A blog cruelly neglected and a Hula trying to make ammends. This post promises to maintain maintence, but blogspiration comes and goes. At the very least I can provide the play-by-play, which, in turn, has more twists than O'Henry.Since I've last written I've changed my hair thrice. Blond to blonder to V for Vendetta short. Today I'll go back to basics. Brown and all things natural. Silly, as I can't remember the last time I've been without color. I call it the quarterly year change. Every 3-4 months, like clockwork, my hair changes, and in turn, slightly, so do I.
In related news, I think I'm having a love affair with commas today.
I suppose I should start with August 6th. It's as memorible a day as any, and I'm fortunate to have spent it in Hiroshima. We (a gaggle of friends and I) met up in the early morning hours to observe and pay our respects to the memory of the Atomic Bomb dropping. There was a peace vigil held in Peace Memorial Park. Thousands of residents gathered around the centograph in the heart of the park. It was early and I couldn't find my friends so I slinked in amongst the other observers and watched from a difficult distance. There was chatter, and general crowd bearing noise, but when the ceremony started I could hear every typically sound-less sound: the fidgeting of feet, a child clamping her barrett in place, the well paced two step of each woman who laid a wreath at the Heart of the memorial. This kind of silence is scary, and everyone watched with rapt attention. What we were so concerned with seeing, I can't remember. I know I needed a focal point, because to look at anyone else seemed an admission of guilt. The crimes of our country, no matter how old, never leave us.
8:15 promised a moment of silence. Everyone was positioned and poised to bow their heads, listen to the bells and think of lives lost. But then, the deterrent. A political protest some distance back that bellowed, ever so softly in the distance. It was a chorus of cries and I initially chalked it up to a dubbed recording of the screams of the victims of the bomb dropping. My, this is morbid. To hear that- as a product of your own making, never leaves you. It's the crime scene you witnessed. Or a loved ones last words before the machine shuts down. When I was later told about the protest I was incensed. Can't they observe a moment of silence? Can't they pay respects to the living in addition to the dead? But it all makes sense in the end. They were serving the only purpose they had left to serve. To fight it to the end. And their rhythm and rehearsed chants only fueled my conviction that this was something, and is something and will forever remain something that should never again happen.
Fast forward through the day. We purchased laterns and wrote messages of peace to be sent down the river, candle in tow, at nightfall. We splayed ourselves over bridge hangings and watched the laterns tug-a-lug down the river. Some laterns adherred themselves to others. Like lovers, hand-in-hand they floated. Some tipped, and the Sharpie penned messages washed away in the water. It's kind of redeeming to think of the capsized laterns. Their hope is forever embedded in the river walls. So it goes.
