Bye, Aveline

My good friend Ave­line (abiuro) had a brain aneurysm on her birth­day last Thursday. She was resus­cit­ated, but the doc­tors turned the machines off this morn­ing and appar­ently, she died quickly. She was 39.

She was a fab­ulous woman: polit­ical, punk, pink-lover. And yes, some­how she made all those things go together: hot pink mohawk and “Bar­bie’s a bitch” T‑shirts in pale pink. We used to walk by the Merri Creek every week talk­ing about the world and how we were going to change it. She had been to Can­berra to do a Mas­ters in Stra­tegic Stud­ies and her next pro­ject was find­ing a way to get to Russia and work on stop­ping the sex traf­fick­ing trade.

She hand-sewed me a beau­ti­ful embroidered blue cat for my new apart­ment with the beau­ti­ful blue walls. It’s utterly gor­geous and I will now frame it and take it with me to to US rather than store it here. She was a power­ful, smart, right-on woman who didn’t take shit from anyone. It’s appro­pri­ate that her last journal post is about going to see rockin’ bands for her birth­day. I said to someone that it was sad she never made it there and he said, “how do you know she didn’t?”.

I wrote this for her when she moved here from Can­berra, but it’s just as appro­pri­ate now:

Tem­pest

she is stand­ing in thrall to the tempest
she has noth­ing to lose but her hide
she knows all the tricks and she’s seen all the hicks
and she’s secretly crying inside

her skin is a rock­ing horse palimpsest
she has noth­ing to give but her throat
the hum of the trees and the buzz­ing of bees
and a smile like an over­blown coat

so she screams when the wire­less plays songs from the west
and she throws away needles and pills
she’s done with the dolls and the blonde gang­ster molls
and she packs up and heads for the hills 

Bye, Ave­line. Whereever you are, give ’em the works.

(Thanks to ozgenre for the pic­ture (taken by kitling). His beau­ti­ful eulogy is also worth read­ing. Thanks for shar­ing that, Craig.)