eighteen

(written on february 6, 2025)

the age i’ve wished to propose to happen soon as it can;

yet still regret upon wanting to turn against

in the sense of my own responsibilities,

in the waves and given midsts of fixed nametags

and what-nots to become in and of the future

in the decisions of deciding if I’ll have

bitterly made cheap highballs at an

avenue down at yebisu-eki; work at a long-gone east-asian

wall-street mimicking marunouchi;

ootemachi ichi-no-ichi-no-ichi-de-gozaimasu

in frat rushes in sickening alleyways of scents of modern

secondhanded herbs — weed, trade, perhaps welcome to the

cabal of californian-collegiate model ubiquity

in having some version of stinking prestige,

drinking some expat-kid consumerist yuzu drink

and shizuoka matcha

and visiting shibuya sky

and unfathomable trends

in the reflections of me being “japanese?”

in if i’ll ever be grown to be chinese enough

to write a single essay of beautiful form and word

1without calling back to vocabulary;

such meaningful four-letter chengyu that representing

nothing past the hollow insignificance of me not

fundamentally understanding anything

past fragmented xiaohongshu reels

to dear; performative belonging;

belonging to a namesake at eighteen of “gen-z?”;

wrongful egotistical acts that i may

or may not forgive myself for

and cynically recover from

belonging to an age where “hopeless-core” is #fyp

and academia-raging “hypercapitalism” ;

“finanical nihilism”, “ implicative deaccelerationism” —

who f*cking invents these words?

belonging to a culture,

a culture where dictionaries fall apart

to be urban dictionaries and tear past scales of understanding

to ideological parity in skibidisigmaalpha form

belonging to communities of so-called “lived”

experiences, nothing past a stochastic scroll

— “imysm 🥺”

— and proliferations of

more macro-micro-societal meetings

belonging to a home in this world

of seemingly-infinitely harmonious, instrumental cliques

of this interest and that fad and this y2k style and that +1 asian music pop group and this

chrome hearts or and that nietzche’s paper and this zk thingy and nous research afterparties

in nyc and bro you have to be in SF it’s crazy bro it’s so lit bro please you are missing out

2bro we are creating the future come to my party we are reading zero to one there will be

music and one woman and what happens when the music stops? when the party’s over?

干杯; kanpai;

cheers to this world computer of a life of being

commoditized; tagged; coping on borderline freakouts

sante, sante, (romance edition); to becoming 18;

to feeling the future feels like a party

where everyone’s in on something

you’re not sure you want to be a part of,

to becoming 18 in the most mentally unstable state

(of this society; perhaps also bits of myself).