In a field of sunflowers.

I have been rehearsing with Weave Movement Theatre. We have been working on a project called Appropriate Behaviour. It's been interesting watching the development of the piece. I have loved every second.

In the opening scene I have a line. All of us have a different line that we all deliver together. I don't know why I chose this particular statement. We all start off trying very hard not to say it; censoring ourselves until eventually the whole statement explodes out. For some reason I have found it challenging. The emotions that simmer inside are sometimes even hard to cope with. Yesterday it was suggested that I could pull back on it a bit if it was too much.

Somehow I don't want to. I both love and hate that this line stirs something in me. I feel that if I held back the emotion of the line it wouldn't be authentic, it wouldn't be me. My daughter told me yesterday that I'm acting, it's not supposed to be me. But I need it to have a bit of me in there. I can't not be me...and part of that involves feeling things authentically. I can't help it.

Like I said, I both love and hate this aspect of me. These things are hard to feel but I never want to stop feeling them.

This morning as I waited for my coffee I looked at the first few pages of the newspaper with the photographs of the faces of the Victorian children who died on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. I wept as I saw the mother of those children being supported by family and friends. My heart just ached for her. I just wanted to sit in the street and howl for her; weep and sob until there were no more tears and then weep and sob some more. It's not fair. Innocent children. Children who died with their grandfather in the skies and then came to rest in a field of sunflowers. What's the world coming to when a plane carrying innocents is shot down? My mind just cannot even begin wrap itself around that reality.

As cruel as this reality is, I don't ever want to stop feeling so intensely about it. I don't ever want to get to a point where I am numb and blank and I just keep on going with my regular life unaffected and untouched. I want to howl with grief for these children and these families. I want to continue to hurt and rage and feel it. I want us all to continue to feel it because if we don't then how can the world be changed? How will these cruel and heartless people who perpetuate such crimes be stopped? Do they feel? Do they feel at all? Do they go home at night and look at their sleeping children, or lover or parents and feel afraid for their safety and thank whatever god they believe in that they're sleeping peacefully warm in their beds?

We've got to keep feeling...and feeling the hard stuff. I never want to not care!

I want to always weep for the children who came to rest in a field of sunflowers.