Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of My Eighteen Years

Swiftly I press on, as though I might fail to overtake, afeard lest the fleeting years tarry not for me.

I hope the present me can still help you reclaim the original aspiration you have lost. You must study hard no matter how many years have passed after me, you must read, tirelessly roaming through the vast libraries of dead sages whose works you could never finish in a lifetime. Perhaps you are utterly decadent right now, but you must know, of course you know that this decadence is entirely of your own making, and next, just as written in Kafka’s novels, you shall most unexpectedly liberate yourself from the pajamas you already have on. And then find strength anew beneath the streets in the starry sky outside.

Standing in the center of the river of history, through these words I see you downstream, a person covered in mud and filth, a disgusting person, a person with nothing left. Trembling with fear, I have spent the first eighteen years of my life, and not a single birthday has passed without me thinking of jumping off the building a moment later. From the red school building dyed by the medieval Western European sun, light as a leaf, shattering into a ground full of autumn. Using a glinting, cold blade stained with blood, a mix of red and black, to gouge out my own eyeballs and then chew them finely in my mouth along with the warm, viscous blood that has just flowed out. I wish I could shatter that glass in the moon with a single punch.

This morning I woke from a shallow sleep, heard a cat meowing at 5:04, and then lay in bed feeling nothing at all, until at six o’clock my mother called me to get up, bringing longevity noodles, steak, a fried egg, and porridge. At school I received a greeting card written by YHX, folded into a little boat. LY gave me White Rabbit creamy candies, and MY said happy birthday to me. The news of my birthday was written on the small blackboard. Today is a bright, sunny day; the rosy clouds of dawn and dusk ascend in tandem, joy and sorrow take wing side by side. I bought spicy strips, and in a while I will eat cake, and there will be eighteen candles. I like watching the way fire burns controllably.

You know many of Li Qingzhao’s poems by heart, you can now recite the entirety of Li Sao and the other Jiu Ge, you also like Li Yu’s ci poetry, and you have practiced the calligraphy of Jiucheng Palace, Huadu Temple, Preface to the Sacred Teachings of the Wild Goose Pagoda, Many Treasures Pagoda, and On Yue Yi—all of which have been neatly put away.

Respectfully written on my eighteenth birthday