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Introduction The poem, "Shock Cocoon" relied on themes and inspirations drawn from Charles Pellegrino's work "The Ghosts of Vesuvius", where Pellegrino describes some of the forensic and paleo- archeology of major catastrophic sites at which he has worked: Vesuvius, undersea exploration of the Titanic, Ground Zero of the World Trade Center. I had nearly finished reading Charles' fascinating scientific and personal account of human history under stress when the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. The connection between the two subjects was inescapable. As well, the poem was greatly influenced by Charles' remarkable account of the events of August 1945, in his book "The Last Train From Hiroshima" (2010), where we are given a very detailed and personal look at the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the point of view of those who survived it and those who did not. Reading it, I could not avoid understainding the enormous burden those events have placed on the shoulders of our children, for many generations to come. Even with such detailed briefings, it took several days before I was able to recover from my own shock at the unfolding (and still unfolding) horrors on the Japanese coast to pick up my pen in an attempt to record my thoughts. To paraphrase Pellegrino, writing about this wasn't merely an exercise in poetry, some catastrophic event to be inked on a page. "These are people," the priest at St. Paul's, The House of Souls, reminded Charles, regarding the scientific nature of his work at Ground Zero. I now felt those words directed towards me. A stern reminder that, when we are handling the pain and suffering of others, we are dealing with sacraments and not simply clever turns of phrase with which to amuse ourselves and our audience. If I was to pry into these lives, into the hearts of those who suffered those events, I would need keep in mind in every choice of word, whether for the living or dead, "These are people." - 'gaman', Japanese, 'forbearance, ' honorable endurance of suffering', a word you can easily define with a google search, where you will find dozens of different nuances and connotations, most focusing around some type of stoic resolve in the face of adversity. Pronounced 'gama(ng)' (the ending is a muted short nasal vocaloid - and is meant to mimic the soft ringing extension of a gong.) Useage: 'gaman' is used in three different ways in the work. In the first stanza the term is introduced in an unqualified manner, defined merely as a technique of survival, nothing more - "to survive they say, gaman." (though it carries the implication of gaman as a way to survive' and ironic sense that the ones who were prompting 'gaman' (officials, nuclear industry spokesmen) were encouraging this posture only to insure their own survival. In the second stanza 'gaman' gains an ironic and cynical voice - a chorus of trivializing gongs, passive and dismissive. In the third stanza, the cynicism is redoubled - it becomes a taunt, as if to say, all those dead people/displaced people - well, they'll all be gone, but not to worry, the land is gaman - always enduring. The next stanza further intensifies the irony of gaman with falsification and denial - don't worry, it will all wash away, nothing here, move along folks, everything is under control. (an accurate description if one considers the official lies and off-hand dismissals that are still being made by the government and the industry.) The final 'gaman' is silent, it is for the dead - their endurance and honorable forbearance, even in the face of such disrespect and official abuse. It will be for later generations to resurrect the true stories of the events and correct the mistakes that dishonored the dead. In previous versions it was the final word of the poem. It has been removed. It has no sound that the living can hear. General meanings of 'gaman': Over the years, as I have encountered this term, I know that none of the book definitions, taken together, quite encompass the meaning of 'gaman'. To get that, you'll have to ask a few people. Ask those who lived the nightmare of internment camps, gaman. Ask those who looked on as their homes and lives were swept away and now turn to help rebuild and to help those who are suffering, rebuild. Ask those who read through lists of the living and the dead at the behest of friends and strangers to find the names of kin, even as they search for the names of their own loved ones. That is gaman. Ask those who stayed behind, knowing they would perish comforting and assisting others who would perish with them. Though their moment of resolve might be very brief, it was none the less, gaman. And, ask those first-responders who ran toward the fury and the danger, when all others were fleeing from it, and those who knew their fate was sealed, even as they worked feverishly to quench the fires at the Fukishima reactors. Ask those who stand tall in the face of cruel assault and insult, whether from nature or inflicted by others. Gaman is more than simply an affect of forbearance and the endurance of pain. It is the practice of encompassing and transcending pain about which one can do little. It makes of the one who so endures something larger than that which confronts them. It makes them larger than life. Sometimes, it makes them larger than death. In the face of that which one cannot change, gaman is an act of courage and transcendence. In the face of that which can and ought be changed, gaman is not an antidote. It can also morph into a dangerous retreat from reality. But for those who are unable to change such cruel and persistent events, it is a way of converting them into something beyond the acceptance of tragedy; a sacrament which, as Gregory Bateson defined it, is "an exterior visible sign of an interior state of grace". Without such signs, the tragic is swallowed whole in the dust clouds of catastrophe and no visible sign of our nobility remains. - 'Shock Cocoon' - Within great catastrophic events that destroy all in their path, leaving nothing - volcanic eruptions, nuclear bomb blasts, hurricanes and tornadoes, violent earthquakes - there are small pockets of perfect safety or preservation. A child's toy, a credit card, a flower, a glass of water might remain intact and untouched by the fury that pulverizes everything around them. 79 AD. Heruculanaeum, a wax-tablet lay in a desk drawer. It was the legal brief of a Roman slave fighting for her freedom; a perfectly preserved artifact, still readable 2000 years later, while the rooms around it were utterly destroyed in the blast and heat of pyroclastic flows from Vesuvius. Animals and people, too, may emerge from such unimaginably destructive events, alive and unscathed. The 1.6 kiloton blast of the collapse of the WTC also wrapped a few lucky souls in such shock cocoons. Perhaps some of the shock cocoons at Pompeii and Herculanaeum also permitted a few lucky souls to leave the confines of their 'escape pods' and walk away, alive and unharmed. We have no record of this, but it is entirely possible. In any case, shock cocoons are the toy chests of Of archeo-paleontologists who delight in finding them and the bounty of published papers that issue from their discovery. It motivates them to lay roses at the sites of ancient as well as modern catastrophes and to reclaim the nobility of those who suffered them. - Subtextual quotes: The first two quotes by the mayor and doctor were taken from published news reports of people in the path of the March 11th tsunami. The third quote is the words of Sergeant Robert Vargas, a Port Authority officer, as recorded by Charles Pellegrino. Sergeant Vargas not only was cocooned in the lobby of the WTC South Tower as it rushed passed him to bury itself five-stories into the basement; but also found himself in a second shock cocoon as he fled the initial collapse and was overtaken by the underground blast surge that followed. For officer Vargas, it was, indeed, "a really strange day". - The 'doll of Hercules' - Charles Pellegrino relates the story of the body of a perfectly preserved eight year old girl, buried just outside the gates of Herculaneum after the eruption of Vesuvius. The girl was clutching a small carved wooden head to her chest. Archeologists assumed that it was a head broken from a religious icon that was hastily taken along with a few other personal possessions as the family fled from the volcanic nightmare. The carved head was removed to the Naples museum. Later examination found traces of cloth and padding still clinging to its base, indicating that the object was not the head of an idol at all, but that of a doll which the child had clutched to her chest during her last moments of life. During the forensic work done at the site of the WTC towers, archeologists there gained a very personal understanding of the sacramental nature of their work. When they returned to again take up work at Vesuvius, they began to place roses at the sites of the entombed dead, as had become their custom in the work at ground zero. One of them also brought along a doll and placed it there, accompanied by a handwritten note: "From the children of New York to the children of Vesuvius." - 'split of wood, lift of stone': Some of the most poignant descriptions in "Ghosts of Vesuvius" center around those who acted to save or comfort others without regard to their own safety; indeed, often at the cost of their own lives. To these acts and those who did them, Charles reserves a passage from the Nile River Gospel, attributing to Jesus the words, "Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone and you will find me there." - 'House of Souls', St. Paul's Church. Located just at the edge of Ground Zero, St. Paul's was provided its own shock cocoon, and was not destroyed as it otherwise certainly would have been by the collapse of the towers. It has since become the repository and requiem for those who perished on that day. There, the names of those who died are brought and kept along with their photographs and notes from family, friends and strangers who come to remember them and their names, and to place roses in their memory. - 'paper and broomstick and fan' - The accessible interpretation might be: It is a stanza describing the attempts to soothe, persuade and calm an increasingly worried and mistrustful population. The 'paper' (charts, calculations, equations); the 'broomstick' (magical thinking, feel-good rhetoric and other wand-waving solutions); the 'fan' (audiences, spectacle, diversion, concealment and denial) all to the end of concealing what happens when history comes too close to us. The less accessible interpretation is embedded in this recent communication to some friends: Assurance to Friends, After Fukushima, Frannie has informed me that our local t.v. channel demonstration makes the science behind dispersal of radioactivity in the atmosphere perfectly clear: SCENE 1: News anchor presents a simple object demonstration: 1) a broom-stick; 2) paper towels*; 3) a household fan. SCENE 2: The paper towels (clouds) are wrapped around the broomstick (reactor) and held in front of the household fan (wind). SCENE 3: the fan is turned on; the paper towels unroll from the broomstick; the towels drift across the room. That's all there is to it, folks. Simple as heating candles until they melt. Nothing spooky here, move along.... to the next exhibit: BREAKING BULLETIN (same channel, true) : "The danger to California from radioactive fallout is the same as if you were barbecuing pork chops in California and the smoke was to drift towards Pennsylvania." LATEST (imagined) BULLETIN: The Pennsylvania Legislature has consented to the unregulated cooking of Japanese bacon imported from California. Wisconsin has followed suit with the proviso that those cooking Japanese pork products must agree to forfeit their Medicare rights and may not collectively barbecue such products at picnics of more than three people. [post-note: frannie assures me that her first-grade classes could have come up with better science projects than these.] [advisory: we recommend foregoing purchases of Potassium Iodide tablets in favor of stocking up on Bounty paper towels.] [* "paper towels": in reality, the T.V. station used toilet paper in the demonstration. However, it was felt that identifying it as such, in this instance, would stretch credulity beyond the breaking point and the whole story would have been rendered as totally unbelievable.] More at 11:00... PRELUDE: Beyond Gaman, kakusei The toll of bells of Gaman will continue to ring in the hearts of the Japanese people until the last soul of the disaster is named and put respectfully to rest. But even now, as the work of recovery continues in a nation swept by the unleashed fury of the sea, a new sound can be heard in the land as the people awaken from the brace of enduring unimaginable hardship. It is kakusei'the awakening'that now sets the stage for the next chapter in this saga of pain. The people of Japan, as I write this note, begin to awaken and are no longer content to stand silent in the face of forces they could not control. As disillusionment begins to set in, and the long hard work of cleaning up their ruined homes and countryside is engaged, a wave of anger begins to swell. How did this happen, why were we so unprepared? The people look south at the still raging furnaces of Fukushima-Daiichi and ask, "Who put those there? What manner of arrogance so miscalculated the powers of nature that they would risk a nation with their own ambition? It is the awakening, kakusei that brings this island to its feet to examine how such a thing might have happened - the betrayal of their trust, the dishonesty of their leaders, the greed of those who deliberately put them in harm's way for their own selfish interests. Kakusei, rushes in to replace the withdrawn sea with different kind of tsunami; a tsunami which does not arise from the depths of the sea, but rather from the depths of an unsettled heart that seeks to purge itself of the of those who so dishonored the trust that was placed in their hands. This tsunami, born on the wave of kakusei, will not subside until the last shameful trace of those who brought such sorrow to their land are swept out to sea and forgotten. © March 2011, red slider. All rights reserved. 
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