Niko + Changchang

I'd always hoped—even though it was an irrational hope and you were too brilliant, yes, I said it, okay?, you were TOO FUCKING BRILLIANT to avoid grad school—that you'd just say fuck grad school and work with me at Médecins Sans Frontières in the Tibetan Municipality.  But when you said no, I can't do that, I WANT to go to grad school and get a million advanced degrees, mostly for me, but a tiny bit for my family too, I realized that you were the hardcore one, not me.  I know I talk big and sometimes, I go overboard with my non-binary, evolutionary power butch aesthetic (old school as that is in this age of labelessness and broad spectrum identity), but you act big in a quiet and powerful way that forces me to respect you against my will.  And, I mean, anyone could just leave earth, especially after the ocean levels keep rising and global temperatures get even hotter.  Leaving takes no guts.  I mean, just look at ALL THESE * ASSHOLES who applied to be the first Mars colonists in the 2010's and the first first lunar colonists in 2020's, all of them just DYING TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, AWAY FROM EARTH.  Staying on this planet, in this world, dealing with all of the chaos, panic, and entropy, and studying something you don't even love just to get a bunch of advanced degrees as a way of evolving culturally, intellectually, professionally, just to help yourself find a better job and demand your family's respect (whether they want to give it to you or not as their non-straight daughter with the fabulistically long hair) so that you have the fucking chance to get a better life in this globalized economy and learn more about our mutant world in the process, that takes discipline and focus and self-control and grit.  I have none of those fucking things.  None.  ALL I HAVE ARE OPINIONS AND A STUBBORN DEVOTION TO YOU, which has always been my downfall.