I’m about to dive into a bit of a whirlpool of activity – almost all of it inspiring and good…..

and I’m really just trying to make some notes on the past 2 days so I don’t forget, so this will be sketchy…

like the feeling of meeting an Ethiopean law student living in Werribee, who travelled into the city to come to the Melbourne Free University meetings, and meeting up with a Sudanese accountant I met ‘in camp’ as visitors, who brought friends to the MFU, and at the orientation, watching my colleague direct a room of 95 strangers to meet and mingle and feel safe and welcome and engaged…

And then the feeling inside the art class which is always astonishing… and meeting more new kids ‘off the boat’, who call me officer *sigh* and meeting Rohinga refugees who have fled SLORC but carry the horrors of Burma in their eyes and their souls, including the 6 year old girl, who continuously munched chips like that little kid in The City of Lost Children while I tried to get her to draw a butterfly and a pussycat….

and this week seeing a middle aged woman draw for the first time, and then seeing the delight and amazement on her kids faces…… and then randomly bumping into them on the streets in Melbourne today, and my eyes filling with tears, because when I’m inside the centre, I don’t let myself feel how horrible it is for people to be behind walls and bars and locks, but when they are free, I can’t help but cry with relief and joy……

and later meeting with our art group – who are setting up stuff in the community, with people who have been released, and then walking and talking and hearing the story in broken English of how a woman clung to a tyre with her husband and son for 8 hours in the ocean, counting 80 people who drowned after their boat capsized, and counting the 5 people who were immediately deported from Xmas Island, and not being able to forget, and we held hands in the sun, crying behind our sunglasses, as her son ran around chasing pigeons, and her friends on Manus said they were told they will be transferred to Cambodia, and no-one can believe this is happening to them…..

and today, bringing my crochet rug into the sun, at a large rally, and so many people admiring it, touching it, wanting to carry it, and a woman giving me $20 donation, so I said I’d buy art materials for our group because right now I really have no money (you know when you sneak a sandwich to a cafe, because you can’t afford a coffee?) and me realising that crochet does create a  tangible message of hope and creativity and beauty and strength and it was worth the 100 hours of OCD crochetting for 6 months last year…..

And I don’t have enough words to wrap around these feelings at all; I can just try to share some descriptions of what I have seen, and felt and heard with so many others, and this is what makes me glad to be alive…..