Pollination

I am impetuous and indulgent. Permanence, is something I have always struggled with: I flit between career aspirations, I’m studying for my second degree and I think commitment has too many letters.

A tattoo is something of permanence. Something that scares me. How can I possibly choose something that’ll be poignant for me indefinitely? So I decided to settled upon a hummingbird. A little indication towards my own ceaseless indecision.

It’s a hummingbird with bright plumage and little majestic wings predisposed to whims and a fluttery ambivalence.

When people ask me about it, I’ll use an anology.

A party scene is useful. A house party perhaps, but one with Baz Leherman grandeur and shimmer. A party is a functional analogy because it’s dynamic. It’s a scene that allows its make-believe guests flow and pool about spaces.

Alcohol and anecdotes are shared in the kitchen. There’re discarded beer tops and there’s a lingering smell of orange bitters that’s spilled and sticky and golden across countertops. There are finger bowls with a residual slick of oil and balsamic, and the occasional surplus olive.

Couples begin to split away and congregate in narrow corridors. Facing one another and intimate but vulnerable upon either side. They lean inwards with romantic propositions and diminishing inhibitions. Just close enough to see each other’s cheeks flush and capillaries blossom fuzzy with excitement. Here secrets can be disclosed and drift with the thoroughfare, outwards towards open French doors and the night.

Outside there’s a lack of artificial lights so the stars are just visible in gaps between the canopy of trees. These little streaks of starlight move conversations towards the profound. These sections are home to louder groups. The vastness of sky seems to permit facades and self-elaboration and an animalistic readiness between the quick flicks of fingertips, majestic blue swirls of cigarette smoke and flecks of orange burning paper.

People dance and swirl with John Travolta hips and a nocturnal slink. They sing, falling into the familiar embrace and sympathy of known choruses and nostalgia. The party sing each lyric together, breathing simultaneously. Every frantic hummingbird heart is beating congruently. Sinking and lifting, like a quick pulse on the entire body of human experience.

These inexhaustible people who disregard their circadian rhythms and every tired persuasion of society, intent upon sharing the experience of the night and the witchery silken dim of moonlight. They dance and unravel in universal ritual, they mingle and cross-pollinate. Enriching each other’s lives and stories.

Like the hummingbird that pollinates and animates idyllic scenery. The party scene demonstrates each intersecting plot and the collective manoeuvring towards meta-narratives and the wider concern of people.

With every nonchalant glance at my little tattoo, I’ll be reminded that I’m a guest at the party.

With my erratic heart I’ll move through the dream sequence. I’ve daubed flaxen eyeshadow into the heavy crease of my eyelids. I’ll kiss and dance through the crowd distributing the glitter that flows through my hair and about my collar bones and sweats between my knuckles. As the night softens and the sky becomes marmalade orange. The space is somewhere liminal, with changing colours and sentiments. My glittery afterglow can ebb through the scene and long outweigh the twilight. There’s a luminous and profoundness in each interaction.

The hummingbird reminds me it’s often doubt and the impermanence that gives poignance to things. Flux makes the world fruitful, colourful and sweet each year. The hummingbird reminds me I’m a descriptor of collective human experience, always belonging and simultaneously integral to progression. The hummingbird reminds me that the best of humanity is within our shared empathy, intelligence and abstraction. The hummingbird reminds me to accept every aspect of my patchwork self, my identity is fluid and eternal.

We are all hummingbirds. We are all a multitude of things bound in little corporal bodies and subject to ceaseless impressions. We should love every meandering and erratic aspect of our being. We must share and distribute our benevolence, acceptance, understanding and stories. We must pollinate and animate the world. We must move through life with impetuous awe and a frantic heart, like a little hummingbird with quick wings and bright plumage; because this is how we can all flourish collectively and individually.