Once, in Sendai, Japan, I saw a bride and groom walking through a park in full wedding dress.
It was snowing lightly and, as they walked, people were pouring into the park from all directions, gathering here and there in small groups—children from local nursery schools were huddling together under trees while their teachers surrounded them and kept running head counts to see if any of them were missing; businessmen, dressed in suits, their black hair flecked white with snow, were smoking cigarettes in open, uncovered areas of the park; ordinary people in casual dress, without jackets, were standing close together in growing clusters, shivering.
Behind the bride and groom, a team of tuxedo-clad men and women were approaching the park.
They were spread out and carrying linens. As the bride and groom moved slowly toward the park’s center, the tuxedo-clad men and women began scurrying from group to group, distributing long, white tablecloths to anyone who would take them.
Immediately, people began tying the tablecloths to trees and making shields to protect themselves and others from the wind. They used rope, tape, twine, and whatever else they could to erect makeshift shelters and tents so that the children could stay out of the snow and keep dry. They wrapped themselves, eight or ten people to a group, and pulled close to each other so that they could keep warm.
Through all this motion, the rhythmic beating of helicopters pulsed through the air and a deep, serious sounding broadcasting voice, somewhat swallowed by the low hum of static, drifted in and out of earshot from the transistor radios that many people were carrying. A tsunami warning was being issued. Evacuation orders were being given. Aftershocks were being predicted.
As the bride and groom came to a stop in the center of the park, I could see a light colored hotel in the distance. Between the park and the hotel, black tables stood bare and abandoned, left in the festive order they had been arranged in. The hotel, the black tables, the bride and groom and the growing number of people who gathered around them, all appeared as if they were slightly hidden behind a thin white veil. It was somewhat fairytale like.
I always wonder if the bride and groom consider themselves lucky to have planned their wedding on that day, and be surrounded by their friends and family in a place that was out of the water’s reach.
Once is a series of micro memoirs inspired by a book of the same title in which Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker, uses a combination of photographs and text to reveal what he considers to be the beginnings of untold stories, which he encourages his readers/viewers to complete.
Similarly, I offer these moments of my life to you as if they were not my own, as if they were in no way connected to me, which in many cases they no longer seem to be. I encourage you to consider these moments as beginnings, beginnings of stories or travels that you are free to write, live, or complete as you see fit.