the unimaginable

We live by the familiar. Things may change around us - our house may fall or burn, a road might be widened, shops might be torn down or rebuilt anew. But the general lay of things remains constant, and this constancy gives us the opportunity to build lives in which risk is possible.

Whenever I revisit my old family home in Vaucluse I notice the changes. An ugly apartment block where there used to be farms and bamboo. Huge shrubs masking our old house so that not a brick can be seen from the road. A cinema that is now a Coles. But the lay of things is familiar still - the bend in the road near our house, the magnificent view out through Rosy Gully, the old cemetery up the hill with its headless angels. Macquarie lighthouse.

So when I look at photos of towns in the tsunami zone in Japan, towns which have almost been erased from the landscape, then I wonder how people might return and pick up the pieces. Or how they can get on with life when everything that is familiar is gone. When everything is unfamiliar all of the time, and this is where and how you must live, then how do you proceed? How do you process the little daily transactions that encompass existence?

I don't know, but the poor people of towns like Ofunato and Natori are about to find out. We can spare a thought for their plight every time we take for granted what is constant in our own lives. And step into their shoes, if only for a moment.