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Authors: Gretel Ehrlich
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after the tsunami.
Before rain stops, what feels like a mask drops off. Not the face masks we’ve been wearing to protect ourselves from toxic dust, or the elegant ones I once watched being carved for the Noh Theatre thirty years ago, but the hardened exterior we present to the world, made with a rough skin.
One small boy said, “I feel one way when people are watching, but I’m another person when I’m alone, without my mother or father.” Another young boy who watched both his parents drown has not spoken a word since the tsunami.
I sit up in the dark. Too often we do not relate directly toexperience. The mask, the scarf around the neck, the tall boots. The mask is brittle. I tear at it and a few pieces fall. Maybe we don’t have to take it all the way off, maybe it’s enough to let rainwater loosen it, to glimpse the possibility of nakedness. The mask slides, sticks, slides again. I cry for only the second time since coming here. Tears roll and the whole carapace crumbles. It’s not so much a question of giving it up; as Trungpa Rinpoche said, “The mask begins to give you up because it has no function for you anymore.”
Lying down, my rib cage floats. It rises to the ceiling and hangs there. From it dangle wrists, knuckles, and knees—the bones as light as toys. Rain comes hard and morning light is washed black as if the tsunami’s shadow-wave had inked the air and gone back to scrape darkness from stone.
The Van
Don’t expect the next moment. Forget this moment and grow into the next.
— SHUNRYU SUZUKI, ROSHI
The “handover” from Masumi and her family to my new driver and interpreter took place at Sendai Eki, the huge railway station at city center. Nikki is twenty-six, half New Zealander and half Japanese. Worldly and bright, she wears a denim wristband with the words: “I ain’t gonna be your bitch.” The driver, a forty-eight-year-old long-hair from Kesennuma, has the unlikely nickname of “Abyss.” Perfect, I think, and smile, wondering if the nickname refers to the “abyssal plain” of the Japan ocean trench, or just the “abyss” of the tsunami.
Kazuko, eyeing Abyss-san’s long ponytail, asks me if I’m going to be all right. I assure her that I’ll be fine. She cries as we drive out of the station.
It’s a hippie van with a bed in the back and a solar panel thrown onto the dash to keep cell phones and MP3 player charged. The windows are down and music is playing loud. Abyss-san is small and agile, with thinning hair at the top of his head. Earlier, when he opened the passenger door for me at the station, he gave me a half-bow with a knowing smile, then told Nikki she’d have to sit on the bed in back.
Now he wheels the old van into the throngs of traffic—mostly policemen and volunteers—with ease. To the south is Fukushima Daiichi, the wounded nuclear power plant still leakingand steaming, melting and fusing; we head north as it gets dark, up the ravaged coast of Tohoku.
A tropical flush of humidity pushes into stifling summer heat as we weave between small trucks with cranes mounted in back, ambulances, and police cars. The old van holds us in its ramshackle confines. In the back, Nikki makes instant soup with hot water from a thermos and checks emails on her cell phone. Abyss-san says that when he’s not volunteering, he makes drums and sells them at a summer festival. To be a hippie in northern Honshu means taking a political stand; he is an outsider and a radical, and unlike so many in Japan, an activist. Nikki, who stands at the fringe of several worlds, sticks her head between us, giving simultaneous translation as Abyss-san tells his stories:
“After the tsunami my mother came to live with me up in the mountains for two months,” Abyss-san says. “For forty-eight years I’d caused trouble for her because of the way I live. But after the tsunami, we became close for the first time. Living together was an opportunity to have deep conversations. Then two
Before rain stops, what feels like a mask drops off. Not the face masks we’ve been wearing to protect ourselves from toxic dust, or the elegant ones I once watched being carved for the Noh Theatre thirty years ago, but the hardened exterior we present to the world, made with a rough skin.
One small boy said, “I feel one way when people are watching, but I’m another person when I’m alone, without my mother or father.” Another young boy who watched both his parents drown has not spoken a word since the tsunami.
I sit up in the dark. Too often we do not relate directly toexperience. The mask, the scarf around the neck, the tall boots. The mask is brittle. I tear at it and a few pieces fall. Maybe we don’t have to take it all the way off, maybe it’s enough to let rainwater loosen it, to glimpse the possibility of nakedness. The mask slides, sticks, slides again. I cry for only the second time since coming here. Tears roll and the whole carapace crumbles. It’s not so much a question of giving it up; as Trungpa Rinpoche said, “The mask begins to give you up because it has no function for you anymore.”
Lying down, my rib cage floats. It rises to the ceiling and hangs there. From it dangle wrists, knuckles, and knees—the bones as light as toys. Rain comes hard and morning light is washed black as if the tsunami’s shadow-wave had inked the air and gone back to scrape darkness from stone.
The Van
Don’t expect the next moment. Forget this moment and grow into the next.
— SHUNRYU SUZUKI, ROSHI
The “handover” from Masumi and her family to my new driver and interpreter took place at Sendai Eki, the huge railway station at city center. Nikki is twenty-six, half New Zealander and half Japanese. Worldly and bright, she wears a denim wristband with the words: “I ain’t gonna be your bitch.” The driver, a forty-eight-year-old long-hair from Kesennuma, has the unlikely nickname of “Abyss.” Perfect, I think, and smile, wondering if the nickname refers to the “abyssal plain” of the Japan ocean trench, or just the “abyss” of the tsunami.
Kazuko, eyeing Abyss-san’s long ponytail, asks me if I’m going to be all right. I assure her that I’ll be fine. She cries as we drive out of the station.
It’s a hippie van with a bed in the back and a solar panel thrown onto the dash to keep cell phones and MP3 player charged. The windows are down and music is playing loud. Abyss-san is small and agile, with thinning hair at the top of his head. Earlier, when he opened the passenger door for me at the station, he gave me a half-bow with a knowing smile, then told Nikki she’d have to sit on the bed in back.
Now he wheels the old van into the throngs of traffic—mostly policemen and volunteers—with ease. To the south is Fukushima Daiichi, the wounded nuclear power plant still leakingand steaming, melting and fusing; we head north as it gets dark, up the ravaged coast of Tohoku.
A tropical flush of humidity pushes into stifling summer heat as we weave between small trucks with cranes mounted in back, ambulances, and police cars. The old van holds us in its ramshackle confines. In the back, Nikki makes instant soup with hot water from a thermos and checks emails on her cell phone. Abyss-san says that when he’s not volunteering, he makes drums and sells them at a summer festival. To be a hippie in northern Honshu means taking a political stand; he is an outsider and a radical, and unlike so many in Japan, an activist. Nikki, who stands at the fringe of several worlds, sticks her head between us, giving simultaneous translation as Abyss-san tells his stories:
“After the tsunami my mother came to live with me up in the mountains for two months,” Abyss-san says. “For forty-eight years I’d caused trouble for her because of the way I live. But after the tsunami, we became close for the first time. Living together was an opportunity to have deep conversations. Then two
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