Journal of Student Research 2018

Journal Student Research

116

Making Animals

It is less important to me whether or not a man is extendedly tortured or beheaded, but rather that a man was put to death at all. There are many tricks within witchcraft and sorcery. A sweet food may be poisoned, then eaten, then dazed may a food glutton follow a new captor. To hit, pa, or drag, ch’e, the wad, to be poisoned and taken advantage. A child’s sweet tooth takes captive senses rendered nonsensical. Making animal, making me animal, taking consciousness away, take sentience away, take me far away from the here of my own here to a new place not I, but new Thou, / fingers slipping away from/ object for others. Five donkeys arrived with a man at an inn in Yangzhou. No water for the donkeys, no food for the donkeys, not allowed by the man as told to the keeper. When gone, keeper freed the donkeys, keeper tried taking them from the sun to the shade, but the water drew them closer than the shade did. Five women now, were donkeys, transformed from their poison-food to a human again, without speech or ability, but only that of which to follow. They followed the keep to a private apartment and stayed without direction indefinitely. The man who brought the donkeys came back with five sheep, and a wonder of where his donkeys had wandered and an aggression of his need for his Things. In the meantime, the inn keeper gave his sheep water, and they became five boys. What happens when one transforms and tries to come back? Will the spring of life forgive one who has forsaken a past? A person turned animal turned back is hard-pressed to keep any sense of previous-ness, and it’s in this previous-ness, / fingers slipping away from/ that true innate, that makes up what is real. A truth can be lost in translation completely. The stranger was arrested and forthwith beheaded.