There are many reasons why I don’t eat meat. But the main one is because I see the damned animal as humans. Living in San Francisco, I would walk down the wharf and see live crabs bound by rubber bands. But then I would see their limbs struggle, the way man’s do under pressure, stress, and violent pain. The crab became human to me. I saw men bound by large soulless rubber bands. I saw adult men and woman strapped down on ice, life fighting for its life, their limbs twisted up and bound like Chinese feet. I saw hordes of spectators, salivating, spying out the plumpest and most promising one. And when the carefree spectator found his prize, the cook would plug up one of these struggling, bound humans and then fling it into boiling water. Their bodies so tired, their screams were muffled out by the tones the spectator and cook could no longer or care to hear.

People often comment on how “kind” they think I am. Kind, I’m not fucking kind. Maybe I’m just some “kind” of different thinking individual. Something most never extend themselves to be. I saw a legless man squatting off some stairs in Shanghai. He had a dirty wrinkled plastic cups laid out. Too tired and hopeless to even beg. The cup was mocking me when I walked by. You don’t give a shit, it said. All I could give was a twenty rmb. Most people spend twice that a pack of cigarettes or pirated DVDs. It wasn’t enough. But it was enough to make people stare at me and think I was crazy. If only everyone helped everyone, I thought. Then maybe the world would be a perfect place.

There is a belief in Buddhism that tells up when we die, we only take our consciousness with us. Every action, thought, and word spoken affects our karma and what will be and where we will go in the next lifetime. In that reason alone, I pity the politician that marches out other people’s poor sons and daughters to fight rich man’s wars. I wonder what kind of eternal shit pool their going to swim in? But even when I speak and act out and get deemed a radical, when all else fails, I find satisfaction in knowing someday those fuckers will get what they deserve. I also am careful to not allow myself to turn into one of those fuckers myself.

There are too many of those fuckers on this planet. Everyday. I see them. I talk to them. I engage them and ask them, like that plastic cup, do you give a shit? Most people don’t care about the things that we consider “world problems.” I like to think of them as your and my problems. I ask, what are you doing about it? That same day in Shanghai, I booked a return ticket home back to Hangzhou. I was told you could take the subway to the train station. In a feeling of confidence, I spent more than twenty rmb on a cup of iced coffee and an exploited motor biked carbide –I was the one whom got ripped off, but then I remembered. I’m a graduate student with a sensitized version of life, this guy probably needs this lesson and this money more than I do. When I got off the subway, I realized I was at the wrong station. I had 30 minutes to find my train in a city of 20 million people where every word spoken was in Mandarin, and every sign that could direct me was in characters and not in English. I felt a panic of frenzy come over me. Like hysteria, I was split in a million fears. Where will I sleep? Who will I call? Where will I go if I miss my train? I made myself walk back down to the subway. Move, I said to myself. I don’t care where you go now, the important thing is to get going. Thirty minutes later, I was on my train headed back home.

I got up out of bed to write this. These kinds of days keep my spirit in knots. It’s 1:43 a.m. I love you, I think. I have a thing for numbers and stars. I am an outer space junkie. But numbers to me have meaning. They are finite and absolute. I find comfort in that for some reason. And looking at that number makes me realize how abnormal it is to be up at this hour. I’ve untangled my thoughts and my soul and now I’m going to back to bed.