In the last week I’ve been to a funeral and a wedding. Rituals that dance so boldly on oppositional edges of our experience. Watching a mother and father eulogise their twenty-two year old child set against a backdrop of gum trees crumpled my heart. Witnessing dear friends in their sixties commit to growing old disgracefully together crumpled my heart too, but for entirely different reasons.
I’ve been thinking about legacy, about the choices we make, and the way we make people feel. I’ve been thinking about living well, and boldly, and bravely. I’ve been thinking about culture and its perverse entanglement in making us risk averse, when the ultimate reality is one day dying.
I suppose I’m thinking about how we live in honour of the fact we’re going to die.
My friend who got married on the weekend has lived through some of the most brutal life stuff, and I frequently marvel at her open heartedness, her courage, the bold no fucks all-in way she lives her life. We sat under a large, branched tree and ate cake shaped like a snowman a couple of weeks ago tears in our eyes as I shared with her my heartbreaks from this year, and she reminded me that the consequence for living and loving big and deep and vulnerably is that there’s going to be pain and loss, but the love is worth it every time.
The love is worth it every time.
I’m thinking about my student who died very suddenly surrounded by people who adored them, doing what they believed in so wholeheartedly, how big a life they had lived in their twenty-two years and the ache of losing someone too soon. It is tragic and hard to comprehend, but there was so much gratitude and love at their funeral. Active reminders to devote time to your art and share it, to walk your talk, to live boldly, to actively dismantle the systems that oppress others. The people who met and adored this brilliant human have been changed by this love and that will have ripple effect for many, many lives ahead and that is deeply incredible to ponder. We really do impact each other. We’re meant to.
I’m thinking about pace and the capitalistic internal metronome of rushing, how we’ve been built to find quick fixes, and how we don’t know how to really rest. I don’t know how to rest. I’m learning. I’m thinking about the fact that timelines, and age and prerequisites are all made up and don’t mean shit. Fuck the rules. The lesson I’m learning over and over again is really about self-determination…my pace, my timeline, my choices, my pleasure, my action, that includes my deep love of my art and my community.
I thought there was no neatly packaged bow tied pondering to these thoughts as they felt scattered like stars and asteroids exploding in a sky, present and real, but totally unable to be caught. But as I’ve been writing I’ve realised this…I want people to stand at my funeral, or my third wedding in my sixties, and say something along the lines of…
She lived life on her own terms, and she encouraged others to do the same. She lived boldly, and made great stuff, and fucked up and learned from it, and talked about it so we could learn too. She went all in, her love was felt deeply, and goodness me she looked great in a clashing pattern.
Now, when the bullshit feels too big and bullshitty i’m going to remember this.
Go easy, dear ones, it’s messy out there, but fuck it can be beautiful.
It’d be awesome if you shared or subscribed, please and thank you.
Pearler is created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people in Meanjin, and I acknowledge and pay deepest respect to First Nations Elders past and present. Always was and always will be.
Self determination and a clashing pattern