I made this piece after Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile, astounded that a book could read me just as closely as I read it. Between the pages, I finally met someone else who knows the feeling of being torn apart at the core, someone whose habit is to oil the fires of self-loathing and bathe in the ashes of what they’ve destroyed. Through the journals of Lazi, a lesbian living in post-Martial Law Taipei when it was taboo to be out and queer, Notes of a Crocodile reveals the creature that is born when our deepest desires have no place to go: the crocodile who hides in the dark for too long will open its jaws, bare the teeth of its insecurities, and strike anyone who tries to come too close. Its longest lasting companion becomes its loneliness.