Japan’s 9.0 earth­quake and con­se­quent tsuna­mi struck one week ago.  As the depth of the dev­as­ta­tion con­tin­ues to unfold, I’ve been think­ing about our Japan­ese broth­ers and sis­ters, won­der­ing how peo­ple man­age to get through the unimaginable.

Three days ago, Al Jazeera News post­ed a video of 65-year old Takio Tachibana, a fish­er­man whose home of 38 years was destroyed. Sur­round­ed by the remains of his family’s life, he pulled a rake through the rub­ble. Slow­ly – the motions of some­one who has to cling to a tool, even if that tool is as rel­e­vant as a plas­tic spoon for clear­ing an avalanche. His wife and son were safe, yet in addi­tion to their home, Tachibana’s boat – their liveli­hood – was lost. The dis­be­lief on his face was clear – how does some­one spend a life­time going to sea, only to have the mon­ster chase him through his very door?

View­ing pho­tographs of shat­tered coastal town­ships, I’ve been think­ing about the pre­car­i­ous nature of the rela­tion­ship between humans and the sea, the sense of com­mu­ni­ty forged between peo­ple, even on oppos­ing sides of the globe, whose hearts pulse in time with the ebb and flood of the tides.

Dur­ing one hal­ibut sea­son sev­er­al years ago, my “broth­er” Mar­tin per­fect­ly artic­u­lat­ed this sense of an ocean-based glob­al con­nec­tion.  He’s trav­eled exten­sive­ly – Tunisia, France, Italy, most recent­ly – and makes a point to always vis­it anoth­er country’s fish­ing vil­lages. “Wher­ev­er I am in the world,” he reflect­ed, “when­ev­er I step on a dock, I’m walk­ing home.”

When Joel and I trav­el, we always pack a few fish­ing pho­tos.  Some of the Ner­ka on a blind­ing­ly blue ocean, some of the moun­tains tow­er­ing above us, some us-with-big-fish snuff shots. When we pull these out to share with the locals on a Cos­ta Rican river­bank or in a Tunisian boat­yard, no es impor­tante that we stum­ble over our min­i­mal Span­ish and hope­less­ly butch­er the cou­ple Ara­bic phras­es we cling to, our lin­guis­tic life-jack­ets. When those pic­tures come out, sud­den­ly we have a shared tongue.  Ours is the lan­guage of peo­ple who’ve gazed over an expanse of water so great that it washed away every illu­sion of self-impor­tance, every mis­placed notion of what was essen­tial, water so omnipo­tent that it washed the very sun off the hori­zon. Togeth­er, with our glob­al ship­mates, we are drunks who clutch this con­fused cock­tail of absolute free­dom and total depen­dence, who’ve trad­ed the cer­tain­ty of firm ground for the risk-filled relief of a deck undu­lat­ing beneath our feet. Each time we leave the har­bor, we know this might be the time we don’t come back. And, know­ing all of these things, we drink that glass dry, drain it of every last drop.

But Japan’s docks are gone.  Wrenched from their anchors as cru­el­ly as a her­mit crab yanked from its shell, their walk-on-water, float­ing foot­way promis­es utter­ly, irrev­o­ca­bly bro­ken. I’m left won­der­ing, how do ocean folk find their way home, when all of the moor­ings are gone?