40

This year I turn 40, and considering that the average males in both the US and in China don’t live past their 70’s, there’s a strong possibility that I’ve already finished more than half of my life. With that in mind, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for me to start planning the last event that I’ll ever attend: my funeral. Or as I’ll refer to it, the last party that I’ll ever let my friends throw for me.

First, as I sifted through my past decade of photos and videos over the last few days, I gradually came to a surprising discovery: I’ve lived a pretty good fucking life. I’ve had so much joy, as much as I’ve had suffering. I’ve been bold. I’ve explored. I’ve challenged myself. I’ve planned ten years out in my mind and ran away with a whim in my heart instead. I’ve followed my curiosity down rabbit holes into new worlds. I’ve chased dreams, never seized them, but woken up each time as a vastly different man than the one who fell asleep pining for them. I’ve loved, I’ve lost, but most of all I’ve lived.

I’ve lived a wonderful life, and when its last chapter is complete, I want those who loved me and were there to celebrate my life with me as I lived it also to be there to celebrate with me as I leave it. And it will be a true celebration. A beach party in Los Angeles, the city with which I’ve felt the deepest spiritual connection and only one of two that lets my restless soul feel at home. We’re going to do this on the beach next to the Pacific Ocean, simultaneously the fathomless barrier that separates and the steadfast bond that connects the two most important lands and cultures in my life. Leave a part of me in the ocean breeze, so I can continue living in the youthful wonder I had the first time I stood between the mountains and the ocean.

Afterwards, this will be where anyone who misses me can come to remember me. Don’t bring flowers when you come to see me. Don’t bring food, don’t bring gifts. That’s fucking littering. Bring your favorite memories of me. Or any memories of me. Look out across the ocean. Feel its vastness, its energy, its life. I’m part of that now.

But before that, we party. I don’t care if you didn’t know me or weren’t there with me during my last journey. You’re still invited, and we can get to know each other before I begin my next one. But it will be a celebration. Open bar, obviously. Nobody attending drives to or from this party. Everybody gets drunk. I’m okay if kids under a certain age don’t. They’re already naturally filled with all the wonder and passion of life anyway. No one else gets a pass. Anyone who dies at my party comes with me on the next journey.

Put my ashes into a giant coffee tin. Don’t buy a stupid fucking urn. Put the tin on a high pedestal. I was tall in life. I’m used to being able to see everyone at a party. Play the music of my youth. And Taylor Swift. And 告五人. Any Kanye from MBDTF or earlier is also acceptable. Dance. Drink. Sing. Sleep on the beach if the cops let you. And if you won’t freeze to death. And if west LA hasn’t turned into the type of place where you get murder-rape-robbed just by being outside after dark. This is my thank you and goodbye to all of you, but it’s only the beginning for me.

Next, I need Mark, my brother Mark, to, first of all, still be fucking alive and, second, to take my ashes to China. I know your ass will be old as shit by then, so bring whomever else you need with you. But keep it small, keep it intimate. Just the people you love and trust, bro. Bring my coffee tin into China. Sneak me in if you have to. Tell customs I’m your brother. If there’s some regulation against that, just tell them I’m ground coffee or protein powder or some shit. I’m in a fucking coffee can for a reason!

Bring me back to the land of my birth, where I began my last journey. I will start my new journey there, too. Take me to Shanghai, my home before I even understood what that word meant. Let me smell the city. That stench of rotting vegetables on a humid day always unlocked within me feelings from memories long forgotten. Don’t drop my ashes into garbage though, you son of a bitch! But please do leave a part of me in that city as well, so my soul can continue to be fuzed with the ecstatic energy there.

Then go west. And south. Find a mountain deep in the forest and high above the mist. Climb to its highest peak. That’s where we say goodbye, brother. I love and appreciate you for everything you are and have done, and I thank you for this last trip we take together. Take the last of me and let me fly. Let me rejoin the universal consciousness from which we sprang forth into these solitary, ephemeral tragedies. That’s where we’ll all be reunited one day. That’s where we all meet again. I’ll be there, but don’t be in a hurry to join me. My life has been magnificent, and I will live many more beautiful years before I take that journey. You take your time, too.

We are all such flawed creatures endeavoring to make sense of our existence in three dimensions of space and half a dimension of time. Time is not a line moving in one direction, and yet we are all ill-fated to experience it that way. It’s an illusion. What has already happened is still yet to come, and what still lies ahead has already come to pass. Paths that cross even once in life will do so again and again in eternity. I’ll be there, somewhere on that path. And if I’m not there with you yet, just come to the ocean. Bring your favorite memories of me. Or any memories of me. I’ll meet you there with all my best memories of you.