The Last Time
When I was 12 or 13 I made the mistake of signing up to play cricket for my school team. Cricket, like anything, really is a struggle to care about once it's longer than an hour or so, and so I was not a fan. I was relegated to fielding (for those who don't know, standing in a field pretending to care, hoping to catch a ball, a bit hard for this 12 or 13 year old, who regularly sat down and complained). Needless to say my team didn't like me and I didn't really like doing it.
On the way back from one particularly awful match I talked my Dad into stopping for McDonalds, something he almost never did. Excited and salivating, I was so incredibly disappointed in the food that it was the last time I ever ate McDonalds. In fact it's the last time I've eaten, really, that kind of fast food - no KFC, Hungry Jacks, McDonalds, whatever - I have my vices, and I love plenty of junk food, but for some reason I just hated eating that meal and never, ever have felt like having another one in my life. I didn't know it then, but that was the last time. It's probably the first last time I'm conscious of.
I find myself occasionally thinking about all the last times I've had in my life. I'm not talking about the most recent times, I'm talking about the finality, the last time you ever see something, do something or experience something. I think it's sort of interesting and a bit melancholic, but through-provoking. For example there's been:
The last time I saw my high school crush
The last time I lived in a share house
The last time I saw my grandparents
The last time I saw a friend at work who died
The last time I worked in England
The last time I caught a flight to Mildura
The last time I ate a restaurant that shut down
The last time I ever tried to see if I'd like alcohol (for those who don't know this I don't drink, have never drunk and can't stand the flavour of alcohol)
The last time I tried to emulsify cheese, water and starch (so hard)
The last time I practiced martial arts
The last time I was a teacher
The last time I broke someone's heart (I think we're here now, but we'll see)
Life consists of a lot of fresh starts and new things, especially for someone more like a spoon than a fork like me, but there's also this sort of passing endings that we don't often think about. I know that there are many more lasts coming in my life, I don't feel sad or worried about it, it's part of life. For example, the one video game I play (which I play a lot of), I just know one day I'll play it for the last time, something will change and I'll never boot it up ever again. It will end and that part of my life will quietly, probably without me even realising it, close. I think that's what interests me about, not that we always CHOOSE to end things but that, more often than not, I think, endings are just a product of our attention shifting elsewhere, a change in our attitude, picking something up rather than consciously putting something down.
Tying back to some earlier newsletters, a lot of the stuff I think about and art I make is sort of concerned with this idea: what last times are we living through now and do we realise it? If so, what the fuck? When will the last koala live in Melbourne? When will the last Platypus?
More hopefully, when will the last petrol-powered car be built? When will the last unenvironmental policy go away? When will the last crypto nerd realise they are being scammed?
Everything comes to an end, mostly we don't notice, but sometimes it's nice to. It can feel widening and expansive. The world can appear more glacial and time more comfortable. We can't grasp at everything, we can't hold on to anything, time is the winner in the end. But we can do some stuff that outlives us. I was at a friend's house on the weekend, sitting on his deck surrounded by 80+ year old gum trees, huge, towering things. Resplendent, shady, alive and homes to many animals we could watch. Someone, way back in the 1940s, maybe before WW2, maybe even during the depression, planted or let those trees grow and here I am, grateful to that nameless person, enjoying their handiwork.
So, a lot of things end without us realising it, but maybe that can help us choose to leave some stuff that keeps on going, doesn't end when we do and provides for someone else. Just a little bit of longer and stretchier time.
No big updates this week, everything is fairly calm. Some cool stuff next week though :)