SEA-SIGHT: DAY NINE
northward the honshu coast in an effort to honour the landscape with poetry
a map of the sea floor is posted in our lobby, revealing graduating shades of bluer blues and eyelash-fine lines, the intricacy which all the mirrors and braids of the tide do not confess. I like this glare of human accuracy that must be pinned on everything. the mathematics which have their own method of poetics. some look into the ocean and see a question needing to be answered. some look into it and find an invitation. some find the blue that obstinately refuses to still.
we stop at the remains of taro kanko hotel, whose first three floors were shattered by the tsunami. in the bend of the rust I can envision the curvature of the immensity that had come, distributing its debris in catastrophic interest, rendering our little architectures into the minor forms which it does not distinguish. the earth-force is a dynasty of annihilation, but it is never a simple thing. when something is destroyed we remember what was there, but only up to a certain point. we never remember that once, there was nothing there.
nearby are the sannoiwa rocks, made up of the three stones which are the taiko drum, the man, and the woman. the oblong stature of the centre stone is commanding—a rare character, somehow conveying both anciency and the sense of being unfinished. in its manifold layers and corners are tucked the expansive materials of years, moments made permanent by their age. the sun sculpts a small hole in the clouds and crawls through. in the impermeable stasis of stone I am thinking that perhaps we are wrong in thinking that forward momentum is the only way of living. that stillness is also a kind of living.
upwards is the tsukehama fishing village, a preserved commune as a relic of the old days when people relied on the sea to give them everything. small huts are aligned in the alcove of the coast—for the processing of salt, for the storage of fishing gear, for the drying and cutting of seaweed. the life that these structures testify to is long lost, but their attestations remain precious. even after the tsunami came in with its vicious stride, this village was entirely rebuilt in the hopes that there is good use in remembering.
but the evidence of disaster is evident in the seawall that has been mounted across the mouth of the port. we climb the staircase over it, ignoring the placard of intimidation, and are met with the rescuing view of the rocky landline which drizzle along the sea, scattered and inquisitive, racing in drags of water smoked and clear. the coast forming a claw as if trying to catch something impossible. it is a wondrous, incredible increment that the wall shelters. strange that both sides are equally heavy with the desire to live; each is trying to protect itself from the other.
my next stop was to be itsukushima shrine nearing the end of iwate, but on our way down our car spins helplessly in the ice, and we are forced to impose ourselves on an impossibly kind man who ropes us out of the slick and back into the black sheen of pavement. I try to enforce a five thousand yen bill on him but he doesn’t budge, just barely smiles and waves us off with a ki o tsukete. I say to f, I hate this feeling of not knowing what to do with this gratitude that I can’t demonstrate or give back. and he says, just pass it on.
a local obasan tells us, with increasingly overwhelming excitability, that the shrine is impossible to get to. so we go on and breach the apple-prefecture of aomori.
on the coast of hachinohe, you can see the island of hokkaido across the pacific, impeding on the solitary feeling that the uninterrupted sea hangs onto. it’s already dark when we arrive (I watch the partial moon brighten and brighten from the windows of the speeding car), and the night-sea is an impassioned speech that goes on with increasing levels of grandeur. the sound of waves, at times transparent enough to sleep to, is utterly opaque in the climate of the dark. they form their own inviolate shapes, bodies on the furniture of the land. there are an exact number of stars.
it’s dark. we have spent it all on the most luxurious thing the day has to give—time. still the only thing unravelling in front of us is vastness. tomorrow is the last day. I could not ask for more beauty, or more dramatic lighting, or more tree-scattered mountains, more instruments of the tide, or more melanges of water and sky. it was always about taking what this coast has to give.I only ask, towards some poetic persuasion implicated in the world-fabric—that the residues of these days gather forever in my hands.
