Whoa!

Little Earthquakes

Shocking coincidences and surprising developments happen all of the time. Possibly, we are too enervated by life in the fast lane to recognize them when they happen, but they’re there. I’ve noticed them more recently whilst in Japan, and they have forced me on several occasions to pause, recognize my fluttering heart, and mutter an inarticulate, Keanu Reeves-esque “whoa”. When these things occur, I can imagine the sun, moon and stars whipping around in their celestial atmosphere, getting all liner. This planet shimmy allows for my inner blonde-headed, feather-banged kook to espouse at endless rates how something beyond my control or understanding is afoot and that I should just zip my lip and put dandelions in my Japanese hair-cut hair and hold on for the magical, the mystical, and the down-right mind boggling.

I shall present you with a list of evidence to back up my statement. Hold on to your berets, it’s bound to get goose-fleshy.

1. Back in December, I had the extreme fortune of leaving Phuket, Thailand a mere twelve hours before the tsunami struck and destroyed the beachfront where myself and a friend had vacationed. I revisit that bit of undeserved luck and horrible devastation in my mind’s eye often. Whoa.

2. My supervisor and wild character of a Japanese English Teacher, Esturo Kawabe, knows and likes the band Primus. Please tell me how, possibly the only Japanese person on the face of the Earth who’s familiar with this mid 90s American rock group, also happens to be fluent in English, teach on Ojika, and be assigned as my supervisor. I can’t explain it. It seems that the odds are too great, and the subject is too specific. But there it is. We only became aware of it after he saw a Primus sticker on my Nalgene bottle and asked me about it. Whoa.

3. Coming from Colorado, I had never experienced an earthquake. And, even though I realize that the country I currently reside in is notorious for both earthquakes and anti-earthquake engineers alike, I didn’t have the foresight to expect to be in one. However, my burgeoning worries were quelled shortly after arriving in Ojika. The locals reassured me that although the island is in fact a part of Japan, earthquakes here are non-existent. Well, in March, I learned that non-existent really means rather non-existent. I was shook up in the slightest and most unobtrusive way in the month of March. I had to travel all this way - to an area that hasn’t had one in over 70 years - to get my first does of what it feels like when tectonic plates shift. Ok.... so that’s pretty amazing, right? Well, what’s more amazing is that we had two small earthquakes today, a little over a month later. Whoa.

4. This is my most startling bit of mind goo for you to ponder to date. Last week I finished reading the novel, The Life of Pi. (Suspenseful - I recommend it.) Looking for my next read, I perused my book shelf of archaic and abandoned titles. Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice piqued my interest. I slipped into bed with it, to start my favorite part of the day (an hour of reading before sleep) and found it had been stamped by the bookstore that had recycled it. The stamp was from Lakewood, Colorado - my hometown. What’s more amazing, (and those of you who are my dear friends and family will only be able to realize) is exactly how close it came from my childhood home. A five minute walk at the most. It came from a used bookstore at the end of my block, sharing the same shopping center as the King Soopers that has served as reference point for years and years of giving directions to my house. How about that! How did I, and this book both arrive in such a specific place in the world at different times. Whoa.

So, all that being shared, I must say that I can’t completely discredit the idea that the love of my life might actually wash up on the shores of Ojika after some sort of devastating, but fatality-free shipwreck in the South China Sea. Strange things happen all of the time.

And that is the end of the story.