Obligatory earthquake report

[serai]

.

Mama Gaia dances!

Here is was a strange, soft rolling effect, moving back and forth instead of up and down. I was sitting on my bed at my pooter, and at first I didn't know what it was. Then I kept thinking it was going to get stronger or really start shaking but it never did. It just kind of swayed and flowed for a bit then faded off. Made me a bit dizzy, actually. Never felt one like that before.

Call me crazy, but I actually like earthquakes. There's something mysterious and wonderful about the earth moving beneath me, proof of its living essence. The Goddess manifest, moving while she rumbles her private song to herself.

I was about 4 miles away from the epicenter of the 1989 quake, driving home, and when I got to the house, all our shit had flown off the shelves and there were reports of buildings collapsed down in town. ("In town" being Santa Cruz, where I'd left work just fifteen minutes before the quake - had I stayed for overtime I might have been killed, because the bookstore where I worked suffered major damage.) But when I looked out my window at the redwood forest, I saw...nothing. The hills were quite unchanged, the trees just as peaceful as ever. Some rocks had rolled down a bit, but other than that, things were exactly as they always were. It occurred to me that day (and has stayed with me every time there's a quake) that these things are catastrophic only to us humans, and that's because we insist on changing the landscape, building these structures that are so un-tuned from nature that any time the earth shifts in her sleep we risk getting killed. As Daffy would say, "What a way to run a railroad!"

Interesting, exciting and potentially dangerous - but then, that's what life always is.

Comments

[marionetteblue3.livejournal.com]

Woah. At least the - uh forest was untouched?

@.@

I have never being in an earthquake. Don't really want to have the experience.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

It's definitely not something I wish for, but seeing as how there's not a damn thing I can do about them I try to be philosophical about the experience. But I've never found them scary, at least not the way I'd find, say, a guy with a big fucking knife coming at me scary. Some people feel betrayed or get mad at the earth or some shit like that, and I just can't. Once it's done, it's done, and I laugh and thank the Goddess I'm okay.

Maybe it's just too BIG for me to rage at, or maybe despite my pagan beliefs (or because of them) I just don't anthropomorphize events the way Christians do, who rail at their god whenever shit doesn't go their own way. I don't expect the Goddess to care about my little life, so this kind of thing never feels personal to me.

Um, kinda wandered off the mark there but yeah. Freaky experience is freaky.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

well, I live in tornado country here and have lived in hurricane country and it's interesting -- I'm fascinated by big, destructive storms, and I actually get a bit excited when we have a tornado watch (we don't tonight, but some counties not too far from us do and the weather is sort of pre-tornado-y here) and I sort of enjoyed my experience with Hurricane Frances back in 2004 in Florida... However, earthquakes scare the CRAP out of me! (I've been through a few in CA and here in IL in my life).

[serai1.livejournal.com]

See, tornadoes scare the shit out of me in ways that earthquakes just don't. One of which is that they happen so damn often. Here in L.A. we get an occasional little shake and a big one maybe every ten to twenty years. In tornado country, those fucking things happen EVERY YEAR. Christ, you people have tornado season. I could never deal with that. Also, you don't see earthquakes coming. Cyclones, on the other hand, come at you from miles away, tearing up the landscape, huge and murderous and FUCKING SCREAMING AT YOU. SHIT NO THANK YOU VERY MUCH BB.

Goes to show there's different scares for everyone LOL!