humanizing the quake (bicycles)

When I paint etegami, I almost always make an English version and a Japanese version. This is the Japanese version of the etegami in my last post. Remember that one? The English version, as explained in the earlier post, has a poetic reference and was meant to be humorous. The Japanese version has no such reference, and simply says "I have the key, but the bicycle is gone."

Yesterday, I received an appreciative comment from a Japanese colleague who assumed the bike key etegami was part of my "humanizing the quake" series. Then it hit me! The tsunami destroyed and carried off buildings, ships, automobiles, people, livestock.... and bicycles.

Bicycles are an intimate part of life in Japan, without which so many of our daily chores would be difficult to accomplish. How much more so in the days after the quake when roads were broken up and gasoline was hard to find, so you couldn't drive even if you had a car. One of the early disaster relief projects was to send bicycles to the hard hit areas. I cheered when I heard of it. I know what a big difference a bicycle can make.

illustration friday (bicycle)

This etegami was inspired by real life experience (lol), and the Shel Silverstein book-length poem The Missing Piece, part of which goes like this:

It was missing a piece.
And it was not happy.
So it set off in search
of its missing piece.
And as it rolled
it sang this song -

Oh I'm lookin' for my missin' piece
I'm lookin' for my missin' piece
Hi-dee-ho, here I go,
Lookin' for my missin' piece.


[Note: I'm curious about whether bicycles are sold with little locks on the front wheel in your country, as they are in Japan. When I googled bicycle locks, all I could find on the English language sites were chains that lock. We buy locking chains for extra protection if we want, but our bikes always come with a small lightweight boxy lock on the front wheel. The key that I drew is the kind of key that comes with that boxy lock.]