Adopted #thedirtythirty #poetrychallenge #poetry

 

Adopted

 

He is –

 

 

Murky breaths and midnight toenails

Perfect Tai Chi in between the walls

Headlight free and Sunday solid

He bends I told you so’s into spoons

 

 

                         – made in his mother’s image.

 

 

Silent in a father’s absence.

Light feet on cold floors

Old dreams starting new wars

Nothing in a name –

 

 

He’d like to ask. He doesn’t.

 

 

– but shame. Woven into brickwork clusters.

Filling in cardboard carpets and red flags.

A dented screen, a captured queen.

A ticking secret on the other end of an Instagram like.

 

 

He swallows.

He bends.

He –

 

 

                   – is.

 

 

*

Prompt: Free write Friday.

Spectators #thedirtythirty #nationalpoetrymonth

Today’s poem inspired by a prompt from facebook poetry group ‘The Dirty Thirty Challenge’ – one poem a day for the thirty days of April.

 

Each day the facilitators of the group offer a prompt, today’s prompt was:

Grab the closest book on your shelf/desk/bed. Go to page 7.
Write down 5 words that stand out to you, and use at least 3 of those words in a poem

 

My response:

From page 7 of ‘Improvisation: The Guide’ by Lyn Pierse

The five words were: judged, panel, risk, crafted, spectators

 

Spectators:

The panel nests in song.
Strong.
Strong.
Their silence a gift.
A gift,
crafted in eyes and sighs.
A risk.
A risk forgiven.
A risk forgotten.
A risk, no more.

I’m making a new thing. #elusivemaybes

Every show performed in a different lounge room. A one woman theatre experiment asking “How can we feel so alone surrounded by people who love us?”

 

“The sound of a baby crying

The sound of a kettle boiling

The sound of a dog howling

The sound of a closing door”

Image: Sing Me Your Sorrow, presented at Crack Theatre Festival 2013

What: Another Elusive Maybe is a small-scale performance experience designed for the intimate surroundings of actual real life lounge rooms. Limited to a maximum audience of 8 people per show, the experience incorporates soundscape, poetry, performance and live text message conversations.

Through the lens of parenting a small child, this is an art experience about loneliness and love and community and how we don’t ask for help. Parents of small children in particular will resonate with Another Elusive Maybe, though anyone who has ever felt lost and conflicted about their choices may also see themselves reflected.

Another Elusive Maybe is an independent project by South Australian artists. There’s no budget and no funding and none of the artists are getting paid.* This project is an experiment. Exploring a number of ideas about the kind of work I want to make in the future. As such this iteration is unlikely to be fully resolved and will see future development. Audiences at Adelaide Fringe will be the first to get an invite to future developments. So come and see inside the process of making new things!

*even selling all the tickets won’t fully cover the cost of fringe registration, equipment and fuel!

Who:

Another Elusive Maybe is a biographical musing (by me obviously) in collaboration with Ryan Morrison. Ryan and I met through our shared experiences with Riverland Youth Theatre (though we didn’t engage with RYT at the same time, we stumbled across each other later) and we’ve collaborated on a number of projects over the last five years. Most recently I loaned my voice to Ryan’s ‘Shapes in Deep Shadow’, a multi-modal, meta-fictional work Ryan completed as part of his Creative Writing Masters. Experience it here: https://shapesindeepshadow.wordpress.com/

Ryan is a clever multi-form artist playing in the writing and sound/music space mostly. He also does a rad daily comic over at http://onlythetruest.com/

I’m assuming if you are reading this here, you already know me, but if not, more about me and who I am here: https://alyshaherrmann.wordpress.com/about/

and ye olde bio here:

Alysha Herrmann is a proud parent, regional artist and advocate working across disciplines in the arts, education, community development, social justice and social enterprise. She is a writer, theatre-maker, cultural producer and the current Creative Producer of ExpressWay Arts. Alysha has won numerous awards for her work using the arts to interrogate and explore community concerns and aspirations including most recently the 2015 Kirk Robson Award, 2014 Channel 9 Young Achiever Arts Award and was named by SA Life as one of SA’s fastest rising stars under 30 in 2014. Alysha also tweets tiny poems as @lylyee and blogs about living a creative life at https://alyshaherrmann.wordpress.com

 

Curious? Come and see the thing, these are the deets:

 

When & Where:

16^th Feb, 23^rd Feb, 8^th March

All shows 8pm

All tickets $15

Book at https://www.adelaidefringe.com.au/

*location will be emailed in the week before selected performance

Running time approx. 40minutes

Bring your mobile phone and keep it turned on. Free cookie at every show.

 

And if you can’t make the Fringe dates, rustle up a group of friends (5-8, including yourself) and book the show for your own loungeroom in March/April. Contact me directly for this pressurelands AT me DOT come.

xx

 

 

Save

Dear Me, 19. #idealist #failure #RAAsummit

I wrote/said some words at a conference last year. A nice lady from ArtsHub was in the audience and asked if she could publish those words on ArtsHub.

I said yes. So she did. You can read them here now.

Some other people in the audience also said some nice things about my words in person and on twitter, like this:

If you want to say nice words to me on twitter, you can too (here). I will say thank you. We can be friends. Or whatever the equivalent is in the Twitterverse. Twits?

Night, loves.

*

Caught by the Now #writeme30 @FELTspace

 

I’m about to put up this week’s #writeme30 in a separate post, but for anyone who is actually counting, you may have noticed that I’ve missed a few weeks.

*slaps own hand*

I don’t want to make excuses. So I won’t, but I do intend to play catch up so I end up with 52 posts by 18th March 2015. So the reckoning will come then…

And although I’ve missed some weeks for #writeme30 there has been other writing happening.Which I wanted to share.

Like this:

“I am fascinated listening to both artists talk about their work. Listening to them attempt to unpack complicated thought processes and articulate the process of making to explore those thought processes. My ears and heart leap towards the crossovers and juxtapositions between the two works and the artists who’ve made them. My fingers itch with the questions they’ve asked in discovering these works. As artists their creative output is a lens for me to discover my own answers. I’m ready and reminded.”

– Excerpt ‘Caught in the Now’ for Feltspace Writers Program

and this:

“THEY BECOME FRAGMENTS. Memories. Flashes of who you have been, who you are, who you could be. Bleeding together. Blending out. Too many things to hold inside of yourself. The more you try to make sense of them, the more they slip into your peripheral vision. The more dreamlike they taste on your lips.

Twelve-year-old me being kissed by a sixteen-year-old boy in a shearing shed. With tongue.

Fourteen-year-old me being held down by a man for the first time. Screaming into the pillow over my mouth.

Fifteen-year-old me sitting my parents down at the kitchen table to tell them I’m moving out. My mother crying quietly in her bedroom.

Sixteen-year-old me working fifty hours a week in a factory. My feet hurt. Home to a house that stinks of hopelessness.

Seventeen-year-old me holding a tiny screaming bundle of flesh and bone in my arms. My son, ready or not.
THESE ARE SOME of my memories. The ones that bleed into my story.”

-Excerpt ‘Not for Me’ for Griffith Review, Cultural Solutions.

 

I’m not sure where I’m at right now. I’m full of lots of feelings. Lots of fears. Lots of hopes. But it’s good. It’s all good.

 

 

Come play with me. I’m keen as.

 

*

Get a REAL job #artslife

 

This life. These creative pursuits.

They are not my hobbies.

They are not something I enjoy doing and so choose to ‘find’ time for in my life.

 

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This is my life.

My career.

My journey.

Sometimes, my obsession.

And absolutely my ‘real’ job.

 

And it’s evolving all the time.

 

I’ve spent a lot of time this year trying to articulate what and why I do. Trying to pin the words to paper. Trying to find words that make sense and ring true. For me and for everyone else.

 

The other YSPers and I have given time at every residency trying to articulate our missions over the last 12months. The ‘why’ driving what we each do. We’ve brainstormed together and solo. We’ve written and spoken draft after draft after draft. And I’ve struggled. Really struggled to pin to paper what it is I do and why.

 

For anyone who lives a creative life or a life that’s ‘offbeat’ in any other way, you know why you do it and what it is. And you know how hard it is to explain to everyone else what it is and why you do it. It’s something that has no words because it needs no words for you. It just makes sense (you think). It’s what you do and who you are. So when someone asks you to put it into words, it’s pretty darn difficult.

 

This year I’ve played with and explored various mission and vision statement iterations, including:

 

• I want to be the kind of person that offers something meaningful to the world. The kind of person who experiences life as frightening, confusing and painful but as deeply, deeply precious and worth my effort.

 

• Our mission is to create systematic change in how people think about failure. For us that means making quiet trouble with everyone we meet by interrogating and responding to rage inducing situations through an artistic lens.

 

• My personal mission is to continue striving for opportunities for myself and others to claim our sorrows as a journey to joy and to create space in our lives to sing our heartsongs with passion, hope and courage.

 

• We empower and enable regional communities to reshape and claim personal and civic narratives using an artistic lens.

 

• We challenge communities and individuals to reclaim failure as a crucial ingredient in resilience and joy.

 

• Our mission is to challenge and inspire young people in regional communities to use to arts as a mechanism for social change and empowerment. As part of this mission we also support regional communities to support and foster the skills and aspirations of their young people.

 

• My mission is to use the arts to be an agent of change – to inspire, support and provoke individuals and communities to actively shape the world around them for the better.

 

• I bring together professional artists, doers, thinkers and change makers to work with young people as mentors and provocateurs on community arts projects to unlock their possibility.

 

All of these things are partly or wholly true, but still none of them quite sit right. They feel too full of jargon or they rest on old ideas about myself (and how I work) so don’t capture the space I’m really in RIGHT NOW.

 

At ATF last year OK Radio asked why Theatre?

“Theatre people are all very nice people […] And I wonder if that is our problem,” asked Liska. “We choose an art form where we can sit next to each other and touch each other and we’re very good people.”

“Revolutions are not often caused by polite people, or good people,” said Cooper. “Sometimes we wonder if we have to stop making art to get something done. I really like art but I have a lot of questions about what it’s good for and if it’s needed.”

–        Kelly Cooper and Pavol Liska (OK Radio, Nature Theater of Oklahoma)

 

Last month during Future Present, surrounded by a bunch of socially aware artists, again this idea. Why art? Is that the best use of your time, does it actually achieve your mission? Or would you be better off using your time as an activist, a social worker, a teacher, a farmer?

 

And going deeper throughout YSP, talking about ‘impact’ – how do you measure it? What impact does your work actually have (and is it the impact you want to have)? How can you have the greatest impact with the limited hours in your life?

 

I care about many things. I believe in changing the world. As more than just rhetoric. I believe I have a responsibility to leave the world better than I found it. To use whatever small skills and talents I have to help. I love teaching and advocating and activating and making and creating. I am driven to do many things. I am also a parent, a lover, a daughter, a sister, a friend. My time is limited and precious.

 

And so, I toss these questions around. Over and over. In my head. In my mouth. On paper. I spin myself around in circles. The questioning is hard, partly because there is no one answer. And there is no clear answer. And mostly because no one can answer for me, what it means for ME, only I can discover that.

 

Last night I stumbled across a free ebook titled “Making Your Life As An Artist” and though I didn’t relate to every single word, the book as a whole REALLY resonated with me.

 

There were moments when I read a paragraph and realised I was holding my breath, caught in these words someone else had pinned to paper and how they so neatly echo words I’ve circled around and around and come back to in my own heart.

 

“Just like scientists, we begin with a question, something we don’t know.

We go into our studio and research that question.

(…)

Just as in science, a negative result is as important as a positive result.

Finding that a certain drug does not cure cancer is a crucial discovery. And an artistic experiment that fails produces important information.

When you are working beyond what is known, when you are questioning assumptions that haven’t been questioned, you generate a lot of useful failure.

Failure in science and art is a sign that the process is working.

(….)

…diverse ecosystems
 are more resilient, more able to respond to disturbance. The same is true of culture. Diversity of thought and imagination makes us more culturally resilient, more able to thrive in times of great change.

– Andrew Simonet (Making Life As an Artist, ebook)

 

Many things that had me nodding along. Catching my breath. Gripping the edge of the computer. But perhaps most of all this:

 

Artists have a lot of effects on the world: our work impacts education, citizenship, multiculturalism, urban renewal. But those are effects of our role; they are not the role.

Our role is to ask rigorous and reckless cultural questions, do our research, and share the results. When we do our role well, all kinds of other things happen.

– Andrew Simonet (Making Life As an Artist, ebook)

 

And so last night I sat and I wrote exactly in the moment who I am and what I’m doing (or trying to do). The last seven or so years of thinking, dreaming and doing coalescing and coming together to pin some words to paper.

 

It’s not finished, because it’ll never be finished. I’m evolving and growing all the time. And that’s okay. It’s G.E. for right now.

 

Transparency and sharing the journey publicly (to be of benefit to others) is important to me. So, you can read the words I finally pinned to paper last night where they’ve become my new ‘about’ section here.

 

I’m feeling good. It’s nice.

 

Moving #writeme30

This week’s #writeme30 photo has been supplied by the beautiful and super talented Lynden Nicholls. Lynden was our movement teacher every Wednesday during 1^st year Acting at the Ballarat Academy of Performing Arts back in 2006.

I loved movement class – I’d easily say it was my favourite class that year – and Lynden was a fabulous teacher who really suited my learning style. And I love that through the power of facebook we’ve stayed connected and I get to see little updates from Lynden popping up in my newsfeed every now and again.

I have really bittersweet feelings about my year at BAPA,

I loved it.

I loved the classes, the community and the learnings I was having but I was also personally (and with family) going through a really difficult time, which led to me leaving at the end of first year. I continue to feel that my performance studies are an unfinished business – and yet leaving led me to some amazing opportunities and experiences in the Riverland (not to mention meeting the beautiful man who is now my husband) so I certainly don’t regret leaving, but it was difficult and I do feel like I lost a fantastic learning opportunity and community by not completing my studies.

*bittersweet *still trying to articulate what it means to me *sigh

With all of those connections and memories these are the words that spring to mind when looking at the photo Lynden sent me for this week’s post:

• Ripples
• Movement
• Life
• Moving on
• Transparent
• Vulnerable
• Skin
• Flowing
• Earth
• Connection
• River
• Home
• Hope
• Promise

The Photo:

                              Photo supplied by Lynden Nicholls

The Response – Moving:

These ripples behind eyes,

the sting.

The shift.

Into,

weighted skin,

waiting dreams,

The hall is too large for the small group that waits there fidgeting. Some familiar. Some new. The walls catch our words and bounce them into smallness as we greet the familiar. The new shift self-consciously on the edges of our smaller group within a group. Jessica, our facilitator arrives in a wave of sound and energy, pulling us into the comfort of a workshop circle. We play a name game. We laugh at ourselves. We twist our bodies into shapes. And then.

A new exercise. A movement moment. Find a space by yourself. Feel the music. Respond. Don’t censor. If you find yourself in close proximity to another person, allow yourself to be changed by them. Move with your whole self.

Jessica dims the lights.

Fingers, dig in. Deep into this skin I wait in. My head bowed. Breaths shallow, but ready. Ready. I’ve always been ready. The sound opens beneath my feet. Welcomes my limbs to unfold. My feet to spring into empty space. Tied to a beat I cannot hear. A fear I cannot reveal.

Bodies move beside me. Around me. In the darkness between our beating hearts. We are lost. We are found.

The lights blast on again. The music ends. Chests heave. A woman’s voice speaks. Jessica. I do not hear her. I hear only the sound of the hairs on my arms reaching towards HIM.

The group comes together again into that safe circle. Still huffing. Not unfit, but so terribly, deeply, painfully open. None of us can look at each other. We are too open. Instead we focus our energy onto the floor, in the centre of the circle and fill it with our fears. Jessica’s voice is subdued. She feels our energy and how fragile it is.

“I’ll see you all next week. You’re all beautiful. Be kind to yourself.”

We all exit out into the cold night air. The other bodies drift off. To their own spaces. Homes lit ready for them.

HE lingers.

We stand awkwardly by the bumper of my car, words tumbling easily into each other’s hands. Our bodies are awkward. Our words are perfect. We skin history. We skim the future. Weave possibilities unknowingly. Lose hours. Eventually fallen silent in the face of what we find.

HIS fingertip brushes my arm as he turns away to head home. Deliberate, but gently.

My arm stings all the way home.

I lay in bed.

Thoughts.

Floating. Stinging. Moving.

 

*This particular piece is entirely fictional though it was inspired by some real life experiences. *cough* Nic Tubb…

** I will be a few weeks short of photos so if you would like to submit a photo for me to respond to, you would be very welcome to. Email it to me at: pressurelandsATmeDOTcome

** Note – #writeme30 posts are published ‘as is’ without any editing or curating as the project is about exploring my responses to the photographs supplied. Some posts may plant the seeds for future writing projects but each post itself should be considered a raw and unfinished piece.

 

 

 

 

 

Rage of the Heart #writeme30

 

Earlier this week I attended the launch of a very special book about my little friend Kaitie.

The photo for this week’s #writeme30 post has been supplied by Kaitie’s mum Kimberlee Francis, one of my very dear friends and shows Kaitie and Kim during one of their many hospital visits.

Kaitie is only 9 but has endured more than 30 operations as a result of the rare genetic disorder she was born with. She was born with Mucopolysaccharidoses Type 1, one of a group of incurable diseases known as MPS, which can cause intellectual impairment, eye and hearing problems, bone and joint malformation and heart and breathing difficulties. You can read more about MPS on the MPS Australia website here. And more about the launch of Kaitie the Courageous here, plus listen to Kim’s moving speech as part of the launch:

This week’s #writeme30 post:

The Photo:

                                            Photo supplied by Kim Francis

The Response – Rage of the Heart:

 

I will hold you.

With my hands shaking.

Eyes raking white walls.

Lips straining cold sheets.

Palms caught in held time.

Fingertips glimpsed and softened.

Ready.

 

I will hold you.

In these new hours. Fresh and quiet.

The edge of falling again.

Your fingers will curl in mine.

I will squeeze back.

My heart will hang itself on the back of the door.

And beg my dreams to tangle into your sleeping hair.

I will find myself there.

The echo. The possibility.

The singing sigh of a tomorrow me.

 

I will hold you.

With smiles staining my tears.

With tears biting my smiles.

 

I will hold you.

Today. Tonight. Tomorrow.

I will hold you.

*

 

And here’s Amaya modeling Kaitie the Courageous at the launch:

You can purchase a copy of Kaitie the Courageous via the MPS Society by emailing info@mpssociety.org.au or head to their website here. You can also read more about Kaitie’s journey here.

PS – If you happen to be getting married anywhere in South Australia. Kim also happens to be an ace marriage celebrant (she married us earlier this year in March on the stage of the Chaffey Theatre) – go ahead and like her facebook page here.

 

 

Green Sleep Dreams #writeme30 #YHMD2014

Let these dreamers sleep. With cracked fingernails and grime to coat their inner ear. Let these dreamers sleep and fish for hope on shores far from here.

I met Lauren a few years back when the two of us were participants in Australian Theatre for Young People’s National Studio (read about my experience of National Studio here). Lauren is a theatre maker and writer with a really wicked sense of humour. Our theme at National Studio was ‘death and dying’ and Lauren’s monologue was one of my favourites in its fun and quirky interpretation of the theme.

Lauren has provided this beautiful photo for me to respond to as part of #writeme30. Her words describing the photo, “Homeless and asleep in Tokyo. I took it on a school trip when I was seventeen and still able to be shocked by a world with concepts like homelessness”

The Photo:

                              Photo Credit: Lauren Sherrritt

The Response – Green Sleep Dreams:

These green sleepers dreams, dream their way into my bent elbows. I wait for morning. Behind windows fogged by my fingertips and fears.

The car I sleep in is blue. It is my car. My XF Ford Falcon and though I can drive it, I do not have a license. I do not know the rules about sleeping in your car. Can I get in trouble for this? I am parked only two blocks away from the house I am meant to be sleeping in. I am parked in front of a chicken shop and my hair smells like oil and burnt deep fried food. I am five months pregnant. I am 17. I am too proud to ask for help. Too proud to admit that I am not safe. Too proud to admit I don’t know what to do. Too proud. Too scared. Too small. Too silent. Too invisible. I am what I have made of myself.

I go back to that red brick house the next night. With its yard full of dry yellow grass. Its slightly leaning grey wire fence. Its dirt stained front door. Its rooms that smell like all the mistakes I’ve made. I am swallowed into its chipped paint. With my hair still smelling like oil and burnt deep fried food.

**

Homelessness in Australia is often misunderstood, stereotyped or invisible. Homelessness isn’t just sleeping rough on the streets, although for many that is the reality. Homelessness is characterized by a lack of access to safe, affordable and appropriate accommodation. This includes examples such as couch surfing between friends and family (not a long term solution), having somewhere long term to live that isn’t safe (ie. Domestic violence situations, room mates selling drugs etc) or living somewhere where the costs of that accommodation are more than 50% of your income.

The Chamberlain and MacKenzie 2008 Counting the Homeless Report 2006 (ABS) provides the following more detailed definitions of the various types of homeslessness:

Primary homelessness includes all people without a ‘roof over their head’. This means people who are living on the streets, sleeping in parks, squatting in derelict buildings or using cars or trains as temporary shelter.

Secondary homelessness includes people who frequently move from one type of shelter to another. This includes people living in homeless services, hostels, people staying with other households who have no home of their own and people staying in boarding houses for 12 weeks or less.

Tertiary homelessness refers to people who live in boarding houses on a medium to long term basis (more than 13 weeks), who live in accommodation that does not have ‘self-contained facilities’ for example they do not have their bathroom or kitchen and who don’t have the security provided by a lease. They are homeless because their accommodation does not have the characteristics identified in the minimum community standard for housing.

In Australia, we often think of homelessness as older men sleeping rough (these are the images we often see associated with homelessness in the media in particular), but the statistics show that in fact 42% (!!!) of people experiencing homelessness are under 24 and the gender divide (across ages) is 56% male and 44% female. It’s also worth noting that homeslessness happens in both metro and regional communities, though it can be harder to spot in regional communities where it’s easier to see a tent by the river and just think it’s a regular camper.

It’s Youth Homeslesness Matters Day in two weeks time (9^th April), which is an annual National awareness day for youth homelessness in Australia. Now is the perfect time to get involved or think about hosting an event – more details about how you can support Youth Homeslessness Matters Day through advocacy, sharing or hosting an event can be found here.

Also check out One Night Stand (Melbourne) and Street Smugglers (Perth) – two awesome organisations tackling homelessness in entirely different ways, led by two awesome young men I’m lucky enough to know through the Foundation for Young Australian’s Young Social Pioneers Program.

You can also find out more information on the realities, stats and what you can do to help at Homelessness Australia.

I had two experiences of homeslessness as a teenager – the one I touched on briefly above (with my trusty XF) and the second a month or so of hopping between houses, including a week in a house with no electricity, hot water etc where the actual tenant was staying elsewhere – because they had upset their drug dealer and were afraid they would be tracked down to the house and bashed! I was 7 months pregnant by that stage.

People who know me now struggle to place me in those situations, struggle to reconcile that I am the same person. Sometimes I do too. Much of that period of my life feels like a story I’m remembering about someone else. A dream.

It’s a dream I was lucky enough to wake from before the cycle became too ingrained to release me. I’m grateful every day for that.

Not everyone is so lucky or happens to fall into the right circles at the right time, but we can all make a difference to ending homelessness in Australia by supporting the work of the organisations I’ve shared above. So please do head to the links, do some reading and remember to share Youth Homeslessness Matters Day on the 9^th April.

 

#DonateLife #havethechat #itsuptome

It’s Donate Life Week this week. A week to remind ourselves and others to have the chat about organ donation and make sure our friends and families know our wishes. And maybe, hopefully inspire more people to consider donating their organs if the worst was to happen. So have the chat and get involved with the thunderclap.

Alysha Herrmann in ‘Random Girls’ Rehearsal 2004. Photo Credit: Lucien Simon

If you don’t donate your organs, what happens to them? They rot away in a box or get burned. That’s it. If you donate them – you’re positively contributing to  quality of life of another individual (and the people who love them), and for some literally saving their lives. You don’t need your organs once you’re gone. I know for some they feel a discomfort with the idea of cutting up their body (or the body of someone they love) or they have a sense of going on to the afterlife incomplete – I’d just say, people lose limbs, have scars, have their tonsils removed etc while they are still living. None of these things makes them incomplete or less worthy in the afterlife, none of these things makes their body less beautiful or precious. So imagine instead, the beautiful, generous gift you can give to extend and improve life of another through the donation of your organs when you no longer need them. That’s a legacy worth leaving.

Last year for the FilmLife Project I wrote a blog about organ donation called ‘One Life?’ and I want to share those words with you again and ask you to think about your position and #havethechat with your family this year.

One Life?

A life.

Only one. Just one.

One to live with, to soar with, to sing with, to love with.

What would you give? What would you risk?

For one more?

One more moment;

One more day;

One more life.

*

Lives held suspended along the length of a siren’s light;

Lives stolen, broken, smashed, ripped, torn;

Daily, nightly, weekly.

And we’re never ready. Never prepared. Never willing to hold those hands one last time. We haven’t asked. Haven’t spoken. Haven’t thought.

Just assumed;

You’d still be here;

We’d grow old together.

*

There are two sides to every story.

Two lives held in check, waiting on the other side of moments like these. Moments where a family sits together and waits. In an emergency room. Waiting to know – will they wake up? Will they be ok? There are other families sitting together and waiting too. In Doctor’s waiting rooms and hospital wards. Families slipping in and out of hospital rooms and home bedrooms watching loved ones quality of life, and sometimes life altogether slip away.

Strung together across cities and towns and farms across the country are people waiting. People waiting to live, people waiting to choose.

If your lover/mother/father/sibling/child was in an accident what would you choose?

If your lover/mother/father/sibling/child was dying from heart/liver/kidney failure what would you ask for?

There was a time people believed the things they were buried with went with them into the afterlife. There was a time people believed the Earth was flat and that the Sun was a god. We’re learnt a lot since then.

You can’t take your organs with you. You can burn them up. You can put them in the ground to rot.

Or you can Donate Life. You can end the wait for families you’ll never meet. You can give someone somewhere another moment, another day, another life.

You can know that some small part of you, or your loved one can live on and change the world.

Make the choice. Talk to your family. Make your wish count. Donate Life.

*This little blog was the winner of the FilmLife Blogging Competition, but there were many other fantastic blogs and films created to increase awareness of Organ Donation. Carly Findlay (one of the judges) shared some of the highlights here.

You can get involved with the 2014 FilmLife Competition by creating your own short film to highlight organ donation. All the details here.

Also be sure to head over and like ‘Sparking Life’ here.