1963

These 4 days in the summer of 1963 were to be remembered forever. The sunlight, through the falling dust in the church floor.

As the terrain started crumbling below me.

I reached out toward the window sill. I frantically started pulling away the threads of paper. The window sill came off. Pieces of the ground were falling below me. The mud-tower reaching out of the rock-face came crashing down.

She fell.

I saw her body falling in the midst of the brown rumble. And then her was flat on the ground, face down.

Now there was nothing more than then ledge of cliff I was standing on, trying not to fall off. And small pieces of it, stones, where falling piece by piece.

I grabbed onto the window ledge and started pulling myself in. And I was inside.

A Japanese woman came running into the room to see what was the commotion. I was in the back storage room of an apartment. I went in the living room.

It was nice and a world away from the deadly experience of chaos I had just gone through. Suddenly it seemed there was no storm and nothing had really happened. I sat down and shakingly poured myself a cup of tea.

The lady was sitting opposite of me and looking through me with deep green eyes. I didn’t know what to say.