The story of how I came to Beppu, began a very long time ago. Almost half of my life ago, in New York, when I was walking down the street – downtown – across from Cooper Union near the now unrecognizable Bowery. There was a man selling old books on the sidewalk, laid out on a sheet. One caught my attention, a book called VOLCANO about volcanoes from around the world. There were volcanoes from Iceland, Hawaii, Italy, Scotland. In retrospect, every project I have ever undertaken can be traced to a picture in this book, but that is a story for another time. It was here, in the book that I saw Staffa and Beppu for the first time. Two sides of a volcanic coin – one extinct, one entirely alive. Unofficial wonders of the world.
It took me 5 years to get to Staffa, another 13 to return.
THE EAST COAST
September 1998
I moved across the ocean to Glasgow. One week after I arrived I turned 25. It was the only time my parents were in Scotland together with me, though they had been here before, in Edinburgh when my mother was pregnant with my older sister Samara. Years after, only a few years ago, my mother left out a stack of photographs on the kitchen table. In one, she is standing, leaning against a gate behind the castle, where the road winds downhill. Her hair is long and she is in a beautiful sharp cut raincoat. It takes me a while to understand the picture. It looks like a photograph of me, leaning against a gate, uphill from Alison’s office, under the volcano. I have been here before.
June 2000
Adam and I go to Staffa. We didn’t plan it, we just ended up in Oban and couldn’t believe our luck – get the ferry to Mull, cross Mull over land, get the boat to Staffa. Staffa is beyond all expectations. We don’t have enough time there. We went to Iceland together for the first time too – volcanoes and glaciers and Bjork. We are just kids from New York City on islands that make us feel weak at the knees. 13 years later, not long before I return to Staffa, by chance – Adam sends me a photograph I took of him entering Fingal’s Cave 13 years before.
THE STORY OF TWO HALVES
Minerals formed in New York City live in Glasgow, at The Hunterian Museum. A piece of Graphite in gneiss from New York Island. We are not the only ones to cross the Atlantic.
In the Hunterian, there are two pieces of Epidote as well – green with shards of quartz and shadow. One is designated as ‘from Rhode Island, New York’; one from Long Island. Of course there is no Rhode Island in New York, just a miscommunication left along the way. The epidotes entered the collection 70 years apart and belonged to two different owners. Each Epidote from the east coast crossed the ocean and stopped in someone’s personal geological collection. In the 1970s Julian Jocelyn noticed these two epidotes were in fact one, one mineral split open and put into two different pairs of hands. It is unknown if this happened in Long Island or on the other island, near here. And then 70 years later, two pieces became one. Rejoined into a single rock with a small scar flitting across its surface. I think about Long Island. Growing up, this was the island of Seders which lasted for hours, and of Jewish cemeteries that you hoped not to visit. The diaspora. To go from Ukraine, Lithuania, Galicia across the Atlantic to the Lower East Side, to live in Brooklyn and then end up as part of the earth in a place as flat as Long Island never seemed quite right.
Growing up, we would never have said a mineral from Long Island is the same as being from New York. We would say – those minerals are from the SUBURBS. The idea of a mineral – or a person – forming below and above the streets of New York City seems somehow unlikely – that anything of the natural world, of caves and volcanoes, could ever occur in New York. But it does – the Subway garnet – found below West 35th street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, in the garment district where my mother worked. A piece of gneiss from an unknown street. A sparkling arterial system that connects one island to another, under and across oceans. The sidewalks in New York are not paved with gold, but with mica. And in Knoydart, garnets and mica shimmer between rocks on the beach. I always imagine volcanoes as the connectors – pipe lines tapping into the core of the earth. Every crater, a mouth that leads to the molten sea. But maybe minerals do the same, fill every gap. New growth in older rock. The potential for life after.
THE WEST COAST
My great grandfather, who in the Jewish tradition of passing along initials – IHH – I am named after is known to have landed on Ellis Island, the Island of Tears, at least twice, maybe three times. His wife Eva followed him across the ocean in 1924. He crossed the ocean on the Aquitania, built on the Clyde, not two miles from my house on North View. The Aquitania was known as the ‘Ship Beautiful’.
I have crossed The Atlantic so many times now I can’t even count. Never on water, only in the air. Over 15 years in Scotland, crossing at least twice a year, and in the years my father was sick, even more – could it be 100 times across the ocean? I feel like part of me is on either side. Though it always feels inconceivable to be on such distinct landmasses all in the course of a day.
Granite from the Tormore Granite Quarry in Fionnphort in the Ross of Mull is somewhere in Manhattan. I have heard rumors that it was used in Grand Central Station, in the piers, at the docks. There are pictures of the Welcoming Hall for the Titanic faced in pink granite along the Hudson – but I can’t confirm where it was from. The Pink stone in Grand Central may come from Connecticut, though I like to imagine crystalline rocks from Mull shimmering beneath the constellations in The Great Hall, igneous matched by celestial. Sidney Horenstein from the Natural History Museum in New York has been able to confirm the location of Aberdeen Granite in New York City – but the trail went cold on Tormore. A team of building conservation specialists had a lead, then nothing. Somewhere in New York are rocks from Mull, but I don’t know where yet. The Hall for the Titanic is long gone, only remnants of the pier and a plaque. Sidney explained that the rocks in Central Park are not smooth from years of kids sliding down them, like the polished fingertips and toes of certain statues, but from the slow movement of glaciers heaving themselves along, leaving a fine grain surface 13,000 years ago.
OCTOBER 2013
I go back to Staffa for the second time in my life. Exactly one year before I had been on Mull for the second time in my life as well, but that is part of an almost unspeakable moment reserved for thinking about marble and how it is composed of former life, or what was once life. And how one day I will be limestone, or marble if an eruption should re-awake, recrystallize and melt. Rock, earth, part of layers. Which generate the organic, the living, life – even if it is not the kind of life I discovered was forming even for a short time – when I was on Mull, between ancient craters and lava flows. And these islands, dense rock, solid rock, were once liquid and airborne and ash. And only air and just the right amount of time and the weather at a precise moment – led to Staffa. In marble, every streak of color shot through reveals who ever and whatever was alive to make it. In marble from Iona, long gone coral is white, plant life – new green at the start of spring.
JANUARY 2014
In New York in the middle of a winter storm I look for granite from across the ocean. Alison, Adam and I stand at the Hudson. Pancake Ice forms on the river. The last place I saw this was Greenland, where pancake ice forms every year around the time of my birthday, in the Arctic shift away from Autumn. We are around the corner from my old studio where you could slip onto the roof and watch the sun set over the river, the Island of Tears on the horizon. A platinum sky melts into water. I wonder if I should bring a piece of Manhattan Schist back to Mull. Bodies and rocks crossing back across the ocean.
BLOODY POND HELL
On March 14 at 2:00am I was awoken by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Beppu, Japan. I was living above the equivalent of Yellowstone in the heart of the tsunami evacuation flood zone. Fortunately, everything was fine. How this moment relates to the present one can be traced to a body of work I made 14 years ago, entitled Felt Events – the term seismologists use to refer to earthquakes. Obsessed with small seismic shifts, I was spending time at The British Geological Survey pouring over their ‘Catalogue of British Earthquakes’.
Felt Events
The house moved sideways.
The ironing board in the kitchen fell over.
Two pictures moved.
The house shook slightly.
The walls seemed affected.
Windows, perfume bottles, cosmetics, cups.
Apples fell from trees.
The ceiling lamp swung.
The wardrobes were collapsing.
The bed moved.
The room shook twice.
A porcelain jug inside a china dish rattled.
The bedroom door opened.
Then shudders.
A sense of dropping, as in a lift.
I was aware something had moved.
Birds were singing loudly.
The bedroom faces east.
The building moved.
Milk from a small jug spilt onto a tray.
Objects were dislodged from stacks.
A noise like moving thunder.
A train going underneath the house.
A mini- tornado.
Building to a crescendo and then falling back.
A shower of fine particles.
The hangers on the door were clinking together like a chandelier.
Indoors, bedroom, top floor.
Only radiators rattling.
Unable to describe the sensations.
Birds gave alarm calls.
Floorboards were moving.
The house sank and then rocked.
Curtains fell down.
Objects on shelves were closer to the edge.
A chair lifted.
How can I describe it as the sound of a plane before crashing. I am fairly sure I was not dreaming and the only way I can begin to describe the incident in my own mind is that it was some sort of tremor.
And then it passed.
Was that a bomb going off?
Was that a plane taking off?
Was that thunder?
A bomb in the distance?
A distant train?
Sleeping/ Lying
awoken by a vibrating house
(mattress on floor)
…..
Beppu is the second largest geothermal center on earth, second only to Yellowstone.
It smells different. Down by the sea, different light. So many tsunami warning signs up and down the seafront, and a map of an underwater tsunami deterrent system, demonstrating hidden protection.
IF YOU FEEL AN EARTHQUAKE GO TO HIGHER GROUND IMMEDIATELY
A picture of a large wave, a line at a 45 degree angle, the symbol of a person running up the hill.
On the beach is a sand onsen. You are buried up to your neck under burning hot sand. Boiling water and steam run into the sea (or the bay I should say) Beppu Bay. Distant cities, another skyline on either side of the scallop shaped bay. Also industrial, though here it is all for the hotsprings – the onsen, the hells, a place to take the waters.
Shimizu-Sensei, the master bamboo craftsman, said I can be free to think of ideas for the bamboo. It is intimidating, but he gave me several thin strips to experiment with that he hand cut with a sharp knife, like splitting pages open in a book, he did it with such ease.
I eat what comes out of the bay, I eat food cooked by the steam of the onsen, I soak my body in the same water and become more mineral each day – more animal of the saline sea and ever productive waters.
…..
What does it mean to see something that you have wanted to see for half of your whole life. I have wanted to see Bloody Pond Hell for 19 years. I have looked at pictures of the pool at least once every year since I was 21. And now I am here. I am 40.
Today it is not red but more of the color of rust, pink with steam.
…..
I saw a crane, a butterfly, a pagoda with a panasonic building behind and beautifully coloured plastic bus stop chairs.
I stood outside an Edo era building with a statue of a samurai while someone practiced clarinet inside.
…..
MAGNITUDE 6.1 Iyo-Nada
This earthquake poses no tsunami risk
2.07 JST
Also – Magnitude 6.3 – 15km North/North East of Kunisaki-shi, Japan
Woke up
Thought train was running overhead –
that I live below a train tunnel like the arches in the Brooklyn Bridge
I remember waking up from a deep, deep dream thinking
how strange it is to live in a train tunnel…
I don’t recall living in a train tunnel…
I do not live in a train tunnel –
this is an earthquake
The sound was very loud
(deafening)
Shaking glass in rickety windows
Cracks between old traditional wood construction
You can see the outside from inside between the planks. Even when a car drives by the windows shake. When there is a storm, it is so loud that you think that the roof will fly off.
But this is different.
It was the ground moving
House was shaking, floor and rattling very
loud rattling
I am still shaking
like a leaf – scared.
Can’t find any information online
a 15 minute walk to get up to the foot of the hills
Don’t want to call home, as even with the time difference being absolutely fine
I don’t want to scare her.
Opened window – old unscrew type hinge – lean out window – look both ways down the street. Across from me lights have gone on – now thinking maybe they checked the TV for warning. But – I have no radio, no TV, don’t understand Japanese.
I got dressed, took out my passport, will make an evacuation bag – like Samara has explained she always has waiting by the door in Oakland. In morning will email M. to ask if it was an earthquake, made me realize if there is a larger earthquake I do not know where to go.
Outside sirens go off at regular intervals. Announcements on a loudspeaker boom from police cars. They say something over and over again. I have no idea what they are saying.
Are they asking us to evacuate?
Is there a tsunami warning?
Aftershocks expected?
I was asleep
awoken by my house moving
futon on floor
…..
I call T. She is home and in and online. She tells me the main thing is it is over, that I am fine and all is ok. She tells me afterwards that I was actually hilarious. Or delirious or both. Utterly terrified and unable to stop moving. Worse than a deer caught in headlights. She stays on the phone with me for an hour. We hang up and a message is waiting for me from M.
It was a rather large earthquake. Not usual for this area. Is everything ok at the house? Now that it is over, try to go back to sleep.
But I stay awake, on vigil. Waiting to see if the earth will move again, and if it does, I will be ready, awake, ready to go out of the house and up the hill as fast as I can.
I find a list of designated evacuation safe houses provided by the local government authority, and realize I have no idea where I live, only how to find it by counting streets backwards and forwards on the map from the train station. Or more particularly, no idea of the name of my neighbourhood, in English or Japanese.
…..
In the morning I go to speak with M.
I live in : Kita = North Area, Downtown Beppu
On the evacuation map for the city, in the event of a tsunami 5 meters or higher, my entire neighbourhood will be under water.
When I ask what I should do in the event of another earthquake, everyone says run for the hills as fast as you can. But the hills are a 25 minute walk away, even running maybe 15. This seems a very long time if a tsunami may be coming.
I feel very far away from home. I think I would rather stay up the hill. I sat for much of the day in different parts of Beppu Park. On the emergency map – this area is green – designated as a ‘safe outdoor evacuation zone for up to one hour’ in the event of danger. First I head through the Bamboo Forest, and then to visit all the different groves of cherry blossoms which arrive more and more each day.
A woman came over and gave me a gold leafed chocolate before she and her friend left this lovely canteen. As it is my second time here, the owners greeted me and told me they like my hat, and now after dinner, more tea and a piece of homemade cake arrived.
I still get waves of fear thinking about the other night and slightly dread the return to my house. I ask the earth and sea and sky – please to stay calm, now and for everyone always.
Tonight I will sleep again in a warm bed in a heated room. I know it is a luxury but I need to calm myself, ease my breathing, steel myself with good rest.
…..
Standing on top of a mountain in Kunisaki, I have a distinct memory that I have been here before. But it is a memory from a dream from 16 years before. I am with Roger Musson, the seismologist at the British Geological Survey who told me that tectonic plates move at the same rate as your fingernails grow. We are standing on top of a very high mountain covered in evergreen in Canada. Below is a sea of trees covered in thick snowfall. When you look out, it is like looking into a sea of snow. There is a rumbling in the distance. The earth is moving. The earthquake arrives slowly. We are not affected. The earthquake is below us, and the snow tumbles off the trees in one long wave – white goes to green as far into the distance as the eye can see.
I think of the story that A. told me. She is from California. Her friend was lying in a field in 1994. Coming towards him, he saw the earth move as if it was liquid, a rolling wave travelling across the horizon. The wave swept in, then under him, lifted him up and rolled on and away very gently. This was the vicious earthquake of 1994.
MEETING ASO-SAN
The largest active caldera on earth, only a few hours by train, then bus to the foot of the volcano. The day I go, I am informed at the train station that access to the volcano was shut – poisonous gas and wind going in the wrong direction. I remember it was the same at Kīlauea, half the crater was off limits – in one direction a section had crumbled into the volcano without warming, further along your lungs would close. You can be ready to meet the volcano, it doesn’t mean the volcano is prepared to meet you. I go anyway, stay at a distance. Watch. Smoke bellows in one long continuous stream.
On Staffa, you stand on a volcanic island. A series of lava flows surrounded by water. We are in volcanic places. In Glasgow, I live near a forest of fossilized trees. When I leave, I am surrounded by volcanoes. Everywhere – gutted craters, casts of explosions, rivers of lava, columns of cooling magma, fissures filled to the brim like long spiny fossils embalmed in mud – only their backbones sticking out above the water line. Volcanic Acts. But really, now it only seems like rock. You have to be told Arthur’s Seat is a volcano, the Royal Mile a slick lava flow between the castle and another crater. Otherwise it is a hill, another hill, a street.
Meeting Aso-San – the road to the volcano is opened. The weather has shifted, the air is clear, you will not choke, you can ascend to the crater. You can get a bus up to the top or walk. I walk. I want to walk, I want to meet this volcano from the soles of my feet up. Past vast boulders of tumbled rock, craters so huge they look like valleys, volcano evacuation huts made of cement walls three feet thick – like the walls of a stone fortress – but for protection against this very temperamental mountain. I walk. The smoke has continued without any pause, so constant it seems industrial. Evacuation huts are at regular intervals now – if the ground should shake you are never very far from these round thick walls. And at the crater, trembling. The sound fills every part of you, there is no quiet. Louder then the earthquake, but equally as startling. Herman Horst would not have far to go into this caldera. Or Empedocles. The walls are almost vertical into the mouth of the crater, and so deep you lose a sense of scale. I stay as long as I can manage to be this close to the other side of the volcanic coin – so active, you feel almost extinct.…..
….
H. tells me she asked a geologist friend what type of house she should live in, in Kannawa. old or new. He laughed and said in Kannawa it doesn’t matter what type of house you live in. Kannawa has a fault line running straight through it. Perhaps every 100 years it has a large event below it. Hasami Kawa – the river – the fault.
You are sleeping on a volcano.
Sleeping on top of Yellowstone.
…..
There is no metaphor in fear, in death or in potential harm or catastrophe. After the earthquake it is hard to imagine all those earthquake reports at the British Geological Survey –
hangers on the door were clinking together like a chandelier…
like a tea party, not an earthquake. And though I know all those small movements are healthy for the surface of the earth to breathe, it totally changes everything after the other night.
T. wrote to me about Mount Unzen, where Maurice and Katia Krafft were killed in a pyroclastic flow during an eruption. Harry Glicken was also killed. He was a friend of Rick Wunderman, a volcanologist I know, and I remember Rick telling me that Harry was supposed to work on Mount Saint Helens on the day of the horrific eruption, but had asked another friend to fill in – who was killed in the eruption, and Harry lived. Though it was hard to live with.
Maurice Krafft is famous for saying, I am never afraid because I have seen so much eruptions in 23 years that even if I die tomorrow, I don’t care.
on the day before he and his wife Katia died at Mt. Unzen.
But I don’t want to die yet.
…..
I realize my actual desire to be here is to replicate the photographs from my volcano book, one by one. A totally particular desire, not even to ‘make new’ but to trace the exact location that every photograph was taken, stand in each place and look out at the view that I had witnessed for two decades of my life, only in my mind. I step into memories that aren’t even mine, that have filled my consciousness for 20 years – that I have looked at when I need a reminder of something else, something beautiful – and here I am at Bloody Pond Hell, with the skyline of steam, soaking in blue milk waters, now in my body, in lived experience both in memory and now.
…..
When I get home, I take out my volcano book. Staffa is there, Heimaey, Big Island, Stromboli – all the places I have gone to meet volcanoes, to understand what it means to be human and rock and both at the same time.
I check the index of VOLCANO and discover, though I have read and looked at this book one million times before, that it is by William Melson, the volcanologist who recorded the sounds of Arenal erupting for over 40 years. And it was William Melson who in 2006 at The Center for Short Lived Phenomena, explained the nature of love to me, when talking about volcanoes. He said,
You love what you get to know, what you pay attention to and therefore become more aware of. This is not a passive form of love. This is how I feel about Arenal. Now, after forty years, I don’t need to see the volcano to know that I love it, just as I don’t need to see my daughters often to know that I love them. Just to know they are there and happy and doing as they should is enough.
Performance with Raymond MacDonald. An Tobar/Isle of Staffa as part of Generation: 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland (2016). With The Necks and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Tectonics Festival, Glasgow (2017); Glasgow International (2016); Performative Lecture, Leeds Museum/Pavilion (2015); Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland (2016).