I knew it would happen some day soon, but never in this way. Never.
The ominous, gathering gloom over these past few months had made me want to leave as quickly as possible and find a more hospitable place to live. Yet deep down I was hoping that the transition would be somewhat smoother, though inevitably painful.
Who could have foreseen such an unspeakable tragedy?
Escapist though it may seem, I've spent these last days trying to come to terms with this country I so passionately love and hate. Listening to the trees and the birds, feeling the snow beneath my feet, bathing at the local onsen, revisiting some of the beautiful places where I once felt happy and whose memories I'll cherish forever.
Preparing to leave.
Because I don't really know when - or if - I'll ever be able to see them again, these beautiful vanishing things, now that I'm being compelled to flee disaster and leave so much behind. We're never prepared indeed.
This was thus the closest I could get to a proper farewell. Sad, but beautiful.
I shall hold you close forever keenly in my memory - and hope that some greater good may one day emerge from all this catastrophe.
I then leave by making mine George Mackay Brown's wish:
It could happen that the atom-and-planet horror at the heart of our civilisation will scatter people again to the quiet beautiful fertile places of the world.
I hope so, I hope.
2 comments:
Espero que as coisas não terminem assim tão fatalistas e que em breve possas regressar.
Beijos
Your words, as always when I encounter them, are beautiful. I cannot imagine what it is like in Japan at the moment. Coming from New Zealand in the wake of our recent disaster the one in your country is terrifyingly vast. I wish you well as you find another place to call a transitory home. P.S. your post unpreparedness astounded me its timing was incredible.
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