Tienamen Square Tank Man - in his own words

I write from the depths of my heart, in search of true companions. I choose to break my silence of my own free will.

After it happened my friends hustled me away. They said, "How could you be so stupid?" They took me back to my room and made soup for me and we drank a bit. The cat sniffed my fingertips. Everyone melted away and I sat up all evening.

I saw my girlfriend two days later at the usual time and place and told her how I could see from high above the street the tanks and myself and the man photographing us and somehow the eyes of all the people who would see the picture in the future and I felt very large yet coiled and I could feel the heart of every man in every tank in the palms of my many hands. I heard the instruction to kill me repeated five times on their radio.

She nodded and said, "that's beautiful in it's own right, but if we get married you can't ever do it again. It will be bad enough always waiting for the security services to bash in our door."

After we married I struggled to suppress the memory of that day but lingering joy constantly tugged at my mind.  Despite having been filmed only from the back, I worried about being recognized. People in the streets would break into grins as I approached. Sometimes a crowd would gather around the sound of my heartbeat.

You might presently experience a similar transformation. You may be disoriented at first but the power you feel is real and good and useful. It's the need of justice that is making us so strong and so many. Do not be afraid, never allow your heart to falter, we are an ordinary thing, like a fever or a fire that comes to clean.