'm too young and old at the same time for any of this "hur durr I am sad because I thought the world was stupid" I said to myself. Your experience may vary, 0/10, made me less depressed.
Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder	Personal unself not real diagnosis. If it was mild, it would feel more real, as if that's a real thing (Insert sterotype here, as if thats a real thing).	Wait, my therapist talked about this disorder as if it's terrible?!? AHHH! RUNN! Anyways, what was real again? Wait, You're telling me i'm in a? WOW! ...[more third person single sided conservation ensues] Apparently DDD is associated with disorders ("Mood, anxiety and personality disorders are often comorbid with depersonalisation disorder..." -NIH) Unpersonally, I don't understand the long term effects of having the higher comorbidity.
Decisive Historical Disasociative Trauma	This disorder doesn't even exist! These are just unreal words being made into abstract concepts by poorly connected neurons! This disorder is the decisive stage of highly disasociative historical trauma, and unless in the future is invented, it doesn't exist. However, the current autism expert in the local area of the keyboard producing these words predicts it might mean more than at first glance: not just nonsense.	N/A

Now that you are likely educated in undefined, let us (lettuce) go (please) back to the current topic: my depressive disorder that is so annoyed at my something?

Part two: What even is trauma?

Spoiler:>! Here's the spoiler: I don't know!!<
Hmm... I don't know?
2.2: What is historical trauma? What's your perspective on it?
Historical trauma is the trauma that affects people in the future due to being highly significant.
Based on the possible fact that trauma is passable by genetics due to the enabling or disabling of genes, find out more by looking at whatever Epigenetics (the process of researching the way the environment affects your DNA that isn't simply DNA sequence through evolution) is, I assume that the historical significance of a trauma makes generational and historical trauma last longer or binarly/linearly activate. This means bad for me, good for people who need to escape trauma back in day of tribal danger basics and maybe guide for trauma is good for people who need to escape trauma back in my day of digital nonsense that was clicky click instead of dyson sphere!

Part three: Doctor K! Alok! Kanojia! The timetraveling trauma is going to get me and other peoples!!

^{How spook.}
[Likely loss of any cognition of writen words at current locational timeline of word string. Barrier cross analysis reveals extreme errors. determinable action is to not care, as extreme disrepair is not solvable by non normal executable actions of the problems resulting in the writing issues in the place of the problem.]
Urga burga! (likely expresses anger, more a chant, likely a fake word) Once, I was this age. Then, I once typed out these words to a therapeutic value. I remembered the one time when I was 6 or 7, and a feeling that indicated something like anhedonia and or depression, a deep boredom of all things functional in my life, happened to me at the time of sitting in a chair at school. I apparently lost lots of energy after that, but the few memories that stayed and are still easily acessible without requirement of remindecontext clues don't really show the process, so I assumed it was just a slow process.
Soon after getting my autism diagnosis and inattentive ADHD due to the autism making me have speech delays, the therapist that was going to get me on the mental health help used the DSM-5 to show I had the mild Major Depressive Disorder. Going to the doctors who I was getting not-so-effective ADHD treatment at the time (it's more effective now), I was talking to a simple yet likely complex life of healthcare doctor about my mental issues, but they talked about Anhedonia and how that sounds like that, just that I was too young to determine plan of action for how to fix such a complicated disorder. Learning what Anhedonia meant, I went to school and summarized the five mental disorders I knew of me having at the time, which didn't have the Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder but had Alexithymia, inside of a text based reading app where you click on the buttons to learn about how the mental disorders affected me or something. Next, I learned about Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder, which when mentioned to the therapist, they thought it was not a normal thing, not normal at all for a child.
Next, I was getting more concerned how long ADHD medication would take to treat my problems. I already knew about HealthyGamerGG, but I hadn't yet gotten the guide to mental health. Also, I was getting more and more concerned about how long I would want to be treated with the problems. So, I got the guide, but when I eventually learned about Doshas, the three elements that abstractly represent how the mental disorders work, I found something spooky.
The Major Depressive Disorder I thought was so 'la lah lahh la!' was actually a cyclic process that brought inattentive ADHD when it was depressive, and somewhat depression when it wasn't. I understood this because it seemed as though if I didn't take action, it would threaten to make me sadder, and even when I did take action to reverse it, it would still require double the amount it requires to go from a downer to an neutral. This was also noticeable in that the Vata Dosha was being affected whenever I did this action, and I then correctly assumed it was because I was a Vata by how my Vata was always increasing for many of the actions I took, showing my personality to be equipped for that specificly. This showed how my Vata being inactive when the 'cyclic depression' was active looked like inattentive ADHD. Next, the cylic property of the depression made it obvious it wasn't Vata, it wasn't Kapha, so it was likely a Pitta depression in it's behavioral property. I noted that observing it's reasoning for depression or source brought my mind back to when I was 6 or 7 of age and had suddenly gotten the sadness, the world could've seemed illogical or nonsensical, but it almost certainly seemed without smart function, then without 'good' function looking back. I saw how the Vata was affected by the depression, so I thought that the depression was more the cause of it's symptom of ADHD instead of a symptom of ADHD. This meant it was surely easy to treat now, right?
So far, I haven't been able to get back to the pediatrican who perscribed the fluxotine, as that's later on in the week, but for now, one thing I know, is that the final plot twist of this EPIC poem... is that i'm likely traumatized from being Native American.

Part Finale: "KarateSnoopy1911, I am your Rescuer, Persecutor, and Victim." - Problems and inevitable drama triangle, showing...

^{"Oh no! it's me, something that can include everything else, and everything everywehere!" - Me, and somewhere else!
Drama really sounds like Dharma, but it's different because one is simple funny and one is funnily simple. "Anyways, what is trauma again" - Demoysis, the non-complete idea of a game I would make.
But wait! If I am meant to be typing about trauma... and I'm typing about nonsense... What happened to me??
Native Americans have problem. The Europeans are problem. How do solve Europeans? Nonsense! No able to solve europeans...}
Anyways, I was kind of rambling... Native Americans have been deeply affected by the mass removal of land, people, cultures, and normal well being in America. So far, I've been able to see three affected people in my family, who is my mother of my mom which had two alcholic parents and then seemingly had issues with emotional expression and processing, which then affected my mom, and my dad's father was also an alcoholic, in someway affecting my dad. This means there are three close people to me (my dad's father idk where he is, likely dud) who are affected by the introduction of problems and the coping mechanism of drinking alcohol without genetical adaptation. However, It's not as if even if the people close to me stopped being altered by issues of the past then all sad Native Americans would stop saddening.
I think my main concern with all of this is that I feel awfully similarly disasociative to my mom, being confused what my emotions are and then what that means for my depression that kept my inattentive AttentionDeficitHyperactivityDisorder keeping me away from my depression that was kept in place by the trauma which was kept in place by the two dissasociative disorders... It looks like a big mess in a model, however I think the thing is that the more disorders are interacting, the less it's one disorder and the more it's multiple disorders that want different directions. The general problems in the Europe-like society with all those cars and those city closeness issues and the big clunky clunk house problem, then the digital device confusion of brain zap cause those general trauma errors be danger when no emotional smart.

Conclusion!!!

"Whats up guys!! This is influencer #1908672 making YOU really influenced or something! I want you to conclude that dissasociation is lead to bad or something!!!! What do you community think??? Bye!! I gotta work on myself and so many other problems that occur in weekends like the gaming and the look at the Trauma Problem Solution Plane 5d chess!! IF you liked this Autism interactive interesting Reddit Post, Keep it on here and blah blah blah blah...."
Alok Kanojia, release thine 5/20/2024 Trauma module to thy world!!!
WARNNIG. LOW AMOUNTS OF CRITICISIM NOTICED AT TIME OF CLICKING POST. NON COMPLAISANT WITH DIFFICULTY REGULATION #810697121-17876 WILL RESULT IN [???] AND [INDEX ERROR] AT TIME [INT OVERFLOW ERROR]
WARNING. HIGH LEVELS OF NON COMPLASIANCE WITH STANDARD LEVEL OF WRITING ERRORS. THE PUNISHMENT OF THIS IS [unknown] AND [index lost] AT TIME [no time context level]
Likely cause of error log naug8 was due to high levels of non complaisance with energy costly numero syntax error. this result in result in result in result in result.

I’ve been reading TS Elliot’s Book of Practical Cats to my son’s kindergarten class and they love it. The drama is really fun, and they understand far more of it than I would have expected.
Can you recommend some more exciting poems at a similar level?

What’s up guys. So like a lot of y’all I’ve had Loss of Life on repeat since it came out. One thing is for sure: it’s an album about maturing and adulthood. But every time I listen I hear more and more evidence that the album has a cohesive narrative, telling the story of a life and representing an endless cycle of birth and rebirth. So I’ve just been jotting down notes, it’s kind of a lot so feel free to skip around.
The basic idea is each song represents one stage/significant event in the protagonist’s life, starting with birth (Mother Nature) and ending with death (Loss of Life). We’ll get to Loss of Life Pt. 2 later.
Even if it’s a little abstract, I think there’s a clear linear narrative carried over between songs anchored by a shifting attitude towards the world. The album starts with youthful optimism, transitions to the pessimism of young adulthood, then ends with the gained wisdom of true maturity.
Let me break down each song, what they represent, and my reasoning:

• Mother Nature - Birth/Childhood
  • Obvious points: the first person you see when you’re born is, of course, your mother and birth is probably the most “natural” part of life, only tied with death
  • There’s a suburbia motif running throughout
    • “I put the groceries down on the front lawn/And think maybe the children just want recognition”
    • “Come take a walk with me down billionaire's row”
  • Fairytale/dream motif
    • “To open castle gates and let me go inside” etc
    • Fairytales evoke the vibe of a bedtime story while also representing the idea that being a child is sort of like being in a dream. And dreams have to end, that’s a recurring theme of the album: “Before the fantasy is cast into the fire”
  • The music video with the animated characters is reminiscent of saturday morning cartoons
• Dancing in Babylon - Teenage Years/Young Love
  • This might be subjective, but the 80s powerpop vibes give it a sort of youthful energy
  • Less subjective: it is at the very least definitely about love
  • It’s also about vice, as Babylon symbolizes evil in Christianity
  • Overall it evokes a vibe of youthful rebellion, being young and in love
• People in the Streets - Young Adult/Growing Self-Aware
  • This song is about self-reflection and discovering your place in the world. In the last song, the “real heads” were “out on the street… trying to keep it low,” and there wasn’t much regard given to them. Now, our narrator is reflecting on his relation to those people
    • “when you're living the dream/And your ears are bad/The people in the streets aren't part of the fun”
    • He’s “starting to doubt where [he] once stood”
  • Whether the people in the streets are struggling financially (“going over receipts with a magnifier”) or they’re protestors fighting for a better world (the chants at the end), our narrator feels he’s separate from them
    • Overall this song has a lot of anxiety about the current state of the world: “someone complained that the fire was out/So they shut off the rain and let the flames return”
  • He’s not even sure if he can trust his own intuitions: “The inside's still glowing/Telling the heart what it wants to heaBut what if it's only lies/Twisted apart by fear?”
• Bubblegum Dog - Adulthood/Anxiety
  • I’ve always thought this song was about anxiety. The “bubblegum dog” sounds like a fantasy creature, much like how a lot of anxieties are just made up in your head. But running from them makes them very real.
    • Reminiscent of the fairytale theme from Mother Nature, indicating even if he’s older he still hasn’t fully matured/ woken up from the dream
  • His unrest carries over from People in the Streets, specifically his anxiety about the state of the world
    • “I saw tenement homes built upon a fault line”
    • He hates this earthly world, he hates this bubblegum world
  • In the end he gives into his anxiety: he’ll “hide until it’s gone”
    • He’s embracing the bubblegum dog lifestyle: he’ll “tinkle on the lawn”
• Nothing to Declare - Depression/Divorce?
  • He’s depressed, man. He’s got nothing to declare, nothing to say about the world anymore, he’s given up. He’s let himself be consumed by his anxiety and he’s still living in a dream rather then in reality
    • The world is his “Spanish castle in the sky,” a French phrase for something impossible or unachievable
    • A dream might seem like a good vibe, but even though he sees the world as his “Fine de Claire” (oyster), he “can tell the pearl’s there/and still there’s nothing [he] can find”
  • “Until I wake up like a baby in the womb”
    • Reincarnation, another recurring theme
  • I include the possibility of this song being about divorce or breaking up with a lover because there’s a lot of lyrical evidence for it. It doesn’t fit as neatly in the narrative since he’s gonna have a kid in two songs, but he could remarry. Perhaps he’s still dating/married the girl from Dancing in Babylon? But overall I also think it shows how this character is disconnected from the world and it’s causing him to lose people around him
    • Think about it: he’s a drunkard who stumbles home to a person with bags under their eyes. He’s got nothing to say to them. They’ve got documents and something to decide. If they let him go, he’ll fall far and wonder who they’ve become.
• Nothing Changes - Breaking Free/Maturity
  • This song starts low but ends high, musically and lyrically. The title has a bit of a double meaning: the idea that nothing changes can sound both depressing and hopeful.
    • At first he still sounds depressed: he “wishes all the stars could save” him.
    • But the final lines are triumphant: thrust the dagger into the night and throw aside your Sisypheun boulder! Living may just be flailing but it’s a valiant struggle!
  • He’s broken free of the dream of childhood and the illusions of his adult anxieties and has learned to take life as it is. Nothing changes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Reincarnation theme: nothing changes, and the gods know it
• Phradie’s Song - Parenthood
  • Andrew’s Daughter is named Phradie and he said in an interview it is a song for her
  • Lullaby vibes
  • “Did I dream before?/It felt like I couldn’t love anymore”
    • There’s that recurring motif of dreams/dreams ending
    • The dream of youth is over, and in this dream he deluded himself that he could never love again, but now having a kid has completely changed that perspective
  • “And I will sing for you/Every night if you want me to”
    • He’s found contentment in singing to his child every night
• I Wish I Was Joking - Getting Old
  • Paying six dollars for a coffee, municipal parking, and taking the kids to Disney on Ice: all the “joys” of getting old
  • Reflecting on youth
    • “Here’s the thing about drugs…” perhaps remembering his days of vice dancing in Babylon
    • Now he’s “kinda into being home”
  • “Nobody calls me the gangster of love”
    • Referencing the classic Steve Miller song to get at the idea he isn’t as hip as he once was
• Loss of Life - Death?
  • Nothing prepares you for loss of life, simple as.
  • BUT: “it’s neither created or destroyed.” Now that he's accepted nothing changes, he's at peace with dying. He knows the end of one life is just the start of another. It hits both the reincarnation theme and the maturity theme
  • It parallels how when the dream of his youth ended, the life of his child started. I saw someone say they interpreted this song as losing the life you had before you had a child, which you might call a ‘good’ loss of life. I think that's a totally valid reading, and if you read it that way you could interpret LoL pt 2 and the rest of the album as representing the life of the narrator's child. Still an endless cycle of birth and rebirth.
• Loss of Life (pt 2) - Reincarnation/Womb/Baby?
  • Lot of ways you could interpret this one, which is why I left it for the end. You could do a whole deep dive on the poem, but a surface level read is just the existential poem with the ambient, spacey music makes it sound like you’re one with the cosmos, waiting to be reborn.
  • I also think the recurring melody sounds like something you’d hear from a child’s mobile. So there’s this sort of baby vibe with distant adult voices speaking in poems you can’t understand, or if you want to go really crazy, it’s a sort of in-the-womb ambience. Is that going too crazy?
  • All-in-all I just think going from this to Mother Nature gives an “entering into the world” type of vibe

Now, before I close I’d like to throw out there that there are a lot of cracks in this interpretation. It’s a pretty literal reading, there are recurring themes I’ve skipped over, and some points rely on flimsy evidence. But the purpose of this post is not to say it’s the only possible reading or that the album is some sort of puzzle MGMT wanted us to solve, rather it’s a vibe that I keep picking up on that I think may constitute just a small part of what the guys were cookin’ up in the studio. And it’s also just an excuse to keep listening to the album.
So yeah I’d love to know what you guys think. Are you picking up the same vibe I am or do you think I’m totally off base?

There is a poem by Jean de la Ville de Mirmont (1886-1914) that begins:

La mer est infinie et mes rêves sont fous. La mer chante au soleil en battant les falaises Et mes rêves légers ne se sentent plus d'aise De danser sur la mer comme des oiseaux soûls.

When I read the third and fourth lines, I understand it to mean that they (the rêves) no longer feel content (ne se sentent plus d'aise) to dance on the sea like drunken birds.
But when I look at translations online, they say that the rêves are "overjoyed to dance" or "taste only the pleasure of dancing" on the sea.
Can someone please explain?

Fancy meeting you here on this fine spring day! Let's go back in time to a January in 19th century England where we last left off with our characters.
Chapter 27
“Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
We are but mortals, and must sing of man.”
Rosamond finds it providential that her sick brother is attended to by none other than Dr Lydgate. She thinks nearness will endear him to her. Mamma is stressing out and worrying. She is coaxed to eat and rest, too. Fred regains consciousness and is merely weak. Mamma's devotion leaves Rosamond alone with Lydgate. He is awkward with her. There is a tension though.
Rosamond plays piano and already imagines them married. She keeps that to herself, though. A lady never reveals her plans.
Rival suitor Ned Plymdale calls on the Vincys with a new publication. Lydgate interrupts them and scoffs at a picture of a woman in a wedding dress. Plymdale leaves the room to play whist, and Lydgate and Rosamond flirt.
A few days later, Lydgate is called to Lowick estate by one of James Chettam’s servants.
Chapter 28
“First Gent: All times are good to seek your wedded home
Bringing a mutual delight
Second Gent: Why, true.
The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and even death
Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
No life apart.”
The Casaubons return in January. Dorothea’s dressing room appears smaller. She feels so useless as a gentlewoman. A small painting of his aunt Julia feels more lifelike to her now that she's in her own unhappy marriage.
Celia and Mr Brooke visit and greet each other. Dorothea has a case full of cameos for her. Mr Brooke notices that Casaubon looks pale, and Dorothea worries about him.
Celia informs her sister that she is engaged to Sir Chettam. He is having the cottages built.
Extras
Tatting
Keepsake Annual
The 1829 edition with work by Percy and Mary Shelley.
Lady Blessington interviewed Lord Byron.
Leticia Elizabeth Landon was a poet. An example that was a sick diss track for back then!
That's it for this week. Ta-ta! I will be expected in the comments.

As Napalm
It felt frustrating in Chongqing. I was rather stuck in Hechuan. I got accustomed to lajiao (spice) there. I was a Midwesterner at the age of 22. I was raised in Illinois. I became a manic—a Ferris wheel on fire—I was hiding under a bed in a hotel. Bold like napalm. Sometimes I can never stop. Even when I was 18 in a ward arguing with staff. Always want to fight things. That’s why I refused the meds and went on a plane from America to China. I was going to be an English teacher. And like a light switch, the change and SSRIs turned me into a mess. It would be my first time experiencing psychosis. My biggest issue. I never imagined I would be stuck illegally in a country suffering a psychotic episode in my early twenties.
Transplanted as pollen. I was left with a backpack and a cellphone. With a downloaded app called WeChat. I had arrogantly quit a university job in a fit. Spent the past months full of energy and not sleeping and neglecting myself, including not eating, to work on a novel. Not considering myself normally religious, I had obsessed over occult ideas during that time. Spending nights reading Aleister Crowley—haven taken a rusty pocket knife to carve a pentagram on my chest for spiritual protection.
I did not have funds to fly home. My visa was connected to my previous job, which meant I had now made it void. I was an illegal resident now in China.
I used a nifty app called WeChat as a messaging app, it allows users to find people near them that are also looking for others. It was like a virtual pond. All kinds of people, including sex workers trying to make things happen.
It could with luck be used to find people looking for people in terms of other kinds of work. It was helpful on many occasions for finding gigs working at English training schools and also finding work as a private tutor for people.
WeChat also works as a digital wallet.
Mania makes me irritable. Enough to tell a boss to fuck off. Thoughts ricochet within me. Bumper cars collide.
Being stuck and angry sucks. I scrolled and scrolled on a Huawei phone.
Absolutely pissed off at this world.
Pissed at the times police wanted to take me away for being a mess.
Sometimes women get pissed. Scrolling through their phones. Angry at their cheating husbands. It really is not that hard to have flair—be a damn white oddity. Like moths to a porchlight. Particles of sand through hands. This is when I first started the habit of it…
I rather go by a rather empty name of Taishen… with further explanation needed but now is not convenient. But I assure it is interesting enough and has some importance.
Habits are various in nature in how they attach to and eat at marrow—like atom bombs flashing as rays evaporating DNA—sets in a way less than human as putting myself in the cage of bad things taken up—my time as a former heroin addict is left as stretch marks on me in various ways. The same goes for the first time I found myself making arrangements with middle aged married women while desperation of waves whiplashed me like sandpaper hands coming at me to leave me in a tiring state of abrasion.
I had spent a night snuck away into a hotel. Found someone on a business trip. Instead of registering I waited to sneak along into the hotel elevator amongst a group of others attending the hotel, as I had no card. I headed to a designated room number. Originally I was sitting in a park. Playing on WeChat and found someone in their mid-thirties. Pictures were exchanged and I said no. She brought up paying for the hotel if I arrived. I agreed and went along.
When I met I washed up after her and we used our phones to awkwardly translate what we would do.
Room service knocked. I found myself hidden under a bed as I was not registered to be there.
It seems unusual that it was around this time I had started working on a story of my life as a heroin addict when I got caught up in my worse manic episode ever experienced during my age of 22. Finished half that story before never going back to it after my manic episode had ended. Now I am here writing about it and wondering if the same can happen again in the process of this work.
It feels extremely cliché I would write a novel about struggles with heroin addiction. It has been done many times. It’s just lame of me.
I feel like my thoughts are bit off. I left the hotel the next morning with the little money I did have on a debit card. Turns out the woman was from Taiyuan. It is a city in the northern part of China in the province of Shanxi—coal country with the worst air pollution in China. She has a colleague in Taiyuan that takes courses at an English training center. I was able to contact this place in the morning via a shared contact on WeChat given to me by the stranger I met that night.
Before I knew it I was sending my information and documents in my backpack at an internet café in a fax—with the intent that the woman agreed to share my information to the training center as she shared my contact to its hiring manager. It would land me a job that day that would help me out of my situation. Things turned not quite out as I expected though. I was shifted like a ball to somebody else to contact for a training center geared to teaching children.
I took what I had and ran off to a train station after taking the public transit. Unfortunately I was shit for money and could not afford a high speed rail pass. The slow train would take thirty-two hours to get to my destination. I would have taken a room with a bed but all I could afford was a hard seat for the travel.
Things were getting better for me in the circumstance considering I had found someone willing to take me for work despite my visa situation.
The thirty-two hour train ride was horrendous in some ways, but mostly I was in excitement despite the circumstances. I’m always giddy when disappointed. I moved up and down the aisle of the train. I could not speak mandarin, but it did not stop me from trying to interact with everyone. I talked many ears off during the train ride. I went up and down the aisle trying to interact as a moth to porchlights—I could not stop even if I had wanted to. I found great enjoyment the times I did get to sit across a table from somebody my age heading to Taiyuan from Chongqing. They were a university student returning to their hometown. Another passenger who sat beside me was an elderly man with hard boiled eggs, he was eating one after another one. I highly enjoyed each and every conversation that I had. It was like my head was a lightbulb wanting June bugs to bang against it with the intensity of Roman candles shot at my mouth of nicotine tinged teeth.
“If you find someone in Shanxi it is practice to pay the family money before you can get married. You would also have to already own a home and a car,” told my new friend across in their seat from me—a university passenger friend named David.
“Not necessarily what I was looking for. When is the next stop for snacks?” When the train stops I am able to get out and to have a walk onto the platform to buy various goods from the vendors to take back with me to eat along the ride to Taiyuan.
I had all my important documents tucked in my bag. This included my health clearance and obviously I made no mention of my mental health diagnosis or history to the doctor who had to evaluate me. My diploma and TEFL certificate were tucked away securely. A TEFL is a certificate that stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, it qualifies me to teach English as a second language abroad—it had only took a few months of taking a course online that I had paid for to obtain.
It is easy to be happy when you can trick yourself as your own con artist. Mania can make you deceive yourself. One can be doused in napalm and still not fully recognize what is actually going on. Same goes the flicking of psychosis. Even when I have nothing I find myself in my radiating irritation the most qualified of things—the velocity of my rhythm sets me out of an orbit.
The pressure cooker keeps me moving like a propeller at times. I finally arrived at Taiyuan. I arrived at the station to be greeted by Ryan my manager and his assistant Jennifer. We had our hello and introduction and they helped me get to a taxi that would bring me to my new apartment. I finally had a residence again. Apparently they were desperate for a teacher. The last teacher was from New Mexico and apparently they pulled a midnight run—that is when a teacher in the middle of the night disappears onto a plane back home without any notification of it.
The apartment was okay. On the fourth floor with no elevator, so it was a bit of a climb up a dark stairwell not lit correctly.
My job was a training center that had a location near Yingze Park in the center of the city. I was to be paid in cash via envelopes. I would assist in teaching kindergarten all the way up to high school aged students there in private lessons paid by their parents. I would also be assigned by my company to various primary schools in the city. I would take public buses to various schools paid by the company I worked for to give English lessons as I bounced around to various classrooms and schools in the city. Often I would receive a phone call to avoid going to work that day if my boss got inside input that officials would be doing raids to check foreigners’ visas that day.
A taxi ride would always be a thrill. Caused me nerves at first, but I came to love the flying in dangerous ways along a busy road. I remember a driver beeping their horn away as they drove onto the sidewalk to pass people. They treated the pedestrians as if they were in the wrong. I came flying in front of a primary school at its front gates. I was going to start teaching a first grade classroom and a kindergarten classroom. The way schools are set up is with a wall around the entirety of the exterior of the school. There is a gate at the front where one or two security will be waiting to let people in and out of the complex of the school.
I walked in front of the gate to greet the security. It was my first time with an assignment at this school. The guard said they had never seen me before and wouldn’t let me in. Not a big nuisance while I called my boss who then called the school to sort out the situation.
I miss the classroom so much. I ended up teaching in China for five years at various training schools. After returning to Illinois, I still taught as a primary school teacher in a public school.
I often feel extremely ugly from inside to my outside, but something is attractive there. This does not come just in terms of flirting and relationships—mania makes me a genuine lightbulb that flickers in a way that encourages the insects to me—everyone looks like a June bug—this is what I have come to understand about life. But that ugly does kind of stay like rot in a cavity that leaves a bad taste in the mouth that smells foul—hoping nobody catches the smell near me—it must tie into my struggles with bulimia over the years.
The same goes for my years as a teacher—in relation to the whole lightbulb phenomenon—I’m positive it is tied to mania and hypomania. The younger students always were fixated on the information I was teaching to them. I kept over the years methods taught to me and self-taught that I found extremely effective with younger students when it comes to teaching.
Everything was physical in learning in terms of intensity and ambition. When teaching my first grade classroom I would create flashcards for the vocab we would work on and implement in creating new sentences with. We would chant these words together in a way that made me a clown while teaching. Students would yell out the word that I presented with intense enthusiasm. As I walked by students it was expected that while they yelled out the word they would also physically hit the card. Later I would also work on physical gestures and acting out of vocab words and they would follow the actions and phrases with me.
I would often eventually turn the class into two teams. When students got an answer right I would behave comically and full of energy—I would give them a high five and pretend they were so strong with it that it hurt my hand in the process with much exaggeration—the students always seemed to never get tired of this act.
One game I would play involved drawing two stick figures with happy faces on them. Each figure would represent one of the teams for the classroom. I would draw a hungry alligator under the figures. Their faces would also be comical in appearance and full of exaggerations. Each figure had a parachute placed over them and four strings attached. During the game the students would race to say the word correctly represented on the flashcard or the correct word for the gesture I was making. The team that was not the slowest would lose a string on the parachute. If a team lost all four strings they would fall to the alligator who would eat them. The students found it hilarious with my actions involved in it. I would also draw tears and a person praying to represent anticipation and worry of falling down each time they lost a string.
I had a tooth game too. I would draw too large faces for each team. The team that could answer the flashcards and gestures the quickest would have a tooth drawn in their mouth. The team with the most teeth would win and it would look rather funny as the mouth grew and grew with an abnormal and extreme amount of teeth.
I often did other physical and interactive games like having students run to the word I showed a card to or gestured—each word would be attached to a point in the classroom on a wall.
I know it sounds grandiose, but the parents always seemed to think I was great at my job.
The word vulnerable means so many things to me. That word is like the coal to form the generator that makes the guiding energy for the ethics I follow in my life—I hold very strongly to these values that have developed on how to live—I can express it more later but I greatly attach a kind of Christian value system to it, which makes sense considering I was raised in a Lutheran household and always went to church, Sunday school, and went to my courses and went through my confirmation—everyone is a bit of a mop—some pick up clean water and others dirty or a mix of it—waiting to find the people to drain them voluntarily or involuntarily. I was born vulnerable. I walk pigeon-toed and grew up tripping on my feet—I speak with a soft feminine voice. Bipolar disorder makes somebody vulnerable. There was much vulnerability in being eighteen and hospitalized involuntarily for my first manic episode—tied to a stretcher. I have almost a sense of us vs them—the vulnerable and those that harm the vulnerable—take advantage of the vulnerable—I feel this is a very much Christian in the idea of the unfortunate are more holy than the rest of the bunch—children are like that in terms of being born into a cruel existence—a cruel existence I felt at times in my life and so many do—making sure harm does not come to those in need gives the light of purpose to go bright inside like a Christmas tree in my brain—this light of happiness and warmth. I never expected I would fall in love for teaching due to the antidepressant effect provided. It would become my career for a decade. Some grow up wanting to be a teacher, I became one by accident, desperation, and being saved.
Sometimes I inflate on self-hate like a helium balloon that needs to be tied to a wrist. The vulnerability equation is imprinted on my brain.
In my early teens I started struggling with bulimia and image. I remember when my mother caught me in the act. I was not offered help but criticized. I was called a girl for my problems and threatened to be taken somewhere to be fixed of my confusion. I don’t identify as transgender. I identify as a man that struggles with bulimia and happens to have feminine qualities.
I attribute it to circumstances that happened to me—a justification for the pain at times—an attack on aspects of bisexuality.
After a long day of work I did what my young self often did. I went clubbing with friends. I feel like even if I hide aspects of myself such as being bisexual, people can spot it regardless. I’m extremely secretive about it and not comfortable displaying that vulnerable aspect of myself.
My friend from England went with me. He was about six years my senior. Big guy. Tall. The clubs name was Maoye.
I always enjoyed the free drinks available to foreigners—it was done to attract Chinese clients, as the idea was foreigners being there would attract people.
Amongst the hot and sweltering crowd a man grabbed ahold of me. I felt stuck. I was taken off guard. Pushed and cornered. While on me I managed to push him off. But it all serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of my life.
A nail was placed into my hand—a constant burn and reminder of that vulnerability.
Part 2
From self-hate I can also be so grandiose. I am like a Christmas tree that is lit up. Sparklers so pretty that you cannot let go of them, even if it burns your fingertips and hurts.
From heroin to sex, you can smother the pain. You drain the ocean to fill a void in these times. It ties to mania as well. That restlessness and irritability is extinguished by the paradox of throwing kerosene to everything burning. I’m so grandiose to hide my insecurities, I mistake my misfortune as a mark of something ugly virtuous—the neon of vulnerability pulsating like a star within me. Swelling on a pain.
Bad habits. I want you to judge me and tell me what’s wrong with me. Give me a verdict.
Stress a trigger for mania, and I was stressed from the incident I had experienced at the club. I bloated like a tick to distract from locusts of thoughts that could not shut up with their commotion.
I had been sleeping around more than before. My brain was Christmas tree lights. I accelerated on a generator—I made a mixed episode worse.
Tease a disaster when you are heightened like a blimp. Full of hydrogen. Hoping to burn up ad rain down like napalm.
When the pretty candles on the Christmas tree are left untouched—not looked at like a kettle on burner that has been forgotten—the dry neglected tree will into a house fire.
I’ve had four attempts in my life so far.
When I attempt I don’t cry for help. I feel too vulnerable. I’m afraid.
Hate police and wards.
Downing pills.
My past failed attempts made me aware of everything done wrong before. The sleeping pills alone might not do what I was looking for at that time. I bought an electrical cable. This way if it failed I would still be unconscious and choked out by the cord—fail safe plan to end my life.
The words coming out of my mouth slowed down. I started getting second thoughts. Stuck my face towards the toilet bowl while on my knees. Sticking my fingers down my throat. Leaving blood vessels bursting in my eyes.
Went stumbling outside and waved a taxi down and asked to be taken to the local hospital.
Never expected finding myself checked into a psych ward in a foreign country.
Nietzsche has a quote in reference to chaos in life and how it is needed to create a star—this reference holds so much value to me. Sometimes stars hit together just right to create fate out of the worst of things. The ward lead me to meet the woman made of paper. She would one day become my wife. I would have two daughters with her. Forge together as soldiers to face the obstacles in life. Someone who would save my life during a future attempt when I was found unconscious from an overdose. The smartest and toughest woman I have ever known. Someone to build trenches with.
I liked it when she stuck that needle in me for an IV. It must correlate to being a heroin addict. The pushing of something in my vein correlates to happiness and purity.
The woman made out of paper was my nurse in the ward I was stuck in. What attracted her to the mess that is me I will never understand fully.
The woman made out of paper is named Lilu. She was one year older than me and one of my nurses at that ward in Taiyuan. She was from Zhengzhou—a city in the province of Henan that is based in the center of China. I am sure as the reader it would be nice to know why I call her the woman made of paper.
She struggled with her own demons. She also deserves much praise for her resilience and brains. When she was born she was raised by a family that adopted her and often neglected and abused her growing up. Her biological family is distant from her, even though she has an identical twin—they felt too poor to take care of her and made the choice that they needed to be less of one child as she also has an older sister—her twin got to stay with that family but she was given up and adopted. I am sure this must bother her even if she never will talk about it to anyone in her life—as she is one to refuse ever discussing emotions and feelings, as this is not her personality type—she is very much a fighter. I think most would struggle with wondering why they were the one let go of—it also must hurt her knowing that the family would have a son and keep him.
Despite all these circumstances, she graduated top of her class of four thousand students—Chinese high schools can be quite large serving a large region—they often serve as boarding schools. She was a smart and hardworking student. Circumstances never made her stop trying to be the best and moving forward and she never made excuses for herself. In university she also did well and got accepted at the most studious and hard to obtain nursing position at the number one hospital in Shanxi.
I have already ranted and gone on about my affection and feelings tied to heroin. Drinking of entire oceans to fill voids.
Paper is a void. It asks for calligraphy to be written on it to make braille. This way when fingers run over skin, it tells worth—the reason for troubles—it forms connection through those words of declaration—the whining for why things are the way they are—the filling of a void like a heroin addict needing a cure—two papers come together to write upon one another—as a paper I am her typo—I stand as a falling mess with nerves like tripwire, I keep failing and losing my composer, while she stands stronger as a declaration that has been written on—when I was chased I listened to her and joined as one. I wish and intend to always serve the woman made out of paper who has saved my life and has always been there for me, being so strong despite circumstances—amongst the wind of turmoil in life I follow along her path.
It was love at first sight for her but not for me. I had no interest in dating her at the time. I worked across the street of that hospital in an office building for a training center as a part time job. I would teach adults English who paid for private lessons near to Yingze park in the center of Taiyuan. She signed up for classes for me to teach her and brought me food on almost every other day that she had prepared. Eventually we found ourselves coupled fully.
In a pit. I get to burn as paper amongst another’s paper. Eternally. With a life that will keep reoccurring.
Part 3 Liu
A woman like Chang’e lived on a moon. Far away.
You can refer to me as Liu.
At the age of 19 I was diagnosed with a severe nerve pain condition. It is called trigeminal neuralgia but you can call it TN for ease.
I was frustrated. I had completed a degree in international finances from Chongqing University of Business and Technology. The boom of the economy was not the same. There was an urge to “lay flat”—to not try as a form of opposition to everything going on in a waning economy in China.
All are elephants chained for an audience. People love to peek and stare as though they are glass doors without hinges—to be made feel useless.
I developed TN at the age of 19, and was now 22. It came as an arrow, and quite literally to the face. It’s a rare nerve pain disorder often considered one of the most painful conditions known.
The illness involves intense nerve pain throughout the left side of my face. It felt like someone was trying to pull all of the teeth on the left side of my face without anesthesia. The pain can leave me falling to the floor unable to speak or move while screaming profanities while choked by pain. A feeling of a knife to my face over and over again. It leaves me in absolute shock. Like Roman candles to the face. An absolute hindrance. The anticipation of not knowing when it will happen again is a nightmare at times.
The disease is often called the suicide disease, apparently up to 26% try to take their lives. In a state of panic during one of the nerve attacks I began swallowing any pill near to me. I went to the hospital to have my stomach pumped when I was found comatose by my mother.
I want to be Chang’e and on the moon and away from a world I have had enough of.
Gossip spread around the workplace that I attempted suicide over an affair with a married man. There was too much guilt to return to the workplace. COVID did have an impact to the economy. I still remember my hometown having dirt and trees piled onto the exits and entrances to the city keep people in their places.
The work I did find felt beneath me. China has what is called the great firewall that keeps something in and out of the country’s networks. A VPN was necessary to access American TikTok as it was used as opposed to the Chinese version.
Feels humiliating the nature of the outcome for me—I gave up in many ways like so many Chinese youth. For work I would go to a local office building. Amongst a long hall would be a room for live stream performers. I would entertain with watchers while trying to obtain virtual gifts for actual money. I despised it—sometimes the conversation could be funny or interesting but it felt hollow.
I would paint flowers on my face and wear hanfu clothing while doing ASMR.
I had a mind of sparklers burning until it burnt and stung like wax—like I had the option to stop and cry and those tears stuck as wax and burnt or I soldiered on and grew accustomed to the pain. I was an elephant chained. The audience watched and interacted with me on the live. I was a chained elephant when it was found out about my previous attempt and when the rumors spread.
Too many thorns in life. Nails hitting at the wrong points like an equation for something terrible to eventually happen.
My favorite dish was Henan noodles. I often cooked it with my mom. It provides great memories of childhood. I hadn’t talked to my mother as much as before. She moved to a job in Taiyuan.
Sometimes I would go up to visit her. But it was harder as she worked more and more hours. Sometimes voids build even when going through extreme nerve pain. And with trigeminal neuralgia, the pain was so intense that I would freeze and scream in pain. It cannot always be hid. It made me an elephant tethered.
Life can be like a pressure like no other. Too much stress. Makes one feel irritable with a mouth like a sprinkler of napalm when someone is too close. Life feels like a lit fire cracker held—in the end it would tear my hand up. Things kept building while the other side of my face began to hurt too recently. This was rare and not so common. My eyesight was becoming blurry too and it seemed I might have multiple sclerosis as the pain was on both side, it was not common for my age, and the blurry eyesight. An appointment was scheduled and I felt terrified to know what was going on and wondered if it was best to not even know my health.
I walked out of the studio and had a cigarette. My boss came out and joined to talk. He was concerned about view count and wanted me to do things to increase it that made me feel uncomfortable. He made a few comments I found incentive.
The boss sure liked to criticize and apply pressure. He was not impressed with my work and thought I could do something different. In China an application is used called WeChat. This application has many uses. People can display and share moments like a Facebook wall, message each other, send money, video chat, and even has a feature to find people near to you who are also looking for people near to them. I was to attract people onto dates. The idea was they would be lured in and the men would go to a set destination to a planned tea house that served snacks. When the men arrived (they had no knowledge of the setup) the bill would be at an absurd rate and if the men refused to pay larger men would use their size to force them to pay up.
I was not sure at the time yet if I wanted the job. Being worried about ethics and safety. It was something I would have to think about.
My medical expenses were growing and I knew the nerve disease could be expensive to treat with surgery. All I had was thoughts while looking at the moon.
Part 4 Taishen
My former roommate in the ward I shared a room with had paranoid schizophrenia. I was stuck in the same place due to mania, and just had gotten my diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
I was so pissed being stuck there and felt I had no business being there. I found my diagnosis to be an insult to me. I was only 18 at the time—taken in on a stretcher. Made me feel very vulnerable and irritated.
My roommate was having delusions related to Christianity and could not stop waking me up in the middle of the night to ask and talk about Jesus. Left me beyond frustrated.
He was drifting from his wife and would go on and on about intending to leave her. Felt he was spied and plotted against by her. So we were both frustrated with being there.
The toilets were special. They would flush what needed to be flushed but not certain things like pills—it helped to keep people from hiding they were not taking their medications.
He had tried to flush his wedding ring down the toilet but he did not realized it didn’t flush. I went to use the restroom later and saw the ring. I told him. He took it out. He found it to be a sign form God that he is to stay with his wife, and there was immense happiness in his eyes.
Part 5 Liu
I’m a missile from Zhengzhou
Where my face is printed with flowers
Left university with hope
A blimp
To be ripped
Abrasion and termites
Eat me whole until I undo
Caught to the wires around me
Laying flat
Hoping for something new.
My name is Michelle. I had been at the local foreigner bar. I was raided in Zhengzhou. I lost my job recently. I’m 22 and wanted to work in business, but it will not do. Lost
Now I was working at a TikTok farm. I’m a busy ant.
I can’t remember much. My anti-convulsion meds make my mind feel muddy. I spend nights playing with my tarot cards wondering what I got to do to get to a place better.
Driving me crazy taking meds because my face started to hurt me. Feels like a bolt to my face—absolute torture!—suicide disease—that is what the doctors told me.
So I had an attempt and all my coworkers thought I had an affair.
All the gossip was like blitzkrieg so I ran away—I quit. And I need to make money because I’m sick and don’t want the nerve pain. Hoping surgery can save me. So I found myself working making money on live streams doing ASMR. I put on beautiful hanfu and paint flowers on my face. I’m waiting for gifts. But my boss hates me. Maybe because I don’t fit the picture. It’s not in my character to lay flat.
I speak English fluently. So my boss thinks I’m perfect for something new. I go on WeChat waiting for strangers to go on the social app looking for affairs. Foreigners that are easy to pull likes moths to lights. I flirt with them. Ask them to me in the middle of the night. We go to predestined positions. Guys thinking they are getting something that night. A couple larger men come to force the unexpected men to pay an astronomical bill that is not just for the snacks served.
This became my routine. But onetime it really bad. A Canadian I met in the street did not act right. He appeared to be bouncing and deranged. Like he was on some kind of upper. Offered me white powder. My sensors went off. I’m a missile. I know when something is off. Ready to do what I have to. He came close. I shoved him. I was near the location for the setup. My colleagues heard the commotion. Hands went. The crazed Canadian fell to the ground and never woke up again. Not knowing what to do. I went off like a missile and ran. The fear…
Part 6
I thought of it as I got lost. I’m a butterfly from Zhengzhou. From the center of Henan in China. I float off. Cause I’m stuck. No symmetry in my fate. Came under the ground as a Cicada. Went looking for something great but I’m not far. Just stuck, like a sun that won’t rise up. Call me Liu.
I developed the suicide disease when I was 19. It leaves my facing in tremendous pain on the left side. Makes me fall down and want to die. 26% will commit suicide. I often painted flowers on the side to grant some beauty to what happens to me. This disease caused all my teeth, gums, and entire left side to turn to intense electrical stabbing pain. There would be no warning before an attack. Paranoia of not knowing when the next one will come.
Had a decent job that seemed to be fit and good for me. The attacks brought me to my knees and made me eat carpet. Brought me to a frantic spell that caused me to overdose. Rumors spread at work that it was due to shame I had for having an affair with a married man.
I left the career devastated. I was shamed out of it.
I had temporarily found myself stranded into a career on a TikTok farm in Zhengzhou performing ASMR.
I was transplanted to a new career after a horrible incident. I had ran off to Guangzhou to where my cousin lives.
I want symmetry in my life. There is none. Just instability and pain.
Do you believe in the transplantation of thoughts? I do.
Do you believe in the transplanting of thoughts? I do. Learned about it before in a book. My friend beside me nodded after having taken their fentanyl based medicine earlier. Tiring doing odd jobs to pull off getting ahold of things.
I walked by and entered my workplace. I walked into the studio that was based in Guangzhou. I was handed my flyers. I headed to the street and began passing them out to advertise for a local KTV with women wearing little to no clothing on them.
A man walked by on the sidewalk. Some man looked like someone I must know before. Ever ad that feeling? But I could not know for sure or remember exactly. I awkwardly stared him up and down.
The man I had a hard time recognizing started to feel all too familiar. It was like I could read his thoughts. I have a projector head. Sometimes I can see everything. I feel it like rays of the sun on my skin—so natural and calling. Like Chang’e on the moon so far away looking down on a lover she misses—this man was sending radio signal signals from his marrow. A special type of attraction. Need attention like the world has been cruel to me. A world that has abandoned me.
The books were right that I had been reading. He must of noticing my odd staring. He took a flyer from me. Stumbled a bit while trying to understand what was going on. I pointed at the establishment I worked and told him he should visit. He gave a smile before departing it. I’m sure heaven can talk—gave orders to lift the anchors to provide transportation to a new fate.
It was exciting to know I might get to meet him, but I had concerns. In the evening I would work within the KTV. Depending on the occasion I would sometimes get to dress in hanfu, which I enjoyed. I sometimes search for distraction as there is something wrong with the way my thoughts transfer. When you live a life under threats and violence—feelings of being trapped in life—you naturally see people with masks. They either pose a threat or are safe and you must view them in black and white. There is no time to see things in grey—too much danger in doing that. I must have a negative perspective on the world around me like a cocoon to stay safe. Like a butterfly I go to faces to see if they bite or have pollen. I believe the man today had pollen. I truly can read minds.
Part 7
Black and white thinking originates like an atom bomb. It tears a mind into a black hole of horrible events. Leaves craters like hole as cheese in the brain—provides the surface to create something that absorbs like a sponge. Pain that radiates through to create the velocity of irritated atomic steam engine that can send signals out. It burns. Cheese head with holes right through like a particle accelerator went right through. Fox holes in the brain when it feels in danger. A life of a perpetual civil war. It is painful.
Such thinking with holes causes one to be prone to have memories fall through black holes and be forgotten. Never can be found. Blanks.
The man that thoughts transpired to earlier in the day went by the name of Muchen. It was like seppuku in attraction. Fusion. We met at the designated room he had gotten with his friends to rent out to have there to host. Drinks are bought as a form of payment. Transplanting of thoughts wears the brain like sandpaper waves of abrasion.
I don't trust you as the reader. You been holding for a long time And I feel attachment with you that makes me very unsafe. I don’t trust you anymore. I rather you stop putting eyes on me. It makes me run off very fast. I’m uncomfortable. The most benign things come across as dangerous to me. And I want you to step away.
Part 8
I like this man I met. He makes me whole. He is the light for everything dark around me. My boss made me feel what I never felt before. He is so nice! Not like the other guys who talk with words that split my insides. I can do the same. Like a cycle hate goes around in love.
He get so lonely at night. But I have the right company.
I’m feeling so nice
Everything just so happy
Tapping away on my phone
Writing poetry
Because my heart grows
Swell like a balloon
Don’t you want to pop it?
Simmer
Like acne to pop.
I kept writing poetry about my feelings of this man. I could not get him out of my head. The strength of transplanted thoughts. I keep going forever. Like a phony I feel. My boss was the man I transplanted thoughts with. He worked at a local host club. For where women and gay men could go and pay drinks for male hosts to sit with them and keep them feeling loved and entertained. I fused to him like atoms in the sun. He was a host at this club. I would host at my location and meet him. We were each other’s. Eating ourselves together.
to be continued..