They are silent now, they have all the same look in the eyes. A deep, grown-up look, sharing with one another without speaking. They were very noisy, now they walk in groups clinging to one another for safety and you do not hear them passing. They speak about their homes, about their ever-worried parents, and each has a different story to tell, the others listen to the story, and do not comment, and go on to share a new MP3 or image through their mobiles. They give their time to one another, and togetherness takes them through their days, each day they grow a little more, each day become a little more unrecognizable to the parents.
A process that used to take years is being compressed in a matter of months and weeks, and suddenly the parents are looking at these new mysterious creatures, risen from the ashes and dust of the night of 6 April 2009, young ones thrown out of their nests before the time to fly was due. They had to leave their nests, and are now roaming a world built out of their fantasies.
The earthquake was a social accelerator, the spark became a fire and burnt the past habits in these creatures, already on uncertain terrain, in a matter of moments. They are still formally teenagers, but a new responsibility was required of them, they were requested by circumstances to be responsible for themselves, and often for their distressed parents, and they grew and came of age.
I look at my young ones, and each day I notice something new, that worries me for the weight of experience that has come to burden their young years. Before - it's always before - their bedrooms were like jungles, the floor covered by a myriad of useless garbage, now they have a tiny corner of a room or tent, and keep shirts and shoes and mobiles all in one cardboard box, ready to move to a new residence, there are many homes now and they cannot get fond of any, since they may be leaving again.
Their sacred spaces where no parent was allowed to walk in have gone, with their privacy and secret friendships. The long forced holiday from school has left them in a vacuum, nothing to do in the afternoons, nothing to get up to in the mornings, and they invented their new social context with mobiles and laptops, filling Facebook with their thoughts and images. Friendship and being together is their religion, more than "before". Water and sand have no shape, they pass through the fingers softly, as these novel, alien but fascinating creatures are moving still without an individual shape, gently, among the chaos, ruins, despair, helplessness of this unruly present, waiting for a future to take form from the mist.