Since every written Chinese word is a picture, everything I see around me now looks like a word. Creation used to appear a tangle of mystery and chaos, but now but now it just seems like it’s belligerently refusing to translate its meaning. On the other hand, flowers communicate an invitation out into the world, whereas the down-turned leaves on the trees tell you to go back inside yourself. Ordinarily I can boil almost any conversation or text down to the sounds of my name, like dissolving a mountain with cyanide to get at a few ounces of gold. Everywhere around me cars: driving is perfect for enthusiasts of transporting themselves while experiencing the feeling of being an internal parasite. I’m convinced Chinese culture is an intermediate historical stage between our human past and robot future. Based on the way fashionable girls in China dress, speak and act, it must be that the overriding fantasy of men here is to rape a five-year-old. But I try to avoid the mentality of Henry James, whose nationality was his hobby. I’ve never heard of a disease being transmitted visually, but in the bar I went to last night I was a little nervous that the light photons entering my eyes had rubbed against the visible surfaces of the counters and walls.