Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

Amid a recent crocodile frenzy, one radical theologian has predicted that no prophet will emerge from among the crocodiles, and that the gods will see to it that they are all cast into a pit of flames.

Which crocodile wants to kiss this crocodile in the pit of flames? ;)

Could it be that even Jesus himself was a crocodile watcher?

TRUE—BUT DON’T FEEL BAD, EVEN JESUS MADE A FEW MISTAKES!

In solitude the burly man, deeply engrossed in his stitches, wipes the sweat from his brow.

The burly man could represent queerness or gender expression that needs to be hidden away. The burly man is hiding in a coat, in a classroom of schoolgirls that he does not fit into. It can also show how much more difficult it is to grow up quee; the burly man has difficulty knitting with his hands.

The gentleman’s hands are folded across his stomach, and the lady has put her arm through his.

Showing a heterosexual couple in a sophisticated and public setting rather than a queer one

The burly man has grown thin. His coat now fits him loosely as he persists in knitting.

In this heterosexual setting, the burly man (who represents queerness) is growing thin and weak due to his attemptsto hide his true desires. However, he continues knitting (a crocodiles favorite hobby!). Could show how queerness will continue growing and working no matter how hidden/weak it gets.

revealing a white wool scarf in progress.

The white wool scarf is something visible; feels like the burly man is making his queerness known by wearing somethinv other than the coat he hides behind. It is also different from the "formal attire" the straight couple is wearing.

On the arena floor is the once burly man, now gaunt as a stick, who, in isolation, has knitted a fluffy white dog.

The Colosseum was an amphitheater used for audiences to watch fighting and violence. The once burly man is now gaunt, worn from knitting and hiding in his coat. He may be the subject about to be killed, being watched by the aristocratic couple in the theater seats. He may be being persecuted because he wore the white scarf; he was more open wih his queerness. However, the orchestra swells and his death is a statement and performance. He holds a white dog he created, something alive and impossible to hide. His queerness is now something loud. He also may be represented in the dog, all his queerness and desire put into this tangible living thing he directed all of his work into. This death is a spectacle, but he is no longer hiding.

I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other, reminding myself that there was a place for me out there in those moments of happiness, even if I was a different person at home, someone who went to bed shit-faced.

I knew there was no hope of running away or winning you back, but I still waited right where you left me.

If our love died young, I can't bear witness and it's been so long But if you ever think you got it wrong I'm right where you left me. You left me no choice but to stay here forever :(

The moment I experienced your tender side, I gave myself completely. That’s why it hurts so much that your cruel side took my love and never returned it.

Tell me, just this once, if you still think of me. And let me recklessly, tenderly, tell you one more time: I love you.

I was then shot 57 times

The ocean was depositing its frothy residue, filling my sanctum with wave after wave. To my horror, she insistently lived on inside of me.

I was shown the limits, and being confined within a set of walls tormented me and drained me of life, for the real me spanned multitudes, stretching far beyond the bounds of normality encircling ninety percent of the human race.

Secretly, though, I did sort of enjoy being a fucked-up mess. Apart from that, I didn’t have a whole lot going on.

how college summer feels

would wear the uniform of a prison convict for life, as that alone was permitted.

Prison uniform of heterosexuality and gender norms

In the eyes of the average person, I was a woman, but that vague semblance was an illusion, an easy category. In my own mind, I was a beast straight out of Greek mythology: a centaur. Like that beast, I’d willingly and madly fallen in love with a woman.

No matter who I was, no matter how anyone else saw me, no matter whether I knew who I was, somewhere on this planet there was someone who’d completely accept me, who’d been trying to figure me out all along, who genuinely loved me.

It was the final standoff between two beasts. The bare teeth of one tore into the flesh of the other in an expression of love commingled with hatred. Incapable of licking each other’s wounds, the two of us could only stand face-to-face and lament.

God I wished I was dead. This woman had to be part of some hellish eternal recurrence.

Wait reading this on the night The Subway by Chappell Roan drops they are so Subway coded. Til I don't look for you on the staircase Or wish you thought that we were still soulmates But I'm still counting down all of the days Til you're just another girl on the subway :(

As I stood on the edge, you took hold of my heart, and suddenly I realized that somewhere in this great big world, there really was a you that loved me.

Relying on only a lover’s intuition, the way a blind man reads a cluster of braille, you reached for me, but your touch was painful, and it broke me down a little more every time. You were like acid on my limestone, unaware of how hardened I was.

My world is one of tainted sustenance. I love my own kind—womankind. From the moment my consciousness of love was born, there was no hope of cure. And those four words—no hope of cure—encapsulate my state of suffering to this day. My condition is one that will keep me in shackles for life.

During those six short months when there were feelings between us, I became a monster. That monster caressed you, its paws held you, and its maw pressed against you in a kiss. With its monster desires, it lusted after your body. It took in the adoration and admiration in your eyes, which reflected nothing of the monster’s shadow. The experience, every bit of it, brutally scathed me.

I’m doomed to my fate . . . and I can’t resist the temptation to look back. The moment you call, I turn around.

ORPHEUS ALWAYS LOOKS BACK AT EURYDICE

You tore me open and exposed the man inside. That new me has no rightful place within humanity. I don’t think you’ve been cast out. You can still return to that place where I’m no longer allowed.

Butchfemme heartbreak </3

When the crocodile discovered the ad, it was so excited that it didn’t sleep for days.

The switch from Lazi seeing the ad to the crocodile seeing it. The crocodile is a seperate character from Lazi, and yet is also a part of Lazi; they are two very different parts of the same person. Also, Lazi's seperation from the crocodile shows her inability to accept and bring into harmony those two parts of herself.

We hope that each and every one of you will upgrade your current suit for a brand-new one.

Points out the performity, perhaps, of this corporate pride. Even if a space is queer does not mean they may always be accepting or that they'll feel comfortable breaking societal boundaries by being queer.

I was the one who’d gone by the name of Jarman. From the moment the crocodiles set foot in the room, I’d suspected that the guest of honor was none other than a corporate sponsor.

This is again showing the crocodile and Lazi as two seperate characters. The crocodile appreciated the opportunity to be around queer people, but Lazi is uncomfortable and immediately senses that the space is performative. The crocodile is comfortable in this queer space, but Lazi leaves as soon as she has to expose that she too is a crocodile.

“No, it’s not that I can’t take it. It’s just that my mind and my body are out of sync. . . .”

This may represenf Lazi's struggle with internalized homophobia and her fear of public representations of queerness that she relates to

“We come from a long line of deviants throughout history, all with the same final destination in the celestial order: death. But not every death is a life fully realized, nor is there any guarantee you’ll make it to the age of ninety.

How can you defy time and space? What does heaven hold for those who do? Hey, we’re the chosen ones!”

How can you defy the force of the universe that makes you queer? How does heaven compare to a life lived out and free? What could heaven hold for someone who has repfessed their sexuality their whole life?

“Meng Sheng, as long as there’s a woman for me to love, I’ll know I’m headed somewhere!”

And there, buried within, are bodily memories that are at war with your spiritual being, and those memories have to be executed at gunpoint one by one,

Executing the instilled ideas of gender and identity that you've had since birth feels a lot like death, but you have to let go of your memories of your old self in order to become aligned with your true spiritual self that grows beyond any gender or sexuality labels.

Meng Sheng is a fierce embodiment of queerness and is a big supporter as Lazi navigates accepting her own identity. However, he also tries to push her towards depravity; he relishes in his own depravity because he sees no point in meaning or significance, because that acceptance of nothingness is what death is. That may be how queerness feels, that you learn to let go of the labels and meanings society puts on everything because you don't fit in them.

That’s the abyss of death—and it’ll make you relish being nothing but a pile of tripe.”

It never looked at me unless it was wearing a human suit. Since it didn’t usually wear one in the basement, it faced the 8mm camera whenever it wanted to talk to me. In order to see its expression, I had to look through the viewfinder until I got tired of conversing from behind a screen, a partition that had been erected at the crocodile’s request.

And so I made up my mind that I would learn trust through a relationship in which lust had no part. First there had to be love and equality, so that the relationship would be built on pure trust.

‘Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness even worse.’

I buttoned her up in a snug-fitting coat and spread out layers of clothing to serve as makeshift blankets. I tucked her in. Her arms were wrapped around my neck as she said to me, You know, we might die together like this. . . .

So I burned myself. I burned me, and I burned her, and I burned the life I hated so much. I could see the glow of warmth from a nearby log cabin.

STOP IT THEY ARE SO BURNING HILL BY MITSKI And I've been a forest fire I am a foreat fire And I am the fire and I am the forest And I am the witness watching it I stand in the valley and watch it And you are not there at all.

I’m not your everything anymore, so even though I want to love you now, all I can do is give you the old me, the one you once loved.”

There are other, essential experiences that ought to come first, for one must be capable of being touched, of embodying the innocence that forms the basis of compassion . . . and of showing a heart that cries out in pain that genuine suffering deserves no less than the dignity to go on living.

Only much later, when I recalled the look in his eyes and the words he said, did I realize that no matter what his real motive was, he had tried to love me.

And the beard looks great on both of them

“Seriously, though, don’t die before me. If you did, I’d be even more bored than I already am. You have to go on living for me.”

Human beings are endowed with both yin and yang. When you become too dependent on one, the other becomes inhibited. You have to let both sides develop fully. That way, you’ll have the ability to love anyone, as long as you harness your yin and cultivate more yang when you need it. You give up too easily.

Because of her despair, I loved her. Because of her despair, I was shaken. Because of her despair, I was overwhelmed, and because of her despair, I left her. Her despair was her beauty.

The reason Xiao Fan accepted me was because I didn’t reject her. And because it wasn’t love.

“Crocodiles are not humans,” Anti-Croc said. “According to you, all crocodiles should be preemptively thrown in jail, just in case you have a child who might become a crocodile. What if you suddenly woke up one day to find that you’d turned into a crocodile, what would you do then?”

They're teaching the children pro-croc propaganda and turning them all into crocodiles D: crocodile agenda :(

“Effective today, we have designated this month as National Crocodile Month in order to give crocodiles nationwide an opportunity to turn themselves over to the registrars of the Bureau of Health and Sanitation or the National Police Agency, to whom crocodiles must provide their names, which will be made public.

Perhaps saying how pride month is simply a cover to make gay people feel supported while corporations and governments still continue to hide and convert queers. No matter how much flashy support the governmemt shows for us, they still want us dead.