Hello fuji fam!
Hobbyist here - you guys are the best subreddit, I've learned so much from all of you 🤓This year I want to get back into videography, especially with some travel coming up (Nola and Japan in the fall). I have the X-T4 with 2 lenses - fuji 35mm f/2 and fuji 16-80 f/4. I recently picked up a ronin gimbal and I've been testing the waters by shooting some video in my area. I find myself handicapped with only being able shoot video, and vice versa if I go out for photography, I miss the steadiness that the ronin provides.
I don't really want to get another camera just for photo since that seems wasteful/defeats the purpose of having a hybrid shooter like the X-T4. I like the idea of having a smaller camera for shooting stills like the Ricoh GRiiii or a used fuji x100v(good luck finding one amirite), but am I falling to solutionism? Should I invest in a lens that has solid auto focus and IBIS so that the gimbal is obsolete?
To those that shoot both photo and video, do you have 2 separate cameras/setups that you bring with when traveling? Any tips on being able to do both without lugging around a ton of equipment?

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.
Taishen Part Continued..
I was stuck at my current work at Mao’ye. A mall in the central part of Taiyuan in Shanxi. Coal dust central China. Frequent dust storms leaving me having to wipe the window sills of dust piles collecting. Life felt dry as the air—numb. I never know what I want. Drifting like paper in a breeze.
23 and feeling empty. Left the previous English training center I working at teaching adults. Company started going bankrupt. Boss was an asshole. He was originally from Datong near to Inner Mongolia.
That boss ran the company horribly. Was a coward of a boss. He would watch the cameras and email complaints on my dress code and not talk to me in person. A coward.
When the company was nosediving I got sent an email in the middle of the day stating my job would be terminated by the end of the month. I worked in china as an American. In china most jobs are based on contracts between employees and employers. I was supposed to continue another seven months with my job. The contract was broken when they emailed me saying they could not keep me due to salary. Contracts can be broken due to performance but not due to finance issues. I had already work for them a year on another contract. The law in China states I was due to be paid a year and a half of salary. My boss was such a coward to not speak to me in person and email the letter. I marched in his office and got told to fuck myself. I talked to the labor board at the local government office. I was told was told that I that they would have to pay me a year and a half of salary for breaking my contract.
Those times were rather gray for me. Clouds were heavy like gnats flying around the face. My girlfriend at the time was a stern nurse. The girl made of paper. She stayed beside. My fortress. Put up for adoption by her family in Henan. Where her adopted mother would put her hands in scalding hot water for punishment and remind her of being an inconvenience. She marched into my boss’s office and created a storm. He refused to budge. A few days later when the labor office contacted him he was willing to keep me for the rest of my contract. The labor office said that because my job was offered back I could not be paid if I left my job, as it would be my choice at that point. Frustrating. My wife had her uncle’s boss contacted from Taiyuan to go into the office. She had some influence in the area. She threatened to look over various certificates to get the branch in trouble. My boss did not budge. I decided to just go ahead and leave this English training center for teaching adults. I went for a new company that paid more passed in the Moye mall on the other end of the city. Now I would be teaching children again like I used.
Is this all I am? A server?
It makes me think of a time right before I met the woman made of paper. Stern from her experiences. A fighter. I like fighters.
I met fighters before. Reminds me of a story. A story I hold deeply to my heart. There was a woman named Ming. I met her through surfing on WeChat nearby searching for people looking for others nearby. Older by a few years. Met and became acquainted over messages.
Christmas tree lights in my head
Perched to be exploited…
Balloon with the air let out
Hissing all the time… because it whines
The inferno in me wants me to burn
Because it feels right
Christmas trees lit are under pressure—they know if they dry up the whole building will be in flames
So you have to be festive when you decorate—and avant-garde with who you decorate with
Maximalist at heart with pleasure
Nomads tend to wander to find a better part of the steppe
With a phallus as a Swiss Army Knife,
Paddling in northern China building a trench
22 year old Midwesterner with psychosis looking for a frigate to save him from the deep end
Impulsivity a catalyst for losing everything
I don’t care if you’re married, if you have a tunnel you can help me in the trench
Two staged rocket—
Already psychotic
Be a Launchpad
So I can get even further from earth
Ripple through the galaxy like I got a mission—
Even if it’s delusional
Another N1
Get myself on disconnect in the vacuum
Even if I come down Iike napalm.
I met Ming because I needed her and she needed me-even if she was married. I was 23 and without security. MY first job that I forgot from my boss Ryan was insane at times. Working without a visa for a company was unbearable. I felt obligated to my boss at that time he promised he could solve my issue if I worked hard for him. And I did. He was a bit corrupt too and not the greatest. Always offering going to brothels with people to make deals happen, including trying with me too. I never went. I did work hard for him though. I wanted to escape my predicament and he knew all the right people to contact to fix my problems if I met my obligations. Obligations could mean being asked to go to another training center to work part time and gather their curriculum for my school.
It felt unstable not knowing when I could get arrested or taken away. Made Ming a perfect connection to come across. I needed a friend that brought stability. She was a radio broadcaster in the city. Extremely wealthy. She would take me on outings eating delicious cuisine in the city or among weekend trips to interesting places nearby. I consider her one of the greatest friends I had. Because of her it was getting to meet other connections at outings with friends at KTV and clubs in the city. Like rhizomes growing out of a tree. Sustainability. It led to more rhizomes of connections. Something I want to talk more about. But I need to move the clock a bit. To the start of this ramble.
I was working in Maoye. I was on a legal visa at this time. My colleagues were not legal. They were often Slavic. Russian, Ukraine, and other Slavic nations. We had an office in the building setup on a third floor of a large mal with various classrooms for the foreign teachers to teach in. They would generally have a Chinese teaching assistant to help them in the classrooms. I taught students from pre-k age to middle school there.
In the middle of the setup of the floor layout was a large open office. I would sit and plan lessons and grade amongst the Chinese staff and foreign teachers. One day I grep of plain clothed officers came into the facility. They were checking on teachers on the wrong visas. The Russian teachers and others often could not fluently speak English or qualify for the correct visas—they didn’t meet the right requirements for work visas and would be on other various kinds of visas. They stormed in and I remember my Russian friend hearing the commotion tore his shirt with his logo on it and threw it on the ground in a rush. He ran shirtless down a stair well nearby flinging the doors open. Fear, anger… got to fill their class schedule while they are all out hiding.
Final Taishen
I met Chang’e. Do you believe in the transplanting of thoughts? I do. Like pollen.
My thoughts can transplant and Change can do the same too.
Mania got me again. I wrote a poem when I was younger to express it.
Feeling bold and exacerbated
Maybe I am just high strung
Ricocheting off these walls like bumper cars
A sparkler burning hot and bright
Popping off like roman candles
I am not always calm, but I am high,
A kettle left on the burner and forgotten,
Watch me melt away into my ecstasy
Where I dance and scream all in one
I’ll hit peak when crisis comes.
I hadn’t been sleeping. I took a second English teaching job and was seeing attending to seeing different people besides Ming.
Ming was kind and always took me on nice dinner dates. I didn’t have to worry about expenses and felt secure.
I was back on my smartphone looking and fishing for people nearby. Chang’e came in as a breeze from Luoyang to meeting a relative in Taiyuan.
Chang’e was working for a boss in Taiyuan. She would go on the WeChat application looking for men nearby. Flirt to get them to meet her. Like moths in dark they get to the lights:
Useless as a glass door. You can peek through. Pigeon-toed. Drained an ocean to fill insecurities. Uncomfortable thoughts ricochet in me. Like an ambush. Giddy when disappointed. I build trenches amongst the tripwires of life. City feels like a tsunami. Manners like a bloated tick. Sipping the veins from any limb around me. As a stranger to a moth, a porch light pulling. Desolate in lost thoughts. Nights awake and bunkering in hotels. Soft in my voice, I hopscotch to hands—falling through like particles of sand. With enough friction to set off an atom bomb. To radiate right through me, and hollow my marrow. Amongst open nerves I can feel something, so I play with the pain. No matter how annoying.
As particles I transplanted through to her screen as we lay in our separate beds in the city. Mania makes me dumb. We flattered away. Fused as particles.
Her intent was for me to arrive at a designated location to drink and eat late into the night—11:00 p.m. With this given location I would be taken down like an elephant via poachers—that was the intent. At the location I was to be given an outrageous bill for the service and if I did not pay a group of big men would use their physical presence to get me to pay.
When I met her at the given location outside the door. I knew the tricks. I tested her. Asked if she would be willing to eat at another location.
She thought she would eat me and I thought I would eat her. My test was asking her to go to another place at the KTV nearby where I knew somebody that worked there—a karaoke location—the LED lights shining and me and her staring at the direction of them.
She hesitated and insisted on the location next to us. I said I had to go—before I left to contact if willing in the future to go to the KTV.
Where a perpetual hydrogen bomb would go off on our fused particles.

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.
Tisishen Part Continued..
I was stuck at my current work at Mao’ye. A mall in the central part of Taiyuan in Shanxi. Coal dust central China. Frequent dust storms leaving me having to wipe the window sills of dust piles collecting. Life felt dry as the air—numb. I never know what I want. Drifting like paper in a breeze.
23 and feeling empty. Left the previous English training center I working at teaching adults. Company started going bankrupt. Boss was an asshole. He was originally from Datong near to Inner Mongolia.
That boss ran the company horribly. Was a coward of a boss. He would watch the cameras and email complaints on my dress code and not talk to me in person. A coward.
When the company was nosediving I got sent an email in the middle of the day stating my job would be terminated by the end of the month. I worked in china as an American. In china most jobs are based on contracts between employees and employers. I was supposed to continue another seven months with my job. The contract was broken when they emailed me saying they could not keep me due to salary. Contracts can be broken due to performance but not due to finance issues. I had already work for them a year on another contract. The law in China states I was due to be paid a year and a half of salary. My boss was such a coward to not speak to me in person and email the letter. I marched in his office and got told to fuck myself. I talked to the labor board at the local government office. I was told was told that I that they would have to pay me a year and a half of salary for breaking my contract.
Those times were rather gray for me. Clouds were heavy like gnats flying around the face. My girlfriend at the time was a stern nurse. The girl made of paper. She stayed beside. My fortress. Put up for adoption by her family in Henan. Where her adopted mother would put her hands in scolding hot water for punishment. She marched into my boss’s office and created a storm. He refused to budge. A few days later when the labor office contacted him he was willing to keep me for the rest of my contract. The labor office said that because my job was offered back I could not be paid if I left my job, as it would be my choice at that point. Frustrating. My wife had her uncle’s boss contacted from Taiyuan to go into the office. She had some influence in the area. She threatened to look over various certificates to get the branch in trouble. My boss did not budge. I decided to just go ahead and leave this English training center for teaching adults. I went for a new company that paid more passed in the Moye mall on the other end of the city. Now I would be teaching children again like I used.
Is this all I am? A server?
It makes me think of a time right before I met the woman made of paper. Stern from her experiences. A fighter. I like fighters.
I met fighters before. Reminds me of a story. A story I hold deeply to my heart. There was a woman named Ming. I met her through surfing on WeChat nearby searching for people looking for others nearby. Older by a few years. Met and became acquainted over messages.
Christmas tree lights in my head
Perched to be exploited…
Balloon with the air let out
Hissing all the time… because it whines
The inferno in me wants me to burn
Because it feels right
Christmas trees lit are under pressure—they know if they dry up the whole building will be in flames
So you have to be festive when you decorate—and avant-garde with who you decorate with
Maximalist at heart with pleasure
Nomads tend to wander to find a better part of the steppe
With a phallus as a Swiss Army Knife,
Paddling in northern China building a trench
22 year old Midwesterner with psychosis looking for a frigate to save him from the deep end
Impulsivity a catalyst for losing everything
I don’t care if you’re married, if you have a tunnel you can help me in the trench
Two staged rocket—
Already psychotic
Be a Launchpad
So I can get even further from earth
Ripple through the galaxy like I got a mission—
Even if it’s delusional
Another N1
Get myself on disconnect in the vacuum
Even if I come down Iike napalm.
I met Ming because I needed her and she needed me-even if she was married. I was 23 and without security. MY first job that I forgot from my boss Ryan was insane at times. Working without a visa for a company was unbearable. I felt obligated to my boss at that time he promised he could solve my issue if I worked hard for him. And I did. He was a bit corrupt too and not the greatest. Always offering going to brothels with people to make deals happen, including trying with me too. I never went. I did work hard for him though. I wanted to escape my predicament and he knew all the right people to contact to fix my problems if I met my obligations. Obligations could mean being asked to go to another training center to work part time and gather their curriculum for my school.
It felt unstable not knowing when I could get arrested or taken away. Made Ming a perfect connection to come across. I needed a friend that brought stability. She was a radio broadcaster in the city. Extremely wealthy. She would take me on outings eating delicious cuisine in the city or among weekend trips to interesting places nearby. I consider her one of the greatest friends I had. Because of her it was getting to meet other connections at outings with friends at KTV and clubs in the city. Like rhizomes growing out of a tree. Sustainability. It led to more rhizomes of connections. Something I want to talk more about. But I need to move the clock a bit. To the start of this ramble.
I was working in Maoye. I was on a legal visa at this time. My colleagues were not legal. They were often Slavic. Russian, Ukraine, and other Slavic nations. We had an office in the building setup on a third floor of a large mal with various classrooms for the foreign teachers to teach in. They would generally have a Chinese teaching assistant to help them in the classrooms. I taught students from pre-k age to middle school there.
In the middle of the setup of the floor layout was a large open office. I would sit and plan lessons and grade amongst the Chinese staff and foreign teachers. One day I grep of plain clothed officers came into the facility. They were checking on teachers on the wrong visas. The Russian teachers and others often could not fluently speak English or qualify for the correct visas—they didn’t meet the right requirements for work visas and would be on other various kinds of visas. They stormed in and I remember my Russian friend hearing the commotion tore his shirt with his logo on it and threw it on the ground in a rush. He ran shirtless down a stair well nearby flinging the doors open. Fear, anger… got to fill their class schedule while they are all out hiding.
Final Taishen
I met Chang’e. Do you believe in the transplanting of thoughts? I do. Like pollen.
My thoughts can transplant and Change can do the same too.
Mania got me again. I wrote a poem when I was younger to express it.
Feeling bold and exacerbated
Maybe I am just high strung
Ricocheting off these walls like bumper cars
A sparkler burning hot and bright
Popping off like roman candles
I am not always calm, but I am high,
A kettle left on the burner and forgotten,
Watch me melt away into my ecstasy
Where I dance and scream all in one
I’ll hit peak when crisis comes.
I hadn’t been sleeping. I took a second English teaching job and was seeing attending to seeing different people besides Ming.
Ming was kind and always took me on nice dinner dates. I didn’t have to worry about expenses and felt secure.
I was back on my smartphone looking and fishing for people nearby. Chang’e came in as a breeze from Luoyang to meeting a relative in Taiyuan.
Chang’e was working for a boss in Taiyuan. She would go on the WeChat application looking for men nearby. Flirt to get them to meet her. Like moths in dark they get to the lights:
Useless as a glass door. You can peek through. Pigeon-toed. Drained an ocean to fill insecurities. Uncomfortable thoughts ricochet in me. Like an ambush. Giddy when disappointed. I build trenches amongst the tripwires of life. City feels like a tsunami. Manners like a bloated tick. Sipping the veins from any limb around me. As a stranger to a moth, a porch light pulling. Desolate in lost thoughts. Nights awake and bunkering in hotels. Soft in my voice, I hopscotch to hands—falling through like particles of sand. With enough friction to set off an atom bomb. To radiate right through me, and hollow my marrow. Amongst open nerves I can feel something, so I play with the pain. No matter how annoying.
As particles I transplanted through to her screen as we lay in our separate beds in the city. Mania makes me dumb. We flattered away. Fused as particles.
Her intent was for me to arrive at a designated location to drink and eat late into the night—11:00 p.m. With this given location I would be taken down like an elephant via poachers—that was the intent. At the location I was to be given an outrageous bill for the service and if I did not pay a group of big men would use their physical presence to get me to pay.
When I met her at the given location outside the door. I knew the tricks. I tested her. Asked if she would be willing to eat at another location.
She thought she would eat me and I thought I would eat her. My test was asking her to go to another place at the KTV nearby where I knew somebody that worked there—a karaoke location—the LED lights shining and me and her staring at the direction of them.
She hesitated and insisted on the location next to us. I said I had to go—before I left to contact if willing in the future to go to the KTV.
Where a perpetual hydrogen bomb would go off on our fused particles.

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.
Tisishen Part Continued..
I was stuck at my current work at Mao’ye. A mall in the central part of Taiyuan in Shanxi. Coal dust central China. Frequent dust storms leaving me having to wipe the window sills of dust piles collecting. Life felt dry as the air—numb. I never know what I want. Drifting like paper in a breeze.
23 and feeling empty. Left the previous English training center I working at teaching adults. Company started going bankrupt. Boss was an asshole. He was originally from Datong near to Inner Mongolia.
That boss ran the company horribly. Was a coward of a boss. He would watch the cameras and email complaints on my dress code and not talk to me in person. A coward.
When the company was nosediving I got sent an email in the middle of the day stating my job would be terminated by the end of the month. I worked in china as an American. In china most jobs are based on contracts between employees and employers. I was supposed to continue another seven months with my job. The contract was broken when they emailed me saying they could not keep me due to salary. Contracts can be broken due to performance but not due to finance issues. I had already work for them a year on another contract. The law in China states I was due to be paid a year and a half of salary. My boss was such a coward to not speak to me in person and email the letter. I marched in his office and got told to fuck myself. I talked to the labor board at the local government office. I was told was told that I that they would have to pay me a year and a half of salary for breaking my contract.
Those times were rather gray for me. Clouds were heavy like gnats flying around the face. My girlfriend at the time was a stern nurse. The girl made of paper. She stayed beside. My fortress. Put up for adoption by her family in Henan. Where her adopted mother would put her hands in scolding hot water for punishment. She marched into my boss’s office and created a storm. He refused to budge. A few days later when the labor office contacted him he was willing to keep me for the rest of my contract. The labor office said that because my job was offered back I could not be paid if I left my job, as it would be my choice at that point. Frustrating. My wife had her uncle’s boss contacted from Taiyuan to go into the office. She had some influence in the area. She threatened to look over various certificates to get the branch in trouble. My boss did not budge. I decided to just go ahead and leave this English training center for teaching adults. I went for a new company that paid more passed in the Moye mall on the other end of the city. Now I would be teaching children again like I used.
Is this all I am? A server?
It makes me think of a time right before I met the woman made of paper. Stern from her experiences. A fighter. I like fighters.
I met fighters before. Reminds me of a story. A story I hold deeply to my heart. There was a woman named Ming. I met her through surfing on WeChat nearby searching for people looking for others nearby. Older by a few years. Met and became acquainted over messages.
Christmas tree lights in my head
Perched to be exploited…
Balloon with the air let out
Hissing all the time… because it whines
The inferno in me wants me to burn
Because it feels right
Christmas trees lit are under pressure—they know if they dry up the whole building will be in flames
So you have to be festive when you decorate—and avant-garde with who you decorate with
Maximalist at heart with pleasure
Nomads tend to wander to find a better part of the steppe
With a phallus as a Swiss Army Knife,
Paddling in northern China building a trench
22 year old Midwesterner with psychosis looking for a frigate to save him from the deep end
Impulsivity a catalyst for losing everything
I don’t care if you’re married, if you have a tunnel you can help me in the trench
Two staged rocket—
Already psychotic
Be a Launchpad
So I can get even further from earth
Ripple through the galaxy like I got a mission—
Even if it’s delusional
Another N1
Get myself on disconnect in the vacuum
Even if I come down Iike napalm.
I met Ming because I needed her and she needed me-even if she was married. I was 23 and without security. MY first job that I forgot from my boss Ryan was insane at times. Working without a visa for a company was unbearable. I felt obligated to my boss at that time he promised he could solve my issue if I worked hard for him. And I did. He was a bit corrupt too and not the greatest. Always offering going to brothels with people to make deals happen, including trying with me too. I never went. I did work hard for him though. I wanted to escape my predicament and he knew all the right people to contact to fix my problems if I met my obligations. Obligations could mean being asked to go to another training center to work part time and gather their curriculum for my school.
It felt unstable not knowing when I could get arrested or taken away. Made Ming a perfect connection to come across. I needed a friend that brought stability. She was a radio broadcaster in the city. Extremely wealthy. She would take me on outings eating delicious cuisine in the city or among weekend trips to interesting places nearby. I consider her one of the greatest friends I had. Because of her it was getting to meet other connections at outings with friends at KTV and clubs in the city. Like rhizomes growing out of a tree. Sustainability. It led to more rhizomes of connections. Something I want to talk more about. But I need to move the clock a bit. To the start of this ramble.
I was working in Maoye. I was on a legal visa at this time. My colleagues were not legal. They were often Slavic. Russian, Ukraine, and other Slavic nations. We had an office in the building setup on a third floor of a large mal with various classrooms for the foreign teachers to teach in. They would generally have a Chinese teaching assistant to help them in the classrooms. I taught students from pre-k age to middle school there.
In the middle of the setup of the floor layout was a large open office. I would sit and plan lessons and grade amongst the Chinese staff and foreign teachers. One day I grep of plain clothed officers came into the facility. They were checking on teachers on the wrong visas. The Russian teachers and others often could not fluently speak English or qualify for the correct visas—they didn’t meet the right requirements for work visas and would be on other various kinds of visas. They stormed in and I remember my Russian friend hearing the commotion tore his shirt with his logo on it and threw it on the ground in a rush. He ran shirtless down a stair well nearby flinging the doors open. Fear, anger… got to fill their class schedule while they are all out hiding.
Final Taishen
I met Chang’e. Do you believe in the transplanting of thoughts? I do. Like pollen.
My thoughts can transplant and Change can do the same too.
Mania got me again. I wrote a poem when I was younger to express it.
Feeling bold and exacerbated
Maybe I am just high strung
Ricocheting off these walls like bumper cars
A sparkler burning hot and bright
Popping off like roman candles
I am not always calm, but I am high,
A kettle left on the burner and forgotten,
Watch me melt away into my ecstasy
Where I dance and scream all in one
I’ll hit peak when crisis comes.
I hadn’t been sleeping. I took a second English teaching job and was seeing attending to seeing different people besides Ming.
Ming was kind and always took me on nice dinner dates. I didn’t have to worry about expenses and felt secure.
I was back on my smartphone looking and fishing for people nearby. Chang’e came in as a breeze from Luoyang to meeting a relative in Taiyuan.
Chang’e was working for a boss in Taiyuan. She would go on the WeChat application looking for men nearby. Flirt to get them to meet her. Like moths in dark they get to the lights:
Useless as a glass door. You can peek through. Pigeon-toed. Drained an ocean to fill insecurities. Uncomfortable thoughts ricochet in me. Like an ambush. Giddy when disappointed. I build trenches amongst the tripwires of life. City feels like a tsunami. Manners like a bloated tick. Sipping the veins from any limb around me. As a stranger to a moth, a porch light pulling. Desolate in lost thoughts. Nights awake and bunkering in hotels. Soft in my voice, I hopscotch to hands—falling through like particles of sand. With enough friction to set off an atom bomb. To radiate right through me, and hollow my marrow. Amongst open nerves I can feel something, so I play with the pain. No matter how annoying.
As particles I transplanted through to her screen as we lay in our separate beds in the city. Mania makes me dumb. We flattered away. Fused as particles.
Her intent was for me to arrive at a designated location to drink and eat late into the night—11:00 p.m. With this given location I would be taken down like an elephant via poachers—that was the intent. At the location I was to be given an outrageous bill for the service and if I did not pay a group of big men would use their physical presence to get me to pay.
When I met her at the given location outside the door. I knew the tricks. I tested her. Asked if she would be willing to eat at another location.
She thought she would eat me and I thought I would eat her. My test was asking her to go to another place at the KTV nearby where I knew somebody that worked there—a karaoke location—the LED lights shining and me and her staring at the direction of them.
She hesitated and insisted on the location next to us. I said I had to go—before I left to contact if willing in the future to go to the KTV.
Where a perpetual hydrogen bomb would go off on our fused particles.

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.
Tisishen Part Continued..
I was stuck at my current work at Mao’ye. A mall in the central part of Taiyuan in Shanxi. Coal dust central China. Frequent dust storms leaving me having to wipe the window sills of dust piles collecting. Life felt dry as the air—numb. I never know what I want. Drifting like paper in a breeze.
23 and feeling empty. Left the previous English training center I working at teaching adults. Company started going bankrupt. Boss was an asshole. He was originally from Datong near to Inner Mongolia.
That boss ran the company horribly. Was a coward of a boss. He would watch the cameras and email complaints on my dress code and not talk to me in person. A coward.
When the company was nosediving I got sent an email in the middle of the day stating my job would be terminated by the end of the month. I worked in china as an American. In china most jobs are based on contracts between employees and employers. I was supposed to continue another seven months with my job. The contract was broken when they emailed me saying they could not keep me due to salary. Contracts can be broken due to performance but not due to finance issues. I had already work for them a year on another contract. The law in China states I was due to be paid a year and a half of salary. My boss was such a coward to not speak to me in person and email the letter. I marched in his office and got told to fuck myself. I talked to the labor board at the local government office. I was told was told that I that they would have to pay me a year and a half of salary for breaking my contract.
Those times were rather gray for me. Clouds were heavy like gnats flying around the face. My girlfriend at the time was a stern nurse. The girl made of paper. She stayed beside. My fortress. Put up for adoption by her family in Henan. Where her adopted mother would put her hands in scolding hot water for punishment. She marched into my boss’s office and created a storm. He refused to budge. A few days later when the labor office contacted him he was willing to keep me for the rest of my contract. The labor office said that because my job was offered back I could not be paid if I left my job, as it would be my choice at that point. Frustrating. My wife had her uncle’s boss contacted from Taiyuan to go into the office. She had some influence in the area. She threatened to look over various certificates to get the branch in trouble. My boss did not budge. I decided to just go ahead and leave this English training center for teaching adults. I went for a new company that paid more passed in the Moye mall on the other end of the city. Now I would be teaching children again like I used.
Is this all I am? A server?
It makes me think of a time right before I met the woman made of paper. Stern from her experiences. A fighter. I like fighters.
I met fighters before. Reminds me of a story. A story I hold deeply to my heart. There was a woman named Ming. I met her through surfing on WeChat nearby searching for people looking for others nearby. Older by a few years. Met and became acquainted over messages.
Christmas tree lights in my head
Perched to be exploited…
Balloon with the air let out
Hissing all the time… because it whines
The inferno in me wants me to burn
Because it feels right
Christmas trees lit are under pressure—they know if they dry up the whole building will be in flames
So you have to be festive when you decorate—and avant-garde with who you decorate with
Maximalist at heart with pleasure
Nomads tend to wander to find a better part of the steppe
With a phallus as a Swiss Army Knife,
Paddling in northern China building a trench
22 year old Midwesterner with psychosis looking for a frigate to save him from the deep end
Impulsivity a catalyst for losing everything
I don’t care if you’re married, if you have a tunnel you can help me in the trench
Two staged rocket—
Already psychotic
Be a Launchpad
So I can get even further from earth
Ripple through the galaxy like I got a mission—
Even if it’s delusional
Another N1
Get myself on disconnect in the vacuum
Even if I come down Iike napalm.
I met Ming because I needed her and she needed me-even if she was married. I was 23 and without security. MY first job that I forgot from my boss Ryan was insane at times. Working without a visa for a company was unbearable. I felt obligated to my boss at that time he promised he could solve my issue if I worked hard for him. And I did. He was a bit corrupt too and not the greatest. Always offering going to brothels with people to make deals happen, including trying with me too. I never went. I did work hard for him though. I wanted to escape my predicament and he knew all the right people to contact to fix my problems if I met my obligations. Obligations could mean being asked to go to another training center to work part time and gather their curriculum for my school.
It felt unstable not knowing when I could get arrested or taken away. Made Ming a perfect connection to come across. I needed a friend that brought stability. She was a radio broadcaster in the city. Extremely wealthy. She would take me on outings eating delicious cuisine in the city or among weekend trips to interesting places nearby. I consider her one of the greatest friends I had. Because of her it was getting to meet other connections at outings with friends at KTV and clubs in the city. Like rhizomes growing out of a tree. Sustainability. It led to more rhizomes of connections. Something I want to talk more about. But I need to move the clock a bit. To the start of this ramble.
I was working in Maoye. I was on a legal visa at this time. My colleagues were not legal. They were often Slavic. Russian, Ukraine, and other Slavic nations. We had an office in the building setup on a third floor of a large mal with various classrooms for the foreign teachers to teach in. They would generally have a Chinese teaching assistant to help them in the classrooms. I taught students from pre-k age to middle school there.
In the middle of the setup of the floor layout was a large open office. I would sit and plan lessons and grade amongst the Chinese staff and foreign teachers. One day I grep of plain clothed officers came into the facility. They were checking on teachers on the wrong visas. The Russian teachers and others often could not fluently speak English or qualify for the correct visas—they didn’t meet the right requirements for work visas and would be on other various kinds of visas. They stormed in and I remember my Russian friend hearing the commotion tore his shirt with his logo on it and threw it on the ground in a rush. He ran shirtless down a stair well nearby flinging the doors open. Fear, anger… got to fill their class schedule while they are all out hiding.
Final Taishen
I met Chang’e. Do you believe in the transplanting of thoughts? I do. Like pollen.
My thoughts can transplant and Change can do the same too.
Mania got me again. I wrote a poem when I was younger to express it.
Feeling bold and exacerbated
Maybe I am just high strung
Ricocheting off these walls like bumper cars
A sparkler burning hot and bright
Popping off like roman candles
I am not always calm, but I am high,
A kettle left on the burner and forgotten,
Watch me melt away into my ecstasy
Where I dance and scream all in one
I’ll hit peak when crisis comes.
I hadn’t been sleeping. I took a second English teaching job and was seeing attending to seeing different people besides Ming.
Ming was kind and always took me on nice dinner dates. I didn’t have to worry about expenses and felt secure.
I was back on my smartphone looking and fishing for people nearby. Chang’e came in as a breeze from Luoyang to meeting a relative in Taiyuan.
Chang’e was working for a boss in Taiyuan. She would go on the WeChat application looking for men nearby. Flirt to get them to meet her. Like moths in dark they get to the lights:
Useless as a glass door. You can peek through. Pigeon-toed. Drained an ocean to fill insecurities. Uncomfortable thoughts ricochet in me. Like an ambush. Giddy when disappointed. I build trenches amongst the tripwires of life. City feels like a tsunami. Manners like a bloated tick. Sipping the veins from any limb around me. As a stranger to a moth, a porch light pulling. Desolate in lost thoughts. Nights awake and bunkering in hotels. Soft in my voice, I hopscotch to hands—falling through like particles of sand. With enough friction to set off an atom bomb. To radiate right through me, and hollow my marrow. Amongst open nerves I can feel something, so I play with the pain. No matter how annoying.
As particles I transplanted through to her screen as we lay in our separate beds in the city. Mania makes me dumb. We flattered away. Fused as particles.
Her intent was for me to arrive at a designated location to drink and eat late into the night—11:00 p.m. With this given location I would be taken down like an elephant via poachers—that was the intent. At the location I was to be given an outrageous bill for the service and if I did not pay a group of big men would use their physical presence to get me to pay.
When I met her at the given location outside the door. I knew the tricks. I tested her. Asked if she would be willing to eat at another location.
She thought she would eat me and I thought I would eat her. My test was asking her to go to another place at the KTV nearby where I knew somebody that worked there—a karaoke location—the LED lights shining and me and her staring at the direction of them.
She hesitated and insisted on the location next to us. I said I had to go—before I left to contact if willing in the future to go to the KTV.
Where a perpetual hydrogen bomb would go off on our fused particles.

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.
Tisishen Part Continued..
I was stuck at my current work at Mao’ye. A mall in the central part of Taiyuan in Shanxi. Coal dust central China. Frequent dust storms leaving me having to wipe the window sills of dust piles collecting. Life felt dry as the air—numb. I never know what I want. Drifting like paper in a breeze.
23 and feeling empty. Left the previous English training center I working at teaching adults. Company started going bankrupt. Boss was an asshole. He was originally from Datong near to Inner Mongolia.
That boss ran the company horribly. Was a coward of a boss. He would watch the cameras and email complaints on my dress code and not talk to me in person. A coward.
When the company was nosediving I got sent an email in the middle of the day stating my job would be terminated by the end of the month. I worked in china as an American. In china most jobs are based on contracts between employees and employers. I was supposed to continue another seven months with my job. The contract was broken when they emailed me saying they could not keep me due to salary. Contracts can be broken due to performance but not due to finance issues. I had already work for them a year on another contract. The law in China states I was due to be paid a year and a half of salary. My boss was such a coward to not speak to me in person and email the letter. I marched in his office and got told to fuck myself. I talked to the labor board at the local government office. I was told was told that I that they would have to pay me a year and a half of salary for breaking my contract.
Those times were rather gray for me. Clouds were heavy like gnats flying around the face. My girlfriend at the time was a stern nurse. The girl made of paper. She stayed beside. My fortress. Put up for adoption by her family in Henan. Where her adopted mother would put her hands in scolding hot water for punishment. She marched into my boss’s office and created a storm. He refused to budge. A few days later when the labor office contacted him he was willing to keep me for the rest of my contract. The labor office said that because my job was offered back I could not be paid if I left my job, as it would be my choice at that point. Frustrating. My wife had her uncle’s boss contacted from Taiyuan to go into the office. She had some influence in the area. She threatened to look over various certificates to get the branch in trouble. My boss did not budge. I decided to just go ahead and leave this English training center for teaching adults. I went for a new company that paid more passed in the Moye mall on the other end of the city. Now I would be teaching children again like I used.
Is this all I am? A server?
It makes me think of a time right before I met the woman made of paper. Stern from her experiences. A fighter. I like fighters.
I met fighters before. Reminds me of a story. A story I hold deeply to my heart. There was a woman named Ming. I met her through surfing on WeChat nearby searching for people looking for others nearby. Older by a few years. Met and became acquainted over messages.
Christmas tree lights in my head
Perched to be exploited…
Balloon with the air let out
Hissing all the time… because it whines
The inferno in me wants me to burn
Because it feels right
Christmas trees lit are under pressure—they know if they dry up the whole building will be in flames
So you have to be festive when you decorate—and avant-garde with who you decorate with
Maximalist at heart with pleasure
Nomads tend to wander to find a better part of the steppe
With a phallus as a Swiss Army Knife,
Paddling in northern China building a trench
22 year old Midwesterner with psychosis looking for a frigate to save him from the deep end
Impulsivity a catalyst for losing everything
I don’t care if you’re married, if you have a tunnel you can help me in the trench
Two staged rocket—
Already psychotic
Be a Launchpad
So I can get even further from earth
Ripple through the galaxy like I got a mission—
Even if it’s delusional
Another N1
Get myself on disconnect in the vacuum
Even if I come down Iike napalm.
I met Ming because I needed her and she needed me-even if she was married. I was 23 and without security. MY first job that I forgot from my boss Ryan was insane at times. Working without a visa for a company was unbearable. I felt obligated to my boss at that time he promised he could solve my issue if I worked hard for him. And I did. He was a bit corrupt too and not the greatest. Always offering going to brothels with people to make deals happen, including trying with me too. I never went. I did work hard for him though. I wanted to escape my predicament and he knew all the right people to contact to fix my problems if I met my obligations. Obligations could mean being asked to go to another training center to work part time and gather their curriculum for my school.
It felt unstable not knowing when I could get arrested or taken away. Made Ming a perfect connection to come across. I needed a friend that brought stability. She was a radio broadcaster in the city. Extremely wealthy. She would take me on outings eating delicious cuisine in the city or among weekend trips to interesting places nearby. I consider her one of the greatest friends I had. Because of her it was getting to meet other connections at outings with friends at KTV and clubs in the city. Like rhizomes growing out of a tree. Sustainability. It led to more rhizomes of connections. Something I want to talk more about. But I need to move the clock a bit. To the start of this ramble.
I was working in Maoye. I was on a legal visa at this time. My colleagues were not legal. They were often Slavic. Russian, Ukraine, and other Slavic nations. We had an office in the building setup on a third floor of a large mal with various classrooms for the foreign teachers to teach in. They would generally have a Chinese teaching assistant to help them in the classrooms. I taught students from pre-k age to middle school there.
In the middle of the setup of the floor layout was a large open office. I would sit and plan lessons and grade amongst the Chinese staff and foreign teachers. One day I grep of plain clothed officers came into the facility. They were checking on teachers on the wrong visas. The Russian teachers and others often could not fluently speak English or qualify for the correct visas—they didn’t meet the right requirements for work visas and would be on other various kinds of visas. They stormed in and I remember my Russian friend hearing the commotion tore his shirt with his logo on it and threw it on the ground in a rush. He ran shirtless down a stair well nearby flinging the doors open. Fear, anger… got to fill their class schedule while they are all out hiding.
Final Taishen
I met Chang’e. Do you believe in the transplanting of thoughts? I do. Like pollen.
My thoughts can transplant and Change can do the same too.
Mania got me again. I wrote a poem when I was younger to express it.
Feeling bold and exacerbated
Maybe I am just high strung
Ricocheting off these walls like bumper cars
A sparkler burning hot and bright
Popping off like roman candles
I am not always calm, but I am high,
A kettle left on the burner and forgotten,
Watch me melt away into my ecstasy
Where I dance and scream all in one
I’ll hit peak when crisis comes.
I hadn’t been sleeping. I took a second English teaching job and was seeing attending to seeing different people besides Ming.
Ming was kind and always took me on nice dinner dates. I didn’t have to worry about expenses and felt secure.
I was back on my smartphone looking and fishing for people nearby. Chang’e came in as a breeze from Luoyang to meeting a relative in Taiyuan.
Chang’e was working for a boss in Taiyuan. She would go on the WeChat application looking for men nearby. Flirt to get them to meet her. Like moths in dark they get to the lights:
Useless as a glass door. You can peek through. Pigeon-toed. Drained an ocean to fill insecurities. Uncomfortable thoughts ricochet in me. Like an ambush. Giddy when disappointed. I build trenches amongst the tripwires of life. City feels like a tsunami. Manners like a bloated tick. Sipping the veins from any limb around me. As a stranger to a moth, a porch light pulling. Desolate in lost thoughts. Nights awake and bunkering in hotels. Soft in my voice, I hopscotch to hands—falling through like particles of sand. With enough friction to set off an atom bomb. To radiate right through me, and hollow my marrow. Amongst open nerves I can feel something, so I play with the pain. No matter how annoying.
As particles I transplanted through to her screen as we lay in our separate beds in the city. Mania makes me dumb. We flattered away. Fused as particles.
Her intent was for me to arrive at a designated location to drink and eat late into the night—11:00 p.m. With this given location I would be taken down like an elephant via poachers—that was the intent. At the location I was to be given an outrageous bill for the service and if I did not pay a group of big men would use their physical presence to get me to pay.
When I met her at the given location outside the door. I knew the tricks. I tested her. Asked if she would be willing to eat at another location.
She thought she would eat me and I thought I would eat her. My test was asking her to go to another place at the KTV nearby where I knew somebody that worked there—a karaoke location—the LED lights shining and me and her staring at the direction of them.
She hesitated and insisted on the location next to us. I said I had to go—before I left to contact if willing in the future to go to the KTV.
Where a perpetual hydrogen bomb would go off on our fused particles.

Outline

1. Introduction
   • Overview of virtual offices
   • Importance in modern business
2. What is a Virtual Office?
   • Definition
   • Key components
3. Types of Virtual Offices
   • Business Communication Plan
     • Features
     • Use cases
   • GST Registration Plan
     • Features
     • Use cases
   • Business Registration and GST Plan
     • Features
     • Use cases
4. Benefits of Virtual Offices
   • Cost-effective
     • Lower overhead costs
     • Savings on utilities and rent
   • Professional Image
     • Prestigious business addresses
     • Enhanced credibility
   • Flexibility and Convenience
     • Remote work benefits
     • No commute needed
   • Access to Amenities
     • Meeting rooms
     • Office equipment
   • Expand into New Markets
     • Global presence
     • Local addresses in multiple regions
   • Reduced Administrative Burdens
     • Simplified management
     • Outsourced reception services
5. Choosing the Right Virtual Office Plan
   • Assessing business needs
   • Comparing features
   • Evaluating costs
6. Conclusion
   • Recap of benefits
   • Final thoughts on adoption
7. FAQs
   • What services do virtual offices typically provide?
   • How does a virtual office enhance business credibility?
   • Can a virtual office handle mail and phone services?
   • Are virtual offices suitable for startups?
   • How do virtual offices support remote working?

The Benefits of Virtual Offices for Businesses

In today's fast-paced business environment, traditional office setups are quickly being replaced by more flexible and cost-effective alternatives.
One such innovation is the virtual office, especially the plug n play office in Visakhapatnam. But what exactly is a virtual office, and why should businesses consider this option? Let's dive into the concept and explore the myriad benefits virtual offices offer to businesses of all sizes.

What is a Virtual Office?

A virtual office provides businesses with a physical address and office-related services without the need for a dedicated physical space. It allows employees to work remotely while maintaining a professional image and accessing various office functionalities. Virtual offices typically offer services such as mail handling, phone answering, meeting rooms, and even access to coworking spaces.

Types of Virtual Offices

Virtual offices come in various forms, each tailored to meet different business needs. Here are three common types:

Business Communication Plan

This plan focuses on providing communication services such as a professional business address, mail handling, and phone answering services. It's ideal for businesses that need to maintain a professional image without the overhead of a physical office.
Additionally, a plug n play office in Visakhapatnam offers the convenience of immediate setup, making it perfect for businesses seeking efficiency and flexibility.

GST Registration Plan

Aimed at businesses that need a physical address for GST (Goods and Services Tax) registration, this plan includes all the essentials for legal and tax purposes. It typically provides a professional address that can be used for registering your business for GST purposes.

Business Registration and GST Plan

This comprehensive plan combines the features of both the business communication and GST registration plans. It offers a complete package for businesses needing a professional address, communication services, and GST registration.

Benefits of Virtual Offices

Virtual offices offer a range of benefits for businesses of all sizes. Here are some advantages:

Cost-effective

One of the most significant benefits of a virtual office is cost savings. Traditional office spaces come with high overhead costs, including rent, utilities, and maintenance. A virtual office eliminates these expenses, allowing businesses to allocate funds to other crucial areas like marketing or product development. For businesses in specific regions, a virtual office in Visakhapatnam can significantly reduce operational costs while providing a local presence.

Professional Image

Having a prestigious business address in a prime location can significantly enhance your company's credibility. Virtual offices provide this benefit without the associated high costs. A professional address on your business cards and website can make a positive impression on clients and partners. Using a virtual office in Visakhapatnam can help businesses project a professional image in a growing and strategic market.

Flexibility and Convenience

Virtual offices offer unparalleled flexibility. Employees can work from anywhere, which is particularly beneficial in today's remote work culture. There's no need to commute, leading to increased productivity and better work-life balance. Businesses can also scale up or down easily without the constraints of a physical office. For instance, a virtual office in Visakhapatnam allows businesses to operate seamlessly in this bustling city without being tied down to a specific location.

Access to Amenities

Despite being virtual, these offices provide access to physical amenities when needed. This includes meeting rooms for client presentations or team meetings, as well as office equipment like printers and fax machines. These resources are available on-demand, ensuring you have everything you need without maintaining a permanent office. A virtual office in Visakhapatnam often comes with access to top-notch facilities, making it easier for businesses to meet and collaborate locally.

Expand into New Markets

Virtual offices allow businesses to establish a presence in new markets without the need to set up a physical location. By having local addresses in multiple regions, companies can appeal to a broader customer base and test new markets more efficiently.

Reduced Administrative Burdens

Administrative tasks can consume a significant amount of time and resources. Virtual offices, including plug n play offices in Visakhapatnam, often include services such as mail handling, phone answering, and even receptionist services. This allows business owners and employees to focus on core activities rather than getting bogged down by administrative duties, ensuring greater efficiency and productivity.

Choosing the Right Virtual Office Plan

Selecting the right virtual office plan involves considering your specific business needs. Here are some steps to guide your decision:

1. Assess Your Needs: Determine what services are essential for your business. Do you need a professional address, mail handling, phone services, or access to meeting rooms?
2. Compare Features: Look at different plans and what they offer. Ensure the plan you choose covers all your requirements.
3. Evaluate Costs: Compare the costs of different plans and consider how they fit into your budget. Remember to weigh the benefits against the expenses to find the most cost-effective solution.

Conclusion

Virtual offices are a game-changer for businesses seeking flexibility, cost savings, and a professional image. They cater to the evolving needs of modern businesses, providing essential services without the burden of a physical office. Whether you're a startup looking to minimize costs or an established company aiming to expand into new markets, virtual offices offer a compelling solution. Embrace the future of work and consider how a virtual office in Visakhapatnam can benefit your business.

FAQs

What services do virtual offices typically provide? Virtual offices offer a range of services including a professional business address, mail handling, phone answering, access to meeting rooms, and sometimes coworking spaces.
How does a virtual office enhance business credibility? A virtual office provides a prestigious business address, which can enhance your company's image and credibility with clients and partners, making your business appear more established and trustworthy.
Can a virtual office handle mail and phone services? Yes, most virtual offices offer mail handling and phone answering services. This ensures that all your business communications are managed professionally.
Are virtual offices suitable for startups? Absolutely! Virtual offices are ideal for startups as they provide essential office services at a fraction of the cost of a traditional office, allowing startups to allocate resources more effectively.
How do virtual offices support remote working? Virtual offices support remote working by providing the necessary office infrastructure without requiring a physical presence. This allows employees to work from anywhere while still benefiting from professional office services.

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4. Click on “Search” button and select then on “Patch”
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Our POTS line went away and our service provider wants to setup and ATA and charge us monthly by the number of pages. Can I setup my own ATA and fax or fax server?

Background:
Got into photography with film point and shoots - enjoyed them but they failed a lot.
Switched to a Canon Rebel film body and the 40mm pancake - lightweight but still solid build, quick autofocus, good subject separation, cheap. I use it as an "EDC" camera but don't take it on flights.
For photography trips, I take Oly E-M1 II, 12-40 2.8, 40-150 2.8 with 1.4 TC. Very satisfied.
When flying for non-photo trips, I don't want to deal with film. I picked up a Ricoh GR IIIx but I don't get on with it. I need a viewfinder more than I thought, autofocus is slow, and it feels delicate for the price (I suspect this deters me from using it a lot). Going to give it one more shot.
Before the Ricoh, I had a GM5 that I broke trying to DIY repair the scroll wheel. I liked it enough to consider repurchasing but wanting to see if anything else is out there first.
The question:
Since I can still recoup most of the Ricoh cost, what camera would make for a great digital substitute for the film Rebel? Looking for solid build, decent autofocus, ideally cheap like my film setup, 28-40mm focal length, pocketable is a plus but not dealbreaker.
I'm most familiar with the APS-C compacts and M43, so looked into Coolpix A, Fuji X100 line, GM5, GM1, E-P5. Anything else you all would recommend?

Played from 2009-ish up until around 2018/2019. I've been mostly AFK since occasional HS Ice mining, or market shenanigans just for something to do since I could never turn off my omegas.
I've kept up on most of the changes since (or at least I think so).
Ideally looking for Sov Null group, prefer to not be part of a large bloc, but unsure if that even really exists anymore (Maybe south/south east part of the universe). Might be willing to go for WH if you can learn how to attach some training wheels onto my ships.
I am thinking I'll be able to play maybe 2 to 3 times a week for 3-4 hours at a time. And unless its timed right I won't be able to drop everything for pings (kids/family), that includes alarm clocking 4am POS bashes (sorry not sorry). US EST timezone. Have comms, but won't be able to use them until everyone else hits the bed.
My current setup:
6x Characters: highest is just over 200m sp, lowest is like 80M sp. The rest are mostly north of 140M sp. Capital wise 5 Gal Dread pilots, mishmash on Carriers/Faxes, focus on mining but at this point can fly most everything except titans/t2 dreads/some trig ships.
Would ideally have some space where I can mine ice and build fuel blocks for income, but not too important. Looking for primarily for regular pvp content, and not to rent this time around.

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I'm looking at picking up the Fuji XT5 and a couple of lenses to upgrade from a Ricoh GRIIIX (40mm equivalent). Currently looking at:

• 18mm 1.4
• 33mm 1.4
• 16-55 2.8

I don't mind the extra weight as I would be using this camera and lenses with intention and would just like to have great image quality. Would this be a good setup, or would you eliminate one (or two) from the lineup? I just want to make sure I'm not wasting money, at least initially.
Is there much of a loss in quality with the 16-55 2.8 vs the primes? I realize the low light performance would be a bit weaker and the autofocus may not be as quick. Additionally, maybe the bokeh wouldn't be as good either. In terms of sharpness and image quality, is the difference that large?
If you could pick two of these lenses, what would be your setup? Mainly for travel/street photography and some portraits of family, friends, and pets.

I'm trying to set up an online payment plan for days. I'm fully logged in. I get as far as "set up payment plan, or one time payment".
When I select "payment plan" it responds "We are unable to complete the transaction Please call 800-829-0994 ext. 654 for further assistance ..".
The phone operator says everything in the account is fine and I qualify for the plan (well under the limit by a long way). She has no idea what the issue is, says nobody else is reporting the same problem. Says there is no tech support line to assist me. No options. Was told same on another try.
Paying by fax/mailing form cost is $107. Setup by phone is $220. Online is just $32. If you have to edit your plan, you pay again fwiu, so I'd like to get it done online.
There are no other outstanding issues. I'm fully logged in. It appears to be a website issue. Does anyone have any experience with this? Any suggestions? Thank You.