Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

realized I should leave behind some sort of record before my memories evaporated. I feared that otherwise it would be like waking from a dream, when the inventory of what had been bought and sold—and at what price—would be forever lost. It’s like a series of roadside warning signs. The one behind me says: DON’T BELIEVE THE FANTASY. The one ahead of me says: WIELD THE AX OF CRUELTY. One day it dawned on me as if I were writing my own name for the first time: Cruelty and mercy are one and the same. Existence in this world relegates good and evil to the exact same status. Cruelty and evil are only natural, and together they are endowed with half the power and half the utility in this world. It seems I’m going to have to learn to be crueler if I’m to become the master of my own fate. Wielding the ax of cruelty against life, against myself, against others. It’s the rule of animal instinct, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics—and the axis of all four. And the comma that punctuated being twenty-two.