#oneyearagoinvietnam

and when i was alone and said to myself out loud- "it's hard" i also thought "beautiful things can come from difficult times"

#whenisee

i've been working on the thank you parcels for my past pozible campaign. These gifts include: 

"+ Hugs

+ A thank you! 
+ I will make you a button [made with love]
+ A personalised instagram photo posted by me for you 
+ A personalised note 
+ A 'today i thought' print 
+ I will draw you a picture 
+ A gift from the Alice Springs Adventure 
+ A poem of sweet goodness

+ Other creative secrets that are too secret to write here"

i still find it hard to believe that project was successfully funded. Its amazing the support that you can feel just through stepping out and trying to achieve something. I am so thankful for the encouraging people of the world. We really need them, don't we. My time in Alice Springs was very impacting and in many ways, im still process the whole experience. This "when i see" is part of the thank you package.

i want to share more about that experience but im not sure what to say and im not sure im ready... this is an extract from what i wrote in August while i was there.

Aug 2nd 2014

Saturday, Day four

"i feel like i don't have time.. its true- i've never had time; time isn't mine- it never was mine but here... i want to take everything in and take it away with me, like a badge to wear, like art inked in my skin for the worldly forever. I don't even know if i've learnt but i want to remember- i must have learnt, i must have, right? I'm thankful for this Australia, i've seen more of it now and love more of it now and im still so far from understanding. But i get a little closer and i find happiness in good conversation and peace in quite spaces and Jesus in other people's eyes and for now, this is enough; just for now. I'm thankful to be part of this land and this beauty and this call forward, take one more step, keep being; be human, come closer... He is always calling and i now with open heart, hear and move. How could i not be moved by such love, such splendid love."

above is a raw file from some footage i shot while being there... and after someone in our crew said "this really is the middle of nowhere" one man who lived there replied "this is not the middle of nowhere, for some, this is the middle of everywhere" i think i'll always remember that.

#camplife

I walked to the closest café, my spine won’t take me far; I feel slow in all ways, since august, if im honest. I know it’ll pass, these things do, it’ll just take time. Time being something I always have plenty of and not enough simultaneously. And I remember writing “I’ve been trying to push the days out the window; to make them jump. I feel like the quicker they come and go, the closer we’ll get to each other” #time

While my sign school class took holidays, I took to Phillip Island, working two weeks on camp. Camp is a complex beast; something hard and beautiful and worth it. I don’t want to over think it but must always find a way to process the experience by the end or I don’t know how I’d go back again.

In some ways normal; cabins, a lake, canoes, a giant swing, coffee, laser tag, calling the police on a kid, watching the blue penguins come to shore for the evening, sunrises, sunsets, coffee, a butter knife thrown at my face, camp food, orange t-shirts, a long drive and questions…so many questions.

Why do you have a boy hair cut?

How long until we’re there?

Why can’t we go to the Melbourne show this year?

What’s ‘will you be my girlfriend’ in sign language?

What’s ‘you’re a dump ****’ in sign language? 

You taught us the colours, why won’t you teach me that!?

How many penguins are in Australia?

Why is the ocean blue and why do the waves do that?

Is that the time coming in?

Where are they going?

Can I take one home?

Do I have to do home?

How may sleeps until camp again?

Who started the world?

If I wanted to go to heaven, whats the best way to get there?

Why don't you have a boyfriend?

Why doesn’t my dad love me?

And so many more. And I find I’m naturally very honest about how much I do or don’t understand. Kids respond to honesty. These kids do.

I have been doing this for over 2 years now and I would say this camp was the toughest yet, and yes, having a knife thrown at me was terrible experience and calling the police in wasn’t great either. It moves me every time and I have a heat patch on my spin and tears fall from my eyes sitting here, at this café from all kinds of pain but I will keep going back as long as I can because when im with those kids, I feel I am really living. If I can give them a glimpse of hope that suggests they can grow into a decent human, a positive contributor to society and someone they can look at in the mirror and think ‘today I like you’; then in my mind that’s worth it.

The reality is these kids come from very difficult situations and they’re not in some distance, far away place; they are in our backyard.

My housemate said it “might be time to look for another less dangerous holiday job” and the physio said “you’ve been accepted for the 12 month health plan, usually I only have people with obesity or lung problems; normally heavy smokers- so that must be some kind of pain you’re in.” to which I replied “it’s not the worst pain I have...”

It’s only a small window of time I get to spend with these kids and I believe that hope is so important and I see unique potential in each child I interact with and I’m so far from not caring. When it comes to camp I think “I can’t just do nothing about it, when I can do something about it.”

And so I’ve decided I’m willing to take whatever life throws at me… literally.

I woke before sunrise one morning, while everything on the island was still new and unfamiliar. I found my way to the beach to watch the sunrise. Upon reflecting on that morning, I wrote the poem below, in case my writing is illegible, here it is:

“Remember early when your colours called my name.

Breaking into dawn, 

spilt in, 

old from new. 

Darkness before me; I walked the field. 

Dew and grass and mud on boots, I didn’t mind- 

in fact the opposite.

All the sounds of children, even in my sleep, never ceasing and

I climbed the restless night wide in thought. 

Now with one simple step in front of another; I anticipate your next move.

Chasing down your mystery with a ‘why’

and many

and always seeking.

Content but never satisfied until I know. 

And I see you in the water, in the sky, in the eyes of others. 

If a howl,

if a whisper 

or in the silence breaking through; 

your colours always calling me, drawing me to you.”

#todayithought

#thesoundtrackofnam...

#abouttoday...
"Reflecting on today i should have eaten more than bubble tea, pineapple and an airplane "meal" [its not really that bad, i don't know why airplane food gets so much hate...] it had been 12 days and the police still hadn't finished or rather- hadn't started the insurance report for my stolen iphone. Anh said its because it got taken from your hand, in daylight, at the same intersection that the police station is on- so it makes them look bad and lazy... which is what they are! he said.
i sat in the police station for too long again, one of the girls who run the hostel translated for me; a whole lot more aggressively than how i put it and it worked. she added things like " she'll call the australian embassy and report you... if she misses her flight tonight you'll be paying for it etc etc" i was very thankful that she was there with me.

before this experience began, i wondered what the soundtrack would be and since my chosen music was removed from me on the first day here; the soundtrack naturally became the experience itself...
the lyrics are foreign, the melody- both haunting and playful. sounds cut in and out of each other but with a sense of belonging; traffic- motorbike horn, a stream of flowing water, the sound of children playing, bricks falling down, someone coughing up, an old woman weeping and begging, weeping and begging, a dog and a chicken, a man laughing and still laughing, layers of silence and if every shade of green had one sound- that... and a woodwind instrument and my beating heart...

The album art would be something like a collage of motorbikes colliding around a monument of earthly significance made of buffalo-head triangle cheese and everything would be drowning, sinking into the ocean but in a hopeful way... with yellow flowers in there somewhere. 

and that is the soundtrack of my #namtownadventure"

#todayithought

#todayithought

#todayithought