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「２０１１年３月１２日」 ・ my coming, my going; two simple happenings that got entangled.
This afternoon at a little before 3 PM shocks from a magnitude 8.9 earthquake hit Tokyo. I was in the Shibuya Red Cross waiting for my doctor's appointment. They'd just taken three vials of blood for tests. My first thought when everything started swaying was that I was passing out, and that I should have eaten a sandwich or something beforehand ( Read more... ) -
sixty-five years (and three days; as always, i'm a little late).
Before I got there, the only thing I knew about Hiroshima was that we had dropped an atomic bomb on it. For me, Hiroshima was that menacing mushroom cloud. I expected it to be a mournful memorial city, perpetually wrapped in gloom, a place where every activity would be dampened and shadowed by the terrible thing that had happened there. I ( Read more... ) -
and you, you could read me anything.
It's easy to confuse attachment to a place and people, and more subtly, to a language, with patriotism. They may overlap, but they're not the same, contrary to what flag-wavers the world over would have us believe. There are institutions that, intentionally or not, promote such confusion. International athletic competitions are enormously ( Read more... )
