chanto fit

Image by Oriol Borrega Cepa. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

MY MOTHER ONCE TOLD ME

My mother once told me—before my sister died or after? I can’t remember—that she believed in ghosts. She believed in ghosts she said because when a person dies the energy that animated their body has to go somewhere, and it can’t disperse like the ashes do when you throw them to the wind, it can’t break up and redistribute itself among the blades of grass, the yellow flecks of acacia wattle sneaking hayfever into eyes and noses, no: it goes bigger, it goes into the earth, the rocks, the rivers.

I feel like my mother must have clung to this, in the days that came after. That all the atoms of my sister’s energy left her body and stayed together, in one unit, the unit of energy that was my sister and is now a current or a breeze, a bough shushing outside the bedroom window late at night, a radiant beam thrown across the bedclothes in a stripe, illuminating knees and fingertips. When the earth moves—when small parts of its grand old narrative make themselves known to us—when the wind lifts the hem of her skirt my mother closes her eyes and leans into its caress, thinking, this is her touch, this is a message she is sending me, and because of this belief my mother lives in a world that is dedicated to her, that is written for her as it happens, a world that belongs to her grief and exists to hold it.

When you’re a writer and a sore little piece of yourself breaks off and crystallises you name it and you write a world for it and it becomes a story. This is how Jeannie comes to be. She falls, fully formed but miniature like a figurine, from the part of my consciousness where I hide all of my wounds so that I don’t have to inspect them.

But last time I reblogged one ten/fifteen minutes later I got a call offering me a job

But I reblogged it because I was waiting on hearing back from the job. So there you go.

His wife, Yukiko, was also a part of this; she is often credited with suggesting the plan. The Sugihara family was held in a Soviet POW camp for 18 months until the end of the war; within a year of returning home, Sugihara was asked to resign - officially due to downsizing, but most likely because the government disagreed with his actions.

He didn’t simply grant visas - he granted visas against direct orders, after attempting three times to receive permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry and being turned down each time. He did not “misread” orders; he was in direct violation of them, with the encouragement and support of his wife.

He was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985, a year before he died in Kamakura; he and his descendants have also been granted permanent Israeli citizenship. He was also posthumously awarded the Life Saving Cross of Lithuania (1993); Commander’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1996); and the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2007). Though not canonized, some Eastern Orthodox Christians recognize him as a saint.

Sugihara was born in Gifu on the first day of 1900, January 1. He achieved top marks in his schooling; his father wanted him to become a physician, but Sugihara wished to pursue learning English. He deliberately failed the exam by writing only his name and then entered Waseda, where he majored in English. He joined the Foreign Ministry after graduation and worked in the Manchurian Foreign Office in Harbin (where he learned Russian and German; he also converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church during this time). He resigned his post in protest over how the Japanese government treated the local Chinese citizens. He eventually married Yukiko Kikuchi, who would suggest and encourage his acts in Lithuania; they had four sons together. Chiune Sugihara passed away July 31, 1986, at the age of 86. Until her own passing in 2008, Yukiko continued as an ambassador of his legacy.

You want to know about my motivation, don’t you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He just cannot help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.

People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives….The spirit of humanity, philanthropy…neighborly friendship…with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation—and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.

The stone next to him bears a quote from the Talmud; “He who saves one life, saves the entire world.”