March '25: on impermanence

flowers for your beloved

Today, I bring you some thoughts on permanence, and the absence of it. Whether we come to terms with it or not, at some point deep in our consciousness, we know everything is transient, including life itself. This is nothing new. What is new (to me) is figuring out what I want to do with this knowledge, how intentionality plays a role in preserving the things (or people or relationships) important to me.

As I think and write this letter to you, I am sipping from a glass of gin & mango juice, the only brand of mango juice I prefer, and which my partner bought half a dozen of and brought it to me from Knoxville. Mango juice is impermanent, and so is our mortality, and so is car mileage, but what is impermeable in the midst of this is our ability to experience love, grief, joy, hurt…

I am listening to “Malibu” by Mumford & Sons, and for some reason, this song always my heart go mushy. Music, another permanent output of impermanent contributors. The main reason I started thinking about this topic is after rereading Hala Alyan’s poem, “Object Permanence,” a meditation on death, loss, and living in the aftermath, that leaves me shaken every time I pay attention to it. I have been remembering Prakrit, my best friend who would have turned twenty seven (twenty eight?) this month. I went on a walk the other day, and picked an acorn for the first time. I wondered if he ever got to pick one. March is always so complex– I want to conserve his memory, I want to bask in spring, but this giant grief (and stupid survivor’s guilt) always comes in the middle.