The Phone Whisperers of Otsuchi: The Wind Phone
The Phone Whisperers of Otsuchi make a pilgrimage to the Wind Phone to commune with their loved ones lost in a devastating tsunami.
The Wind Phone – Love & Grief
By Mark Nepo
On March 11, 2011, a mammoth earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami that wreaked havoc in more than fifteen cities in northeastern Japan. Waves reached as high as 120 feet. More than nineteen thousand people were killed, and twenty-five hundred more have never been found. In thirty minutes, the town of Otsuchi was destroyed.
In trying to make sense of his grief, a gardener from Otsuchi, Itaru Sasaki, said that he needed a place to air his grief. So he moved an empty phone booth into the remnants of his garden and put an old rotary phone on a wooden shelf inside it, even though the phone wasn’t connected to anything. Then he dialed his lost loved ones and began to talk to them.
Word spread about the wind phone in Otsuchi, and in time thousands who had lost loved ones in the tsunami made a pilgrimage to visit the phone booth in the garden, so they could commune with those they lost through the disconnected phone.
There was the seventy-year-old grandmother who’d lost her husband. She brought her grandchildren so they could tell their grandfather about school. And the fifty-year-old widower who just wept into the phone and listened. And the thirty-three year- old man who lost his parents, his wife, and his one-year-old son. He dialed the old, battered phone and listened to the wind encircle the booth and finally said, “I don’t know what I’m waiting for. . . . I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.” And the fifteen-year-old who lost his father, who whispered into the phone, “Why did you have to die?” A month later, he brought his younger sister. She dialed the phone and in her tears, asked, “What happened to your promise to buy me a violin? Now I’ll have to buy one myself.”
Of course, this story holds great sadness. But when we can listen to the sadness, not skipping over it, until it brings us to the bottom of all feeling, it becomes beautifully clear that it’s the power of raw feeling that moves us to express our fundamental being. And the power of that expression is what draws us together to heal. It’s the unmitigated depth of expression that releases resilience. This belongs to everyone.
When raw enough, tender enough, and honest enough, we’re not ashamed to stand in a phone booth in a garden and speak through the ruins into a phone that isn’t connected to anything. From the outside, this may seem like desperation.
But having been this desperate, I can attest from the inside — that this reach into the heart of our grief is a courageous act of being that rips through all the excuses we can construct, landing us in the heat and wonder of direct living. And the heart of this courage and the heat and wonder of direct living belong to everyone.
The phone whisperers of Otsuchi are profiles of inner courage. Each of them is a poet. And each of us is a poet when we dare to swim to the bottom of whatever we feel in order to bring up a taste of what we all have in common.
The elixir of our commonness is the reward for diving so deeply and speaking so tenderly.
Thousands who had lost loved ones in the tsunami made a pilgrimage to visit the wind phone booth in the garden, so they could commune with those they lost through the disconnected phone.
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You will also enjoy Mark Nepo: The Power and the Spirit of Community and Mark Nepo: The Way Under the Way
About the Author
In his 21st book, Drinking from the River of Light: A Life of Expression (Sounds True, September 2019), Mark Nepo, the acclaimed poet-teacher, and NY Times #1 best-selling author of The Book of Awakening, presents the art and practice of our creativity as a means to unfold our spiritual growth. In this collection of interconnected essays and poetry—covering subjects ranging from the importance of staying in conversation with other forms of life to a consideration of how innovators such as Matisse, Rodin, and Beethoven saw the world—Mark presents a lyrical ode to the artistic urge that stirs in each of us. Whether we consider ourselves artists or not, he explores how the deeper we go into the creative process, the more attuned we become, and the more we join with everything around us. Whether your writing is published or not, whether your music is recorded or not, whether your art is in a gallery or not, your garden is given a prize or not, or your cooking is or isn’t featured in the local paper—inhabiting a personal life of expression is its own reward, by which we strengthen our connections and find our way. Filled with stories and exercises intended to introduce readers to the skills of vision, perception, feeling, and articulation, Drinking from the River of Light is a culmination of all Nepo’s years of writing and teaching regarding the deeper creative process. MarkNepo.com
