ManicDDaily

The news out of Japan continues to be heartbreaking.  The translated words of  survivors are  devastating, their  stoicism inspiring (and devastating).

The landscape is, of course, devastated.  One of the most shocking aspects of the images, for me, is simply the clutter, the jam of detritus, the  crisscross of shard, the shattered layering of mud and rooftop and car, fender and mattress, washing basin, chair, the wayward smile of child’s illustrated toy.

One doesn’t associate this kind of disarray with Japan.  Crushes, yes, odd disjointed pairings (Colonel Sanders in the Ginza), but always, always, even in the plastic samples of dinner offerings in restaurant windows, there is a carefully decorous attention to detail.

I think of a visit there many years ago.  Every leaf in our host’s not-inconsiderable garden seemed to extend from its twig (every twig from its branch) at a gently harmonious angle; the man-made and the organic accompanied each other like thirds or fifths or beautifully atonal sevenths in a single line of music.   Yet the details were executed so thoughtfully that the garden (okay, forget about the plastic food) also seemed perfectly natural, randomly special–signs of forceful manicure a la Versailles were no where visible.

In the images of the last few days, one is conscious of a great and terrible force, careless of both men and the man-made, nature at its most ungentle,