sugar i love

Since a few months after I started living in San Francisco, on every Thursday, I would wait for a column to be up on one of my favorite websites, The Rumpus (in fact, I'm such a big fan that I should link to their site from here, so I just did). Now that I"m back in Japan, because of the time difference, I have to wait until Friday morning. So I try to be patient and wait for another night.

The column is written by a woman named Sugar. She is an amazing, brave, beautiful person and writer. I have dropped tears so many times reading her column, sometimes at home while putting on a make-up, other times at work behind the computer screen.

This week, she wrote to English/creative writing majors who are about to graduate. It rang with me so well not so much because I am a former English/creative writing major who was anxious about the future as because encouragement in her words felt just so appropriate for the current situation of my country where many are still left grieving with the future taken away from their hands unbearably violently and unexpectedly.

And it just happens that the people Sugar directly addressed the piece to are the ones who studied at University of Alabama, which is located in Tuscaloosa, the city severely attacked by the terrible tornado at the end of last month. I think it's a great gift. Although they may not be in the state where words are the first thing they ask for, I believe words will still help them keep standing, or collapse down and cry if that's what they need to do.

The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

Her words are beautiful, but I know it's not words that matter after all. It's what's behind, and hers have love, always. I'm grateful for Sugar, and I hope her words reach the ones who need them the most.

dealing with tragedy

Bin Laden is dead.

When I read the news on Twitter, I was struck by the empty feeling I always feel when I hear news of someone's death. Every time I get shocked, by the fact that someone who has been alive and breathing until just a second ago can be gone in the next. I was by no means sad, knowing what he has done, but when I began to see reactions from American people on the internet, I couldn't help but feel a wave of estrangement.Those were words of joy, excitement and celebration, none of which, to me, fit the occasion--whoever it was that died, it was an occasion of a death (or, in fact, four deaths, as the news later reported).

For all he did, he probably deserved to die. The world is most likely safer and better off without him. He was, after all, the leader of a bunch of terrorists.

But then, who ever deserves to die, really?

Two weeks after the earthquake on March 11, a boy gave a speech at his graduation ceremony at a junior-high in a town by the northern coast where so many people died from the tsunami. Tearful and clenching his teeth with sadness, he said;

"The disaster took away too many precious things from us. It was brutal. We are sad. It is really, really painful. But in this hardship, we should not resent. We should accept what happened and live on, supporting each other. I believe that's the mission for those of us who survived."

The situation is not the same. It wasn't other human beings that cast the tragedy upon us. It wasn't anybody's hatred. There would be no way of revenge even if we wanted it--how would we chase down, catch and kill nature? We never know if Japan wouldn't have wanted a revenge if it had been a human being attacking and causing this much devastation to our country, so it's not about Japan and America. It's about how we get over such devastation, the kind that keeps you up all night in fear and makes you bawl in helplessness and despair.

It's hard not to resent when you are in so much pain and sadness. It's hard not to hate when you lost things that were precious to you. But in all the brutality of what had happened, this fifteen-year-old guy refused to resent, and I find it extremely brave, because it's probably even harder. Resentment, anger, hatred, things like these can get you moving. It takes energy to give up on these and still try to move forward.

But that is the start, I believe, if we want to step ahead for the better.

So maybe we should stop rejoicing over another death, because after all what's behind the seemingly exhilarating joy is hatred, and such joy is in fact empty. This death doesn't cancel thousands and thousands that preceded. This death doesn't bring us back what we've lost.

The sad, but maybe comforting, fact is that there seems to be only a little we can do when something extremely sad falls upon us. We can just grieve and cry over whatever makes us cry writhing and fists gripping for as long as we need to, somehow leave that behind, and keep on.

That's the only way out, and we are all brave enough for that.

a young boy's voice from iwate

Today, I read heartbreaking  journal entries by Yuta Hakoishi, a twelve-year-old boy from Yamada, Iwate, a town that was severely damaged by the tsunami. Here's an English translation that I did on a whim (the original can be found here).

March 11, 2011

We were practicing a song for our graduation ceremony. A big earthquake came and shook us really hard. At first, I thought it was just an earthquake. There was a large tsunami warning, but I didn't think it was really going to happen. Even if it did, I didn't think the waves would be that high. I was totally wrong. I saw wrecked houses and buildings being swept away by water along Route 45. Mom and Dad were at my school before the tsunami. But then, Dad left in his pickup truck. I was worried about him. I prayed he wouldn't be swallowed by the tsunami.

March 18, 2011

It's been a week since the tsunami. Mom said she gave up on Dad because he hasn't been found after this long. Grandpa cried and said, "I'll build the house again and send you guys to school. Don't worry if your dad never comes back. I'll take care of you."

March 23, 2011

I graduated from Osawa Elementary. When we were singing a song, "Arigato (Thank You)," at the graduation ceremony, I was talking to Dad in my mind. "Dad, thanks to you, I finished school. Thank you, Dad." Then, somehow, my voice got shaky and I got a little teary. I had a dream that night. In the dream, Mom and Dad came home from grocery shopping at the supermarket in Miyako.

March 25, 2011

My relative got a phone call. They said Dad had been found near the fire department. We hurried there and saw him lying with his mouth open. My big sister cried so hard. Mom was speechless. My little brother was clinging to my relative. I touched Dad's face. It was colder than water.
In my head, I kept asking Dad, "Why did you leave the school?" I asked that over and over. I also told myself, "You gotta be strong." But my eyes got all teary. He still had his things on, like the titanium accessories, the charm for his feet that he had bought in Tokyo, the wedding ring and the cell phone. I was really surprised his watch was still working. It never stopped working when it was swallowed by the tsunami with my dad and even when my dad stopped breathing. It is my watch now. I will always keep it with me for the rest of my life.

March 26-27, 2011

I can't forget Dad's face. A part of me wishes I had not seen him like that. But because we found him, we can cremate his body now. I got to touch him, too. His chest was bloated. I think he swallowed a lot of water. I'm still glad we found him.

March 28, 2011

We cremated Dad's body today. My sister, Keijiro, Mom, and I all wrote letters and put them in the casket with him. When we said goodbye to him, I told him, "Don't worry about us. I'll take over your job." I got to hold his bones until we had to put them in the grave. I felt relieved when we finally buried him properly.

April 7, 2011

Today, I feel like saying thank you from the bottom of my heart. People who read the article about us sent us letters and photos of Dad from when he ran the Tokyo marathon. There were letters to my family, and to me, too. My dad is amazing. I'm really thankful today.

a month and a day

I wanted to say something yesterday, the day that marked a month from the quake. I couldn't make it in time. But now, I'm finally writing. It's taking me a while to remember how. It is five in the morning, and, again, it doesn't look like I'm making it by the end of my day. I will start again when I get up.

A month has passed, and it's not cold anymore. Days are sunny, and flowers are blossoming.

a song

what i learned from miyazaki

We have to create to reach out, not for our own satisfaction.

dead and alive, living and dying

My late grandfather

Over the weekend, my mom and I visited Yamagata, where she grew up. The main purpose of the trip was to see her mom, my grandmother, in the hospital. From what we'd heard from my aunt, mom's sister, we thought grandma would be weak and groggy, probably not able to tell who we were, but when we got to her room, she smiled and grabbed my hand with strength that surprised me.

"Do you remember her?" my aunt asked, pointing at me. It'd been five years since I'd last seen grandma.
"Of course!" she said a bit indignantly. "But I didn't recognize her." She looked at me and gestured with her hand, "She was so little when I saw her last time!"

So she remembered me only as a little girl. She'd shrunken, and her hands were pale and bony. But her eyes had twinkle of a sane person, her words sharp and humorous.

For all we knew, my grandmother was dying. She is. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer two years ago, and the doctor told her family (she doesn't know) that she'd only have a few months. Since then, in our minds was always the question, How much longer will she last? When my mom and I planed this trip earlier this year, she asked my aunt, who told us visiting in February would be a bad idea because of the snow, "Will we still make it in time if we visit in March?"

Once when I was teaching English, my student and I started talking about adjectives about living and dying. As I explained the differences between dead and alive, and dying and living, a realization hit me, and I said, thrilled, "So when you're dying, you are actually living, too. Dead and alive don't happen at the same time, but dying and living do." 

That's what I saw in the white, small corner of the hospital room. Dying people are living, not dead. My grandma, though her body might be decaying little by little and she might've been the closest to death among the four of us, was still there, living.

She ate a dorayaki (which is a type of Japanese sweets) we brought as a souvenir slowly. My aunt and my mom were engaged in a conversation about their relatives. Grandma glanced up at me a few times and lifted her eyebrows in a smile, which made me feel as if I was the little girl she remembered. It was a fuzzy, happy feeling. Embarrassed by the assumption I'd made about her dying, I held grandma's left hand in my hands as she spoke with my mom, for she'd told us that the left side of her body was always cold. The talk went on, and my arms grew numb, but I kept my hands in the praying position feeling her hand, frail like a baby bird, gaining warmth, slowly, but surely.