Tsunami Art

On the first Full Moon after the Winter Solstice, in the southernmost of the lands of the Tiger, an enormous earthquake shook the Earth that rests on Turtle's back, and created a great wave in the Indian Ocean. Within minutes and hours it had crashed over the sandy coasts, sweeping everything away. Tens of thousands of people died, and hundreds of thousands lost their homes and families. They came from diverse tribes and countries, and their traditions had no word for what had happened. But they were one in their shock and grief, huddled under the pall of hunger, the fear of disease, and the utter fatigue of starting over after the end of the world. So their tongues claimed a word full of power and menace borrowed from the islands of the Rising Sun, whose people watched from afar with the memories of generations: tsunami.

Weeks later the dead still washed ashore like driftwood, and some of their wandering spirits sought help from those who knew the old ways of guiding souls to the otherworld.

This picture tells the story as it might be told in years to come around a fire in the forest, painted on a temple wall, or scratched in the sand with a piece of broken shell. The style is a reminder of the meticulous detail of Indian miniatures, Thai niello silver, and Indonesian woodcarving. The turtle shell is round like the earth. Its pointed edges recall the Spiny Turtle (Heosemys spinosa) of Asian tropical forests, and the handprints, blurring into sand or light reflections among bubbles, honor those who were lost to the waves.

1. A great earthquake caused undersea landslides as Naga, the World Serpent, tectonic life-force of the planet, writhed under the ocean crust. Five days after the winter solstice, the pale sun flickered on the swirling water, but it will never illuminate the Serpent's eye.

2. The uncoiling power of the earthquake spawned a swell in the ocean, a compression wave that did not simply swirl across the surface like an ordinary stormwave, but walked on the seabed in all directions at once. The seismograph needles recorded its jagged energy in zigzag lines.

3. The sea drew back from the coast with a rush of wind and tiny waterfalls, and for a few moments it revealed a coastline that had never been exposed before. Then the three great waves came, one on top of the other, a wall of deep blue water with a foaming mountain crest that exploded in whirlpools when it smashed into the beach.

4. A dizzying number of people were lost. Some were indoors and had no warning until their houses collapsed. Others saw the wave and could not or would not run away. In Aceh, many were already confused and injured after the earthquake, and were caught in the chaos as the water rose through fallen buildings and debris-choked streets. Each body that washed up afterwards had a story, but the tales had dissolved into the sea, and they lost all meaning anyway as the numbers of dead rose beyond comprehension. After two hundred and sixty thousand, people stopped counting.

5. Even the Moon wept, for many of the drowned were her own fishing folk, and she looked into the dazed painted eyes of broken boats that stared impossibly from rooftops. She wept also for the sea's children, the smashed coral reefs and their myriad creatures smothered under scouring sand.

6. Thailand's Moken Sea Gypsies survived the wave, recognizing the threat in the ominous retreat of the water from tales handed down by ancestors. In this picture, a wall hanging forms the door of the boat's tiny dwelling. Woven of Indonesia's famous ikat cloth, it depicts the eruption of Krakatoa, the volcano that exploded off Sumatra's southeast coast in 1883, causing a tsunami in these same islands. Are some of Aceh's tsunami survivors the descendants of refugees from Krakatoa?

7. An Indonesian shaman transforms into a tiger to guide the souls of the dead, and to chase the spirits of sickness away from the homeless people who are now vulnerable to hunger and illness. To make the necessary journey, the shaman catches a snake and tames this earth spirit into a rope hung with brass tiger bells, making a ladder into the sky.

8. A figure with the head of an Indian vulture carries a shaman's purifying flywhisk and lights a funeral pyre with a torch of incense. The despised but sacred task of burning bodies is necessary to prevent disease among the survivors, and many believe that it releases the spirits of the dead. India's vultures have suffered a frightening decline in the last decade and are now endangered in the southern part of the country. Some people attribute this decline to toxins or pesticides, and see it as a sign of greater environmental imbalance.

9. A cracked coconut, fruit of the tree of life, rains sweet moon-milk. It is not just a symbol of purity and survival, but its very substance, and in all the affected lands it is a familiar and comforting food. Coconuts floated on gentle tides to the few survivors who clung to scraps of wood in the sea, quenching their thirst until help arrived. Coconut wood, leaves, and fiber build temporary shelters and permanent new homes. The husks make bowls and utensils to feed the hungry and carry women's prayers and offerings to the Goddess of the Sea.

10. The bodies of many of the dead are never found, but undergo mysterious transformations. To find their souls, the most primitive shamans use quartz crystals and the skulls of ancestors in divination rituals.

11. A single skeleton, curled up in a sea turtle shell, is cast adrift toward the sun in a heart-shaped boat on a quiet sea. It could be anyone's. In the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the wave swept away sea turtle nesting beaches, coral reefs, and fishing grounds. The earthquake slightly repositioned some of the islands, and the surviving tribal people say that the tides are now unfamiliar.

12. The calcium in the skeleton is transformed into a handful of uniquely beautiful Indian Ocean shells, and the chaotic energy of the Naga drifts away in the form of a graceful sea krait whose poison holds no threat for the shells. A hand curls into a spider conch and the ribs and other bones form the combs of a murex. The eyesockets swirl into sundials, the snails that are called Architectonica, builder of worlds.

13. Lit by a jellyfish moon, spirits ride the back of a leatherback sea turtle on their final journey to the deep ocean or the night sky. Undersea or deep heaven, it is all one to the Swimmer, who dives to sunless depths with constellations sparkling on her back, and wanders the globe on the sea-road of the Milky Way.

Moonlight on a warm ocean. Boats floated all around in the black water, moving slightly but with no sense of direction, caught for a month in the limbo of the night ocean. Exhausted families wandered on battered fishing boats, some barely afloat, their hulls damaged and their bright paint scoured and faded. Ragged young people poled crude dugouts or crouched on floating tree trunks, and lost wild island folk paddled slim native canoes with outriggers and palm-fiber sails. Bewildered villagers clung to rafts knocked together out of broken boards. And everywhere there were coconut shells bobbing and spinning aimlessly, each holding the single spirit-spark of a child too young to swim. The full moon clung to the sea, its face iridescent with jellyfish, its spiral halls coiled like a shell and alive with forests of coral. It grew larger, and a huge dark shape loomed across the shimmering light: a great long-tailed gypsy boat, its curved black prow piercing the sky. A giant stood at the pole, his face hidden behind a bronze bird mask and his body wrapped in a dark cloak fringed with seaweed. His long hair was braided with shells and sheltered living crabs and snails. The boat was made of entwined roots and branches that were still alive, for they were not cut from any tree in this world. They moved constantly and slid over each other like wet black snakes. There was no sail, but black wings fluttered at the sides, the clothing of bird-masked women who huddled around a fire in the boat's tiny hut.

They were weaving and untangling a heavy net, and they dragged it over the side and dropped it into the water. It spread out like a spiderweb. The crowd began to awaken. Sea turtles and giant fish leaped among them, herding them together. The wise eyes of the fishing boats blazed. Old men fastened the ropes to their boats, anchoring the smaller, fragile craft to their rails. The Boatman spun his pole and drew the glowing threads of the net tight, pulling all the scattered floating things together, and gasps and twitters of excitement rose from the crowd as the entire flotilla entered the current and began to move. The Boatman shouted in triumph as the black wings rustled and the great ferry surged toward the glowing whirlpool of the moon, drawing all the boats after it: the line of fishing boats in the center, the canoes and rafts and floating logs beside them, and hundreds of coconut shells strung along the edges like beads, their wild spinning calmed and their movement given a purpose. The people began to sing as they entered the River between sea and sky, through the doorway from darkness into the morning of the Unknown Land. By moonset all was quiet. At the bottom of a forest pool, the dawn light reflected on a tiny silver mirror engraved with a single eye.

Here is a reference to a tsunami from the Roman poet Vergil (70 B.C. - 19 B.C.).
Georgics II, 475-480, 490-492:

Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,
quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore,
accipiant calique vias et sidera monstrent,
defectus solis varios lunaeque labores,
unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant...

felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum
subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.

As for me, first before everything, may the sweet Muses,
for whom I bear an enormous sacred love,
accept me and show me the roads of the stars,
the eclipses of the sun and the various labors of the moon,
the origin of earthquakes, by what force the deep seas swell
to burst their bounds and then sink back into themselves...

Blessed is one who has been able to know the causes of things,
and has cast beneath his feet all fear and inexorable fate,
and the roar of greedy Acheron.

[Acheron, the River of Grief, is one of the five rivers of the
Roman Underworld. The others are Cocytus (Woe), Phlegethon (Fire),
Lethe (Forgetfulness), and Styx (Unbreakable Oath).
Translation by Lorena B. Moore.]