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My husband got a new shortwave radio for his birthday recently; he has been connecting to his world through shortwave – a delightful process of hearing the languages and accents of the world he lives in describe their own experiences in their own way, at their own times. I often wake in the small hours of the morning and find him guiltily up in the living room with the earphones on catching radio Japan.
As such, he has become a new and vibrant source of first hand world information. It is not all what it is reported to be as filtered and reconstituted through our American reporting system.
For instance, only the Japanese will report that three hundred yards from the shore of the devastation of the January tsunami in Japan, a single cherry tree blooms as Japan’s spring will not be denied. Cherry blossom time in Japan is symbolic of healing and rebirth. The first hand remarks of radio Japan as it shares its visions of healing are undeniably catching. The hope of this stoic nation and the world watch as these delicate blossoms live their tender short lives out in beauty and fragility against the backdrop of destruction and the threatening doom of radioactive forces beyond our control; reminding us that not all forces beyond our control or complete understanding are bent upon our destruction, and that beauty has more force and power than we credit it with.
Thousands of miles away, in the midst of terrifying, destructive, deadly storms of sudden and seemingly uncontrollable rage, here in the heartland of America, a young man is sucked up from his home and before our virtual computerized eyes is taken to Oz and gently returned without a scratch, to walk home and hug his parents. And we are once again amazed, confused, awed and humbled in our obvious ignorance of the benignity of the violence of nature; how it interacts with us and how it walks with us upon this planet- how we live in and with it’s energies.
This week, my husband strolled among the Boston Gardens, recording the bursting of our surprising spring upon a wintered and sanded and salted landscape that would seem, two months ago, never to have held the capacity for the tenderness of fragile new growth again.
Just two days before, the world had been told that the the human tsunami, the terrifying cyclone of September 11th, Osama Bin Laden, had passed from the face of our earth, that his energy had been dissipated, that the forces of destruction and terror have passed through us like water and wind, leaving their mark, taking their toll, and causing us to wonder if there is a rising from such pain. As my husband walked the Boston Gardens, he came upon the 9-11 memorial with the names of the Massachusetts victims engraved upon it, and a single cherry tree in blossom standing in solitary eloquence beside it….