This is a long post, but then Shi Shi beach is long.  It’s one of the wildest, most forlorn, most beautiful beaches in the world, four hours by car and ferry from Seattle, and then another hour slogging through psychedelically viscous deep mud, ending in an ohmygod slither down a steep cliff, clinging to tree roots as you go, and then…  the magnificent wilderness of the Pacific Ocean.

Usually I come here in winter, after a storm, when the water wells up so high that you swear it’s going to swamp you like a tsunami wave.  The pounding of it makes the sand beneath your feet reverberate like an ongoing earthquake (seriously:  it registers on seismic sensors.)  With the wind high and rain flying at you, there’s no telling where water ends and sky begins.  Spume lifts in huge curtains off the tops of the waves;  giant balls of foam race along the beach as though propelled by some inner force;  the roar of the water drowns out anything but shouting.  To stand on Shi Shi at such times is thrilling and humbling and terrifying all at the same time.

The ocean tosses up whatever it carries here, and some of it comes back home with me.  Buoys torn loose from crab pots;  tangled nets and long lines of rope;  even, once, a blue hardhat that belonged to someone called Beata Riggo.  I know this because the name is there, carefully marked in indelible ink on the mesh webbing inside the hat.  A Norwegian name, I think, though I’m not sure.  The hat must have gone overboard.  But it wasn’t until last week that it occurred to me that its owner might have gone overboard too.

I was at Shi Shi on a sunny summer day, for a change.  Yet there was a certain overcast to the sun, at least in my mind, because now a different kind of flotsam is coming ashore.  The ocean has carried the debris from the tsunami that ravaged the eastern coast of Japan over a year ago, and now it’s beginning to arrive on the west coast of America, ten thousand miles away.  A fishing boat washed ashore this spring on Vancouver Island;  a floating dock on the Oregon shore.  And at Shi Shi?  I kind of didn’t want to know.

But the indomitable Jen Graves, art critic of The Stranger, was braver than I.   Like me, she’d been part of an kind of ad hoc temporary collective of art and tech types convened a couple of weeks ago to explore problems they might collaborate on.  The tsunami debris was identified as one such problem:  how to contain, it, how to handle it and collect it and dispose of it.  But for me, the problem was quite the opposite.  It was how to conserve it.

What Jen and I saw washing up on the Pacific coast is what remains of people’s lives.  It’s what remains of people who died.  There was stuff on the beach that day I’d never seen there before.  Nothing as dramatic as a boat or a floating dock, but small remnants of humanity like a piece of wood that might have been part of a broomstick, but with many layers of multi-colored paint on it, which made it seem somehow ceremonial.  Or matte black spheres that looked at first like mines, but turned out to be plastic floats from Japanese fishing nets.   Or – the bane of our oceans – Styrofoam, brittle and yellowed by salt and time.

This is only the beginning.  More will come.  I can see that it’s an environmental problem, of course, but surely it’s also a cultural one, even an existential one.  This is, after all, more than mere debris.  It’s testimony.  Testimony to other people’s lives, to the power of the ocean, to the conditionality of our own existence.  To treat it as a problem that can be “solved” seems to me insufficient.  Surely a group of artists and technologists could find a more creative “solution”?

An interpretable site?  A memorial?  An installation?  I don’t know.  But another country’s tragedy as our debris?  I think we can do better than that.  And perhaps we will.  We meet again tonight, this time open to the public, and I’ll be wearing Beata Riggo’s hardhat – not because I look good in it (in fact I look idiotic), but as a reminder, at least to me, that we need to conserve not only the environment, but also memory.  That we need to respect the power of the ocean rather than try to control it.  That we need to be thrilled and humbled and terrified all at the same time.

Exactly a month after the humongous 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, Japan has finally raised the severity level of the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant from level 5  to level 7.   That’s the highest there is.

I guess they could no longer deny reality.  Maybe we can’t either.

The decision came after another huge aftershock (6.6) today.  Which followed an identically huge one yesterday.  And another even larger one (7.1) four days ago.  Which makes me wonder what the new definition of “aftershock” might be.  The dimensions of the unfolding disaster at Fukushima seem to have had a devastating effect on, among so much else, our ability to react.

Now it’s true that a 7.1 is nothing compared to the 9.0 one on March 11 (reminder:  a 9.0 is ten times more powerful than an 8.0, which is ten times more powerful than a 7.0, and so on).  But as I write, these ‘aftershocks’ (any one of which would send Seattle into total panic) all seem to be right in the area of Fukushima.  Where things have clearly gone not from very bad to worse, but from very bad to worst.

So how come it’s no longer headline news? Have we gotten used so quickly to nuclear disaster?  Do we seriously think that because it’s “over there” in Japan it’s not quite real?

Take the word “indefinitely” in this April 6 front-page NYT story, for example.  It could mean an indefinite amount of time.  It could also mean a very, very long amount of time.

United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semi-molten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.

Buried in the very last paragraph of the story is this, from the director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists talking about the nightmarish pile-up of problems at Fukushima:

Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air.  They’ve got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse.

Two days later, and a 7.1 quake hits — a pretty good definition of a missed step —  and yet the story is suddenly not on the front page of the NYT, but on page 14, with the scariest part again buried at the end:

At Fukushima No. 2, extremely radioactive material continues to ooze out of the reactor pressure vessel, and the leak is likely to widen with time, a western nuclear executive asserted.

“It’s a little like pulling a thread out of your tie,” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect business connections in Japan. “Any breach gets bigger.”

Flashes of extremely intense radioactivity have become a serious problem, he said. Tokyo Electric’s difficulties in providing accurate information on radiation are not a result of software problems, as some Japanese officials have suggested, but stem from damage to measurement instruments caused by radiation, the executive said.

In other words, nobody knows what’s happening because there’s so much radiation — those “flashes of extremely intense radioactivity” — that it’s fried the gauges.

Meanwhile, that “extremely radioactive material” keeps oozing out.  Into the Pacific Ocean.  And into the air.   Which means that in an “indefinite” amount of time, it will reach us, wherever we are.  And that sounds pretty definite to me.

———————

If you want to see just how many earthquakes there’ve been in Japan since March 11, click here for a horribly hypnotic visual timeline of the size, frequency and depth of the ongoing tsunami of quakes (it comes courtesy of a researcher at the University of Canterbury in, no coincidence, Christchurch, New Zealand).  You can follow every one since March 11, when the 9.0 lights up the whole screen, or click on the upper right-hand corner for any date you select.

The super-moon is clearly having its effect on me.  I’m not exactly a wide-eyed optimist, my sense of tragedy is rather well-developed, and I certainly don’t think in terms of “cosmic evolutionary steps” like the writer quoted below, yet I found her description of life right now in Sendai, Japan, very moving.

I was sent it by a friend in New York who wrote:  “There is much to be depressed about what is happening in Japan, the Middle East, and the U.S., and yet this morning, when someone forwarded me this letter from Anne Thomas about her decision to stay in Sendai, I knew I had to send it on because this is really a time for the best in human beings to come forth.  I am glad to be exploring with all of you what it is to be human:

A letter from Sendai
ANNE THOMAS  3/14/2011
published online @ Ode magazine

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed  to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is now even more worthy of that name, I am staying at a friend’s home. We share  supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one  room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and  beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes.  People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or  line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water  running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up  their jugs and buckets.

It’s utterly amazingly that where I  am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front  door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying,  “Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one  another.”

Quakes keep coming. Last night they  struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass  overhead often.

We got water for a few hours in our  homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this  afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people  have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We  feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us  now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level  of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not  just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes  happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or  laundry out drying in the sun. People lining  up for water and food, and yet  a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same  time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty  are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the  heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but  now the whole sky is filled. The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the  crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky  magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so  wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this  e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my  entrance-way. I have no idea from whom, but it is  there. Old men in green  hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to  complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear.  Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect  aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we  are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that  I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than  other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my  friend’s husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed  again.

Somehow at this time I realize from  direct experience that there is indeed an enormous cosmic  evolutionary step  that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I  experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening  very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is  happening.  I don’t. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that is much  larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet  magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me,

With Love in return, to you  all, A

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and  right doing,
there is a field.  I will meet you  there. —  Rumi

Somehow, with the news horrible from Japan to the Middle East, the idea that there’s going to be a “super-moon” this weekend — a huge full moon, with that sunlit pile of rock closer to the earth than it’s been in 18 years — makes me happy.

Some people are apparently seeing all kinds of weird auguries in thus lunar perigee.  Not me.  I think of it more as a blessing, a kind of consolation.

I  imagine it slowly appearing over the rim of the mountains, as though some gigantic hand were inflating an impossibly outsize balloon.  It’ll be deep golden orange, the color of California poppies, the color of spring. Then as it reaches its full size, it’ll lift off into the sky, a giant floating ball of gold.  And then slowly — but so fast, too fast — it’ll rise higher and become smaller, paler, whiter, until there it goes, just another full moon, and you walk back inside feeling as though you’ve just been graced with magic, in touch again with a sense of wonder.

This time I can only imagine it.  The forecast here is for rain.  But if the sky is clear where you are at moonrise, don’t hesitate:  go outside with someone close to you and watch, and be grateful.

Replying to an email from a friend just now, I quoted a line from Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s “Ozymandias,’ written in response to a giant sculpture of a pharoah’s head lying on its side at Luxor, Egypt. Then as I thought of the whole poem, I began to get chills up and down my spine. So with nuclear disaster in Japan uppermost in all our minds, here it is:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far way.

When a political activist friend who runs an extensive email distribution list sent out this photograph over the weekend, many on her list mistakenly understood that she’d said it was taken in the US Congress and rushed to correct her.  In fact it was “only” Connecticut’s House of Representatives. The trouble being that it might be too representative:

Note that in addition to the two solitaire-playing legislators sitting side by side (the irony of that!), the guy sitting in the row in front of them is on Facebook, while the guy behind is checking out baseball scores.

The photograph is indeed real.  And old. It was taken on August 31, 2009, in the final session on the Connecticut budget, as Minority leader Larry Cafero (R – Norwalk, standing at right) was holding forth at length.  Jack Hennessy (D-Bridgeport,  center foreground) at least issued a letter of apology to his constituents, and has doubtless since undergone solitaire detox.

But as my friend noted in a follow-up email, at a time when our screens are full of images of the tsunami in Japan, when nuclear reactors there are on the verge of meltdown, when Ghadafi is bombing his own citizens in Libya, when Saudi Arabia has sent troops into Bahrain, when the Supreme Court has given corporations the right to fund US elections, and, as they say, much much more, this photograph is what the politically concerned people on her list chose to get really worked up about.

She wondered angrily if this reaction was a sign of paralysis, of feeling helpless to do anything when it feels like the world is in free-fall.  “So many of you put your good brainpower to work to let me know that this is not the U.S. legislature,” she said.  “Did I imply that it was?  Sorry.  Regardless of whether it is state or federal, the state of the political sphere is beyond belief.”

She’s right to be angry.  People in the Middle East and elsewhere are literally dying for a taste of democracy, while here in the US we take it so for granted that half the electorate doesn’t even bother to vote.  And quite clearly, dumb voters elect dumb representatives.  I mean, they could at least have been playing chess…