Strange Beasts of China

by Yan Ge

Children are like that. They think life is as beautiful as a flower. But Lucia would grow up, and come to understand that sometimes living feels like chewing on wax. And so you let go. The more resilient life is, the more you want to destroy it, raze it to the ground, put on a show, all guns blazing, what joy.

‘It’s a funny thing, despair. Without it, we’d all die. But too much of it leads to chaos.

Every story is someone else’s myth. Life holds no pleasant surprises for us, only nasty shocks.

There is an ancient saying: birth is a process of returning, death is a process of longing.

Humans possess intellect, and claim the knowledge of the ages. They take neither sorrow nor joy from material gain or personal loss. Thus their existence is more difficult than necessary, as they strive too hard for cleverness, and push away from the heart. The fugitives fear capture, and the captured fear escape. They live out their days in uncertainty. What good fortune for the beasts, to lack intelligence; how cursed humans are, that they possess it.

That’s how authors are; the words we write are fleeting, but what goes unsaid is eternal as rock.