Japan

Here the sun is shining, a soft wind gently bounces the poinciana leaves and a resident pair of magpies carol love songs to each other. On the northern curve of the planet a small island country is drowning in debris, grief and fear. Of course I mean Japan. Not only have they had to endure an earthquake and a tsunami but now they are faced with the possibility of a nuclear meltdown from two different sites. It is unprecedented. They are talking about 10,000 people missing but I suspect the figure will be much much more. Whole villages have disappeared. They found a 60 year old man clinging to his roof 15 miles out to sea. His wife was swept away. Before his eyes. The immensity of the disaster is so huge that relief workers can't even get in to the places where they are most needed.

It is a reminder to us how brief and precarious life is. R and I were taking our whippet-led 6km walk yesterday at dusk discussing it. A local resident died a week ago, drove his truck into a dam. Was he accident-prone, drunk, suicidal? No one knows. But it was unexpected. He lived alone, no pets, not particularly well liked. He was actually a bit creepy. At least I found him so. He struck me as a man who would have creepy magazines in his bedroom. Perhaps I am being unfair and he was religious and honourable and misunderstood. But he's dead. Unexpectedly dead. As are those unfortunate souls in Grantham, in Christchurch and now Sendai and beyond. I got rather fierce in discussing this because all of us, me included, live as though we will live forever. We won't. But and it's a big BUT, as long as we have breath, we have the greatest miracle. In all the billions that have come and expired before us and those billions that will come and expire after us WE are the lucky ones. We breathe. How can anything truly bother us as long as we breathe? The things I get upset about, the things that depress or annoy me, what of them? They are nothing for I, out of all the billions, I breathe. That very fact is a miracle beyond miracles. And I am so so grateful. The dead of Japan have stopped breathing, for them the miracle of this place, this planet, this time, has stopped.