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It seems that young people do everything on their portable phones these days: Talk, text, take pictures, play games, make contactless payments and do their banking... amongst other things. Many older people do those things too, the main difference being that they remember the days when your typical telephone was stuck to the wall or located in a moderately private and soundproof box on a street corner or in the lobby of a public building.
So I was quite intrigued by the premise of the book I'm currently reading, The Phone Box at the Edge of the World, by Laura Imai Messina. It's a novel with fictional characters but the titular phone box actually exists, in a garden in Japan. And the kicker is: the phone (known as the "wind phone") is not hooked up. You can still lift the receiver and dial numbers, but there's no one at the other end. Or rather, the person at the other end is whoever you want it to be.
People go here to talk to those they have lost. In many cases, the people have died. Sometimes they are simply missing or far away, and the caller may not even know if they are dead or alive. It's a way of handling grief and loss in a private forum. You can say all the things you couldn't say before, or "tell" the person how things are going now and what you hope to do tomorrow or next year or ten years from now.
The two main characters in the novel, both in their thirties, have both lost people close to them in a major tsunami that occurred in the area in 2011. Yui has lost her young daughter and her mother; Takeshi has lost his wife, the mother of their daughter Hana, who has stopped speaking as a result of the tragedy. Yui and Takeshi meet at Bell Gardia, site of the wind phone and get to know each other better. Eventually they start to travel from Tokyo to Bell Gardia together on their monthly visits there. A relationship develops between them, based on their shared experience of loss.
In many ways, this novel could not have appeared at a better time. The wind phone offers the ultimate in physical distancing. It's also electronic distancing! The one thing it probably isn't? I'd say emotional distancing. The phone instead offers a kind of emotional, spiritual, imaginative and cathartic proximity to those we've lost and in the process, gives us better insight into our own psyche and our interactions with those who are still with us.
It's really not that different from visiting graveyards or setting up roadside memorials like ghost bikes. Some would say it's not so different from praying or attending confession or making a pilgrimage of any kind. Or daydreaming or meditating. Or any kind of creative expression.
During a pandemic, with traditional funerals and memorial services often out of the question and drive-in or drive-by events not cutting it for many survivors of trauma and loss, something like this could be restorative to the heart and soul.
For more information on the real life site, see:
http://bell-gardia.jp/the-phone-of-the-wind/
So I was quite intrigued by the premise of the book I'm currently reading, The Phone Box at the Edge of the World, by Laura Imai Messina. It's a novel with fictional characters but the titular phone box actually exists, in a garden in Japan. And the kicker is: the phone (known as the "wind phone") is not hooked up. You can still lift the receiver and dial numbers, but there's no one at the other end. Or rather, the person at the other end is whoever you want it to be.
People go here to talk to those they have lost. In many cases, the people have died. Sometimes they are simply missing or far away, and the caller may not even know if they are dead or alive. It's a way of handling grief and loss in a private forum. You can say all the things you couldn't say before, or "tell" the person how things are going now and what you hope to do tomorrow or next year or ten years from now.
The two main characters in the novel, both in their thirties, have both lost people close to them in a major tsunami that occurred in the area in 2011. Yui has lost her young daughter and her mother; Takeshi has lost his wife, the mother of their daughter Hana, who has stopped speaking as a result of the tragedy. Yui and Takeshi meet at Bell Gardia, site of the wind phone and get to know each other better. Eventually they start to travel from Tokyo to Bell Gardia together on their monthly visits there. A relationship develops between them, based on their shared experience of loss.
In many ways, this novel could not have appeared at a better time. The wind phone offers the ultimate in physical distancing. It's also electronic distancing! The one thing it probably isn't? I'd say emotional distancing. The phone instead offers a kind of emotional, spiritual, imaginative and cathartic proximity to those we've lost and in the process, gives us better insight into our own psyche and our interactions with those who are still with us.
It's really not that different from visiting graveyards or setting up roadside memorials like ghost bikes. Some would say it's not so different from praying or attending confession or making a pilgrimage of any kind. Or daydreaming or meditating. Or any kind of creative expression.
During a pandemic, with traditional funerals and memorial services often out of the question and drive-in or drive-by events not cutting it for many survivors of trauma and loss, something like this could be restorative to the heart and soul.
For more information on the real life site, see:
http://bell-gardia.jp/the-phone-of-the-wind/
