Earthquake?

I sat in front of the computer starking blankly at the screen.  I was nursing my flu with Echinacea tea and fighting the urge to crawl back into bed where it was warm and the world didn't have to exist  Fragments of old dreams floated in and out of my subconscious, the barrier between the waking world and the unseen world still permeable.  The scary man dressed in shadows who gives chase in slow motion as you try to run away in spite of your leaden feet.  Or the one where you wake from bed in the middle of the night to the ground, the walls, the sky, the whole world rumbling around you...

Oh wait.

T. came home for lunch today and almost the first thing we said to each other was, "Did that really happen?"   

You see, it was hard to be sure.  T. had taken to peering into the primordial darkness of night, head cocked to one side like a wolf or a cave man sensing some approaching danger. I would never feel or hear anything, but I would begin to suspect that T. could perceive vibrations on a scale beyond the average human animal.

"Did you feel that?" he would ask.  "I think it's an earthquake."

"I didn't feel  anything.  Go back to bed."

"I heard something," he would insist, "I'm hearing it right now, don't you?"

I would crane my neck toward the window, make my breathing slight; all there would be was a deafening silence.

Last night was different; it was loud and everything shook.  I can only compare it to being nine and riding an old wooden roller coaster on a beach somewhere in Virginia.  It rattled and groaned as though at any moment the whole structure might crumble and blow away like a house made of matches, and we'd all go flying into the ocean.  I immediately understood why the ancients thought the gods moved the earth or virgins had to be sacrificed to appease volcano deities.  What else could be the source of all that power?

I went to the Japan Meterological Agency's website today, and apparently the quake was a 5.7, but its "seismic intensity" was only about a 2.  I'm not sure exactly what that means, but suffice it to say that we were probably just initiated to what must be a common event in Tokyo.  (Although they are expecting the big one any time now.)  If I were to stay here long enough, I'm sure I'd grow blase about earthquakes, the same way when I lived in Orlando, I thought nothing of walking outside in the middle of hurricanes, ducking the tree branches flying at my head because I liked getting wet.  Love the Mother Nature you know, fear the one you don't.

There's the quake.  And here, just because it's one of my favorite pieces of art:

Comments

[Rezwan]

Glad you are alright. Well what can I say? Be brave or get out of there soon!

[Blaise]

Vous mettez du réel talent à exorciser votre peur ; vous parlez de tremblement de terre au Japon et volontairement ou non vous lui donnez comme une touche d'intimité captivante, là même ou rode le danger, l'inconnu, la peur...
ça me rappelle un passage de Tanizaki où il parlait de la découverte de la beauté du corps de sa mère qui l'avait serré contre lui lors d'un tremblement de terre mémorable...
Alors un conseil, un seul : faites confiance à Mère Nature, elle est la même sous des formes différentes... !!!

[Jennifer Brea]

Merci, Blaise. Je suis contente que tu as aime la description de ma peur, a la fois reelle et irrationelle. Je prefere toujours les ouragans :-)

[cathy]

first visit here to you blog and I am feeling the warmth of your words, keep up the good job