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.

[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).