The Oxford definition of ‘access’ is ‘the means or opportunity to approach or enter a place’.
A definition that breeds triviality. A meaning that surpasses physicality. It is more than sizing up a space. A restricted movement from place to place. It is a negotiation. A validation of a way through. Ears that can hear and make improvement. Minds that can recognise and cause change. Hearts that will accept unconditionally.
Access for me is a dream of weightlessness. An easy way from one place to the next.
The morning starts. The light through the blinds. The blinking so my eyes work as one. The physical and the mind quiet in speaking. My choice is to go out. The beginning. The turn. The focus. Refocus. No sleep. Need sleep. I’ll make it. The walking. The lifting. The hauling. Falling. Sprawling. My muscles not hearing my brain. My foot dropping to the floor. The disconnection between brain and body leaves me flat. Walkers pass me. Not seeing. Not caring. Not recognising I need help. So I get up. Restart. Retry. Try again. The leaving. The losing. Needing. Fleeing. So slow. No go. I stop.
I learn in a hope of succeeding. I attempt in a hope to conquer. But I am tired. I need a slow, silk saturation of an everlasting eiderdown upon a writhing fault-line rhythm of rest. I twitch. I’m pain. Front and back. I move and crack. I rein in the restless. I resign to a fate of consciousness.
New day. New way to motivate. New hope of change. Now moving. Watching feet. Checking ground. On a train. Immersed in a sea of standing. Upright. So tight. So hard. I clench. The train jaunts. Familiar jolt. It stops where I need. Doors open to a new sea of people. Faces pass as the tide transfers. I exit as it recedes. A face stops me. A voice claws me. ‘God, you people take up so much room.’ The shock. The tears. The stumbling out passed eyes and ears. Unnoticed. Uncaring. I see. They don’t. I am nothing.
The light through the blinds. Another day. A new one. A new try. I open my eyes and blink. Once. Twice. I see different. A new insight. A bodily yearning. An attempt at a fresh elevation. I rise before it ends. I think. My mind is tired of reversion. I call for subversion. A realignment of my being. A way it should be. There is nothing I won’t do. Can’t do. To look to the sky. See them whole and changing. See parts come away then reform. The weightless bliss of the unearthly. They grow dark at times. They reflect the sun at others. They move with an ease that should be here. With us. No fuss. No question. I am not them but it’s how I want to be. To move. To feel. To peel away the unwanted covers and own the opportunity to approach or enter a place.
About Sonia Marcon
Sonia Marcon is the chick with the stick. She has been working as an actor, writer, singer, producer and director for nearly twenty years. Since 2015 Sonia has performed in Quippings: Disabiity Unleashed events to deliver self-devised performances exploring the challenges and changes of disabled life with humour and pointed commentary. Sonia is one of the 2017 recipients of the Writers Victoria Writeability Fellowship. Her works have been published with ‘ABC Open’, ‘FilmInk’ and several short story anthologies.
About Quippings Disability Unleashed
This commission is the third from members of The Quippings Disability Unleashed Theatre Troupe.
Quippings is a unique six-year-old inclusive spoken word performance troupe based in Melbourne. Part cabaret, part wordfest, the Quippings crew has staged a number of public performances over the past few years with performers who all identify as disabled and/or deaf and queer/queer friendly.
There’s been a natural happy relationship between Quippings and Writers Victoria via the stars of Writeability. Writers who love to perform their texts work with us and in 2016 Quippings and Writeability made a successful joint application for Creative Victoria funding for three shows across this year.