Som Chai meets my family & friends
I am so excited that Som Chai is now in Oz and has been granted a partner visa.
He's met my family and friends, and even come along to Uni with me.
It is wonderful having him here with me - no more lonely nights or awkward outings on my own!
I can throw my wish list in the fire now because he fulfils all my dreams. I am so proud of him - he is charismatic, generous and kind, and he is also Budhist and a meditator!
I wondered whether there was a difference between art made by a human and art made by a machine? So I made a fan that painted, and I became a painting human fan.
Conclusion: there was no difference.
Just an Ordinary Peasant is based on my uncle’s experience as an inmate at Treblinka extermination camp in 1944. His memoir recounts that while being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to an open-air pyre, he was handed a sack which held little children who were still alive. The guard commanded the sack be thrown into the fire. The woman I play in Just an Ordinary Peasant is a hybrid character created from the memoirs of my uncle, my parents and my own research. She sings and dances and also throws a sack of babies into the fire. This piece explores my own biases as well as questions the culpability of ‘ordinary people’ who were accomplices to the atrocities carried out during the Third Reich.
Mum decided to move into my home in 2017, a year after Dad passed away. She was in her early 90s with the first signs of dementia. Instead of feeling burdened, I saw this move as a gift — an opportunity to care for her and share these years together.
These posts capture that precious time: mum living in my ‘share home’ with family members, housemates and guests, supported, appreciated and surrounded by love. The stories also offer a glimpse into the daily joys and challenges of caring for a loved one.
'All about Marysia' also includes stories from her earlier life -- pre-war, the war, and post war years.
Today mum is over a century old.
