In the midst of madness...

...there is still beauty to be had.

I realize it when I, guiltily, pull myself away from my order-in lunch at the junior high school today, put my suit jacket back on, and file into the school's genkan with the other sensei. We welcome one of our students--the last of the third graders to graduate--back to the school for the first time in months. We all follow her into the principal's office and cram in around furniture to be the witnesses to the presentation of her diploma. In this small office, they do it with all of the pomp and ceremony that they used when the rest of her class graduated "normally" this morning in the cavernous gym. With the exception of the odd setting, there is no mention or recognition of whatever demons have kept her from school these last months. Her homeroom teacher announces her just like any other student, and the principal hands her the certificate just as woodenly as he's handed all the others, and then we teachers--us small posse--we clap like it was the most regular thing in the world.

In the parts of Japan untouched by the recent tragedy, life goes on.
Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to find that anything was at all amiss up here in Hokkaido, in the far north beyond the nuke plants and the shake-ups and the waves. We go about our day-to-day in a way so quotidien as to cause one to feel guilty of it: safe and ashamed of all the hardships you haven't suffered.

Let this be clear:

I haven't lived through anything.

There was no experience.

If I hadn't had my phone on me at the time, I would have missed all of it.

I haven't been any more than a worried observer, just like all of you in the foreign lands. I've only witnessed what has happened in Japan via internet and TV, and the only way that I can be seen to differ is that these place names make sense to me.

But only just.

I am so unaffected by all of this that it makes your concern absurd (though I thank you for the love in it).

So don't lose any sleep for me. There are others out there who need it more. If, like me, you wish you could do something, then do it:

http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=38380&tid=001