Walking Practice

Happiness is an incredibly rare and dangerous emotion. I'm someone who can't bear the fall from happiness to despair. I need a safety net to prepare for it since the higher I climb, the greater my injuries will be when I fall. That's what's so frightening. You never know when an iron mace will beat you out of your drunken happiness, casting you into hell. Am I incapable of fully enjoying even the smallest moments of happiness? As soon as I'm happy, I start having ominous thoughts of ruining that happiness.

The desire to become a member of society always overpowers the shame of being embraced by their system.

You, dear reader, earnestly play all your parts. The roles that were assigned to you without your consent are stuck to your body like a label: A label that you can’t remove before death. A label that can’t be removed even after death. The labels are invisible. They’re not really there, you know. They’ve melted into your flesh. They may have even made their home in a deeper, more abstract part of you. You won’t be able to fish them out even if you’re sliced up to the point that your bones are exposed and your guts are spilling out of your carcass.

Criteria are like glass. As long as they are respected and held without dropping them, they’ll stay solid and won’t break. I made myself complicit in humanity’s scam and adapted myself to the local ecosystem. That being said, I still don’t feel an intimate sense of belonging, but at least I don’t starve.

That’s why, when I was first learning to walk like a human, I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out the difference between men and women. In my eyes, all humans looked exactly the same. I thought that things that look alike move alike. To put it a different way, I wondered how it was even possible to divide something with so many visible variants into just two groups.

Can you understand the agony of hating humans so much but shoving that hatred aside to look just like one? The desire to become a member of society always overpowers the shame of being embraced by their system.

Since we’re already talking about this bullshit, why don’t I go on? When you want to be a woman, follow my advice. Speak in a thin, pretty voice. It has to be high-pitched. Try pushing it up into your nose. Cover your mouth when you laugh. Press down firmly and neatly when writing. Grow your hair to your shoulders. Curls are discouraged. Flap your wrists often. Show enthusiasm about grocery shopping and cooking. Beef up your cooking skills. Be unfailingly kind to others—especially men. Use your charm to get out of danger. Fall in love with a man. Eat very little. Even if you really want to finish it, leave some on your plate. Make sure you attain a slim figure and maintain it for your whole life. Play dumb, with no regard for your actual intelligence. Disparage your driving. Be chatty. Try your best to sincerely enjoy cleaning and doing laundry. Think of weakness as a virtue, and let your strength rot away. Wear makeup even in your dreams. Wear bright clothing. Conceal your sexual appetite, and take it to your grave. Become shyness incarnate. . . . There’s a fuckton more where that all comes from. I just couldn’t write it all down. To act the part of a woman, you’ve got to memorize a hefty script. Men should do the opposite. Just don’t act like a woman.

He’s a real fucking dog. Ah, forgive me. I’ve accidentally lumped dogs in with the likes of him. I would like to give a sincere apology to all the dogs of Earth. I can almost hear their complaints now. Bow wow! Woof woof! Bark as much as you like. Fight back against the humans who have used your good name as a curse.

Acting as a woman is far more intricate than acting as a man. Men can walk however they like, but a woman must walk like a woman.

Hurry up and use me... I won't forget to make you pay for it.

Every night, without exception, I am plagued by nightmares. No, not plagued by dreams but by my past. There is no way to break free from its grip. The past is a discarded thread of spider silk. If I am not careful, I could spend my whole life unknowingly wrapped up in it. But the more aware I become of the spider silk, the more tightly it will bind me. Then I see a vision of a spider charging down the thread straight at me. What I have just seen is a hallucination. But you have to know it is a hallucination in order to identify it as a hallucination. That’s why these visions are often more terrifying than reality.

Sometimes I have so much time it sickens me. Please take up my time! Not my body, but my time, time together with me. Steal as much as you like. Just a moment is fine too. It’s better if we meet in person. And even better than that if you don't get creeped out by my true form and back away. Please give me attention, please give me some love. Ah, I'm asking for too much, forgive me (a formality). But if I were to try and make friends, is there any other way than to split myself to two? But the other half of me is still me, so what's the use in that?

Do I exist in the same physical space as other people? Can I really seek joy and pleasure together with them? Why does the path become narrower the further I walk down it? Why is every place I go to a cliff? Self-pity pins me down like a boulder, and I struggle with it until I arrive at the subway station.

My burden decreases when I highlight the differences between me and them.

By eliminating the wretched screams from death, the line between human and object blurs. As long as I am certain that they can't feel their deaths bodily, I can pop as many as I like into my belly and digest them. My burden decreases when I highlight the differences between me and them. If they were the same as me, I couldn't eat them. And even if they were like me, if I were to believe that I am fundamentally on a different level, I could devour them without a second thought. The moment that belief breaks... I have trouble eating, or I throw up. I'm thinking of them: my meals, the humans I owe my life to, the life-forms typically made with two arms and two legs, the beings that are capable of throwing themselves out of windows in order to live.

You, dear reader, are an old hand at the gender-matching game. No doubt about it! From a tender age you have guessed the gender of countless humans whose bodies are covered by clothes, coming to conclusions based on the gender you believe corresponds to the shape of genitals you believe match up with the remaining exposed parts of their bodies, and you have lived your lives in certainty, believing the result of your deductions to be true. The problem is, however, that you do not acknowledge the mistakes you have made and will continue to make. No one knows that the game itself is a mistake.

Being a mess is totally different from knowing you're a mess.

Dammit, I broke my cardinal rule of biting off my partner’s head after they reach orgasm. I’m not even surprised. The pillowy arms currently wrapped around my shoulders and waist should be rolling around the bathroom floor. But I want to let their arms keep holding me. It’s too hard for me to butcher them anyway. If you want to criticize me, go ahead. This person and I are going to get married.

I’m sorry. Actually, that apology is a load of shit. It’s just a formality, like saying, “How are you?” I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you. I love you. I love you.

I set my bag on top of my thighs and take a look around. There are cameras here and cameras over there as well. There are old cameras and new cameras. Cameras to carry with you. Standing cameras, sitting cameras, cameras riding wheelchairs, yawning cameras, dozing cameras, sleeping cameras, chatting cameras, cracking-up cameras, angry cameras, passionate gaming cameras, music-listening cameras, begging cameras, ignoring cameras, swearing cameras . . . and even a camera on my insides filming me. The cameras don’t know who they are. When one camera shoots another, they too are shot. Cameras that are shot and are shooting each other. Surveilling and being surveilled. Being surveilled and surveilling.

I’ve invested close to ten years of my time figuring out what exactly their criteria are. My conclusion is that there are no such criteria.

The warm spring sunshine is strangling me. It seems that depression and lethargy have nothing to do with the weather. My condition can be ruined when it rains, because it rains, and when the skies are clear, because they’re clear. The weather is the weather. The weather isn’t doing anything wrong. The weather doesn’t concern itself with the likes of me.

When you want to be a woman, follow my advice. Speak in a thin, pretty voice. It has to be high-pitched. Try pushing it up into your nose. Cover your mouth when you laugh. Press down firmly and neatly when writing. Grow your hair to your shoulders. Curls are discouraged. Flap your wrists often. Show enthusiasm about grocery shopping and cooking. Beef up your cooking skills. Be unfailingly kind to others—especially men. Use your charm to get out of danger. Fall in love with a man. Eat very little. Even if you really want to finish it, leave some on your plate. Make sure you attain a slim figure and maintain it for your whole life. Play dumb, with no regard for your actual intelligence. Disparage your driving. Be chatty. Try your best to sincerely enjoy cleaning and doing laundry. Think of weakness as a virtue, and let your strength rot away. Wear makeup even in your dreams. Wear bright clothing. Conceal your sexual appetite, and take it to your grave. Become shyness incarnate. . . . There’s a fuckton more where that all comes from. I just couldn’t write it all down. To act the part of a woman, you’ve got to memorize a hefty script.