I walked into Tsutaya Bookstore, and seeing the cover of a magazine on the shelf featuring a young actor I frequently see in the media, I thought to myself that night, "The world is full of boring people who try to act cool even though they're not all that great."

I couldn't help but wonder how I would come to terms with the monster swelling inside me.

It's been a month and a half since I started hiding and sleeping during the day, and at night I pick up my camera and wander aimlessly through the city.

For the past few years, I've lived my days watching with a cold eye as my spirit withered away in an attempt to blend into the city and appear normal.

The people I see on the streets are merely cogs in a capitalist society, nothing more than inorganic beings.

They blindly obey authority, are trapped by status and honor, form herds, idlely spout shallow conversations, arbitrarily rank people, and conform their opinions and tones to please others.

Meetings, numbers, manners, rules, polite language, small talk, forced smiles, meaningless corrections... Before I knew it, I had become an inorganic being, doing only these things.

...It's lame.

It's pointless.

It's empty.

Leaving the bookstore, under the elevated tracks in Nakameguro, permeated with the smell of alcohol, I realized that even after shedding the labels society had arbitrarily attached to me, I wanted to be someone who could leave something behind, and I resolved to live for that.

On nights when my mind is sharp, in the gaps of the city, by pointing my lens at the inorganic and "continuing" to "click" the shutter, I feel as if a part of myself that was fading away is desperately struggling to be reborn, spreading its wings and beginning to fly. It is the moment closest to being a true "human being," not a bystander.

I had endured intense physical and mental pain just to sleep at night and live like an ordinary person. Cherishing even the slightest moments of waking, fully confronting one's inner self, extracting and developing the intensely dynamic universe within one's brain, and taking responsibility only for the "things" that are created.

That's enough.

Hsiangning Wu
Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Traveling casually as if living there, and living as if traveling.

Working in design and photography, and also active as part of the creative unit "Kumoism."

https://www.instagram.com/hebetobubu/