It all started when…
I am transported back in time to Japan, perhaps my second or third visit, to the deep red rock of Mount Fuji. A hot muggy day, accompanied by my dear Japanese friend Masa, his fragile wife Shigemi, Christopher, a fair haired jazz drummer from Hunnebostrand, with his German wife Lorraine, pregnant, carrying their daughter, they plan to call Ruby. We drive leisurely out to the sacred mountain stopping at a friend’s house to smoke hashish, and again, a little stoned, to luxuriate in sulphur waters of natural hot spring, nestled high on a gentle sloping foothill.
Refreshed we set out on the upward weaving Fuji road. At a third of the way up the sacred volcano, the road ends. The breathtaking panorama, softened by a haze of humidity, tempts us to climb higher. Disembarking from Toyota space wagon, the texture and colour of terrain is astonishing. Everywhere fist size rocks of pumice, blood red, I want to put one in my pocket to take home but resist the temptation. One or two clouds hover just out of arms reach. All climb silently several hundred feet. I observe the two couples hand linked and feel a sense of remorse to have no love to share this splendour. The ground crackles under foot. A few hundred feet higher, the slope of the land steepens and eventually we pause to take our breath casting eyes over the wondrous view, lake Fuji shrunk beneath feet, swan and dragon pedalos, tiny black calligraphy on turquoise parchment.
Suddenly, lying on sharp ground I have the impression that the earth is turning to jelly. The hard mountain a viscous thick liquid. An extraordinary wave ripples the solid earth and for almost ten seconds, though it seems an eternity, our jaws drop and lock. When I finally manage to make the word, earthquake, it combines with “地震だ” from the mouths of Shigemi and Masa, ‘Jordbävning’ from Christopher and ‘Das Erdbeben’ from Lorraine. With our combined voices a new word is born, uttered, almost in a whisper, a calm yet awesome utterance, and the world returns to its habitual hot passive solidness. Immediately I regret that the phenomenon is finished and can’t take my eyes from the mountain surface. I am searching even the briefest most microscopic movement. It was such a transient encounter with the infinite power of nature that I wish it would come back. I want to re experience. Hours and hours after, my legs wobble as I walk, as if my mind is no longer able to rely on the solidity of the earth, as if I can no longer trust the transient ground beneath my feet.
The after effect of this earthquake is, I acknowledge, as strong as the emotion generated by a woman, when her love is mysteriously burnt out. When the man struggles to rekindle her, to find explanation for her silence, her lack of enthusiasm, her indifference. Nothing works, nothing can be done, and he would like her warm precursor self to come back to him, even if just for a moment. The magic spell is broken but we are not Gods, we are not even clever magicians. We are simply powerless. (From “Almost True - the book of 12” by Steve Nieve 2025)