Trembling

March 18, 2011 | Japan, Japan Earthquake 2011, Ruminations, The Land, Tokyo | 13 Comments 

When­ever some­one writes about the be­gin­nings of an earth­quake the story in­evitably starts off with that lull be­fore the event. Usu­ally the story takes a hu­mor­ous twist, be­cause the ex­pe­ri­ence only lasts a mo­ment and then fades into a mem­ory, and when the adren­a­line drains away and the heart stops thump­ing, you’re left with this void that laugh­ter does a good job of fill­ing.¹

The Great Sendai Earth­quake of March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m., in north­east­ern Japan, started the same way. Seven days ago I sat at the liv­ing room ta­ble, work­ing away at my blog de­sign, atyp­i­cally out­side of my stu­dio, loung­ing back against the sofa, sip­ping Prince of Wales tea from a mug. My part­ner lay fast asleep on the floor in her room, still ex­hausted from a hard day work­ing at the hos­pi­tal the day be­fore. The sun shone through the win­dow from a cloud­less blue sky, gray star­lings twit­tered and chor­tled in the branches of a young gingko tree, and the street stood quiet, the el­e­men­tary school chil­dren still not out, a day like any other.

When the first tremor came it felt al­most gen­tle, a soft bump­ing against the floor that made the hang­ing po­tus plant sway in the win­dow sill. It was fol­lowed by an im­pa­tient shud­der that rat­tled the win­dow glass and spoons in the sink. Then all of a sud­den this ti­tanic shrug shoved against the floor and walls and knocked my mug off the ta­ble. For a mo­ment it sub­sided, a breath­less mo­ment, then it rammed into the build­ing again and bucked, shak­ing, the way a dog shakes a mouse in it’s teeth. The move­ment gen­er­ated an al­most in­audi­ble, far­away rum­ble, the same sound you hear when you press your fist flat against your ear and clench your fist hard, grow­ing steadily louder and more indistinct.

I was al­ready up, first un­con­sciously grab­bing my in­sulin kit, then dash­ing to my partner’s room, shak­ing her awake. But she was a deep sleeper and just moaned, throw­ing her arm over her eyes. “Get up! Get up! Get up!” I in­sisted, still not quite scared yet, still hav­ing no idea. I pulled her by her arm and she re­luc­tantly woke, mum­bling, “It’s only an earth­quake. Stop get­ting so ex­cited.” But the earth kept heav­ing and the walls creaked and groaned and the win­dow glass of her room skit­tered against the frame. “It’s big!” I said, louder. “Come on, get up!” She moaned again. A huge fist slammed into the floor, forc­ing it to buckle un­der me and I al­most top­pled over, caught my­self. She was still slow, so, shout­ing now, I wrenched her to her feet and pulled her through the liv­ing room into the cor­ri­dor. My part­ner walked to the bath­room door while I threw open the front door, and stopped it with the old, chewed up plas­tic door wedge. I glanced out at the sunny day out­side, every­thing telling me to get out and fly the coop and get away from this pile of rock, but I stopped my­self. To the bath­room. The bath­room. The bath­room. Where had I heard that it was safe there? Right. The bath­room. We stood in the door­frame as the walls see­sawed back and forth on ei­ther side of us, dust spilling from small fis­sures that split along the cor­ners of the wall, and my thoughts seemed to flut­ter in the dark­ness, with­out di­rec­tion, fran­tic flashes of old lessons re­peated over and over like a litany… don’t go out­side… falling ma­sonry… bath­room tight frame safe… why didn’t I buy those hel­mets?… I should have fin­ished putting that emer­gency back­pack to­gether… oh no! My cam­eras!… but noth­ing co­her­ent that could think my way out of what­ever this huge thing was.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God…

A siren punc­tu­ated the air, howl­ing over the city. Down the hall­way an­other alarm, an in­sis­tent elec­tric beep­ing, echoed down the hallways.

I kept glanc­ing at the ceil­ing, won­der­ing when it would crash­ing down on us and crush our skulls. Out­side I heard the sharp crack and then heavy thud of a con­crete wall falling down. A woman in a neigh­bor­ing apart­ment kept bawl­ing over and over, “Yadaa! Yadaa! Yadaa! Yadaa! Yadaa!” (No! No! No! No! No!) in a high-​​pitched, keen­ing voice. A baby’s thin wail started up in the apart­ment above us.

In Japan­ese mythol­ogy a gi­gan­tic cat­fish is said to re­side be­neath the is­lands. When­ever it rolls or turns it takes the is­land with it, a mus­cu­lar shift­ing of bones. The cat­fish had started wildly awake, shud­dered un­der the in­hab­i­tants, and bro­ken the old sleep with vi­o­lent fits. Only af­ter the mud had clouded the depths and cloaked the cat­fish in dark­ness, did the cat­fish be­gin to set­tle down. The sway­ing be­gan to die down, but not com­pletely, just enough to get our wits to­gether and think what to do. My part­ner got her coat and bag and some food ready, while I gath­ered, as quickly as I could, two packs with light­weight back­pack­ing equipment.

“One look into the liv­ing room con­vinced me that I wouldn’t be able to look for any­thing pre­cious, even if I wanted to. All the dishes in the kitchen cab­i­nets had slide out and crashed to the floor. The wine bot­tles lay smashed and bleed­ing amidst the dishes. The kitchen counter that I had built had shifted two me­ters to­ward the cen­ter of the liv­ing room. In my stu­dio, the en­tire book­shelf sys­tem had col­lapsed into a huge mess, books scat­tered over every­thing, the shelves buried un­der boxes, the gui­tar bro­ken in half, and no way to get in. I’d have to stick only to what we ab­solutely needed, if I could find it.

For the first time since I took a pas­sion­ate in­ter­est in learn­ing how to go back­pack­ing and moun­tain climb­ing with an ex­cep­tion­ally low weight pack, I felt grate­ful for the hours and hours, over the years, por­ing over gear lists and putting to­gether and us­ing in the moun­tains, com­bi­na­tions of gear nec­es­sary for sur­viv­ing out­doors in all kinds of con­di­tions. WIth­out even re­ally think­ing con­sciously, I stuffed two packs with what we needed, in­clud­ing a shel­ter, wa­ter fil­ter, wood burn­ing stove, spe­cial clothes, sleep­ing bags, head­lamps, gloves, etc. I knew we’d be okay out­side, even in the snow or heavy rain. My part­ner im­pa­tiently stood by the door, keep­ing back her thoughts that I was wast­ing time and looked ridicu­lous with my geeky ob­ses­sion. Within five min­utes I was ready and fol­lowed my part­ner out the front door, into the afternoon.

Trees still reg­is­tered the on­go­ing shak­ing, like metronomes tick­ing down the heartbeats.

To be continued…

Disaster Japan Information Gathering Site

March 17, 2011 | Japan Earthquake 2011 | 4 Comments 

Hi Every­one. I have been quiet again for quite a while on Laugh­ing Knees, but not, this time, due to ne­glect. I’ve been very busy set­ting up my other con­cur­rent blogs, Cham­ber Moon, a pho­to­blog, and Trac­ing the Wind, a draw­ing blog. I still have to fin­ish set­ting up my fic­tion blog and pro­fes­sional il­lus­tra­tion site, but for now the two above are on­line and started. I will still mostly post to the pho­to­blog be­cause I just don’t have time to write a lot of long posts to Laugh­ing Knees, but I want to keep it mov­ing along more fre­quently, too.

Also, I’ve just been through the hor­rors of the earth­quake here in Japan, though luck­ily quite far away from the night­mare of the north. I’ll write more in-​​depth about the ex­pe­ri­ence in my next post, but for now I wanted to an­nounce a blog I put to­gether in hope of cen­tral­iz­ing much-​​needed in­for­ma­tion in Eng­lish on deal­ing with the cri­sis. It is not a news blog, or a place to dis­cuss pol­i­tics (in fact there are no com­ments open), but rather a sober and prac­ti­cal ap­proach to bring­ing some mea­sure of or­der to the chaos of in­for­ma­tion about the cri­sis. This in­cludes in­for­ma­tion on where shel­ters are, what the trains sched­ules are, who to go to for ad­vice on trauma, etc. I want to help, not cause fur­ther panic. Please take a look at Dis­as­ter Japan.

Quite a few peo­ple are help­ing with gath­er­ing the in­for­ma­tion and work­ing on the site. If any of you are in­ter­ested, please join the Face­book group “Dis­as­ter Japan In­for­ma­tion Gath­er­ing” (it’s closed and you have to knock to get in… don’t worry it’s not exclusive!)

Hope to see some of you there!