I have a slight confession to make... I've thought about earthquakes a LOT since coming out here. By my nature I'm not a particularly neurotic person, so this occasional fixation on disaster has been an anomaly. I don't look at my gas oven and wonder when it will explode, I don't hear the rumble of thunder and step ten feet back from my computer monitor. I understand the Odds, and I've pretty much internalized the fact that focusing on the unlikely event is pointless. But earthquakes are different. In my L.A. life, they have been both inevitable and totally unknown.
For a transplanted DC native, the West Coast has felt deceptively familiar. Sure there are little differences... the permanent May weather, the palm trees, the occasional Bruce Willis sightings. But the fast food constellations align in more or less the same pattern as they do elsewhere (despite a few new stars) so for the most part I've been able ignore the miles between Here and Home.
Except for the rumors that, every couple years, the vast plates of earth under Los Angeles decide to rebel. That kind of geological fact puts Los Angeles on another planet, and it's always served to make me a little less sure of my steps.
Occasionally I've woken up at night to the sound of some deep rumbling... a helicopter taking off from a nearby hospital probably, or trucks shifting on the 405... and I wonder "is this it? Is this what it feels like when the ground moves?" I'll turn my eyes to the pencils on my desk, awaiting some roll or tap to validate my restlessness. Once in a while I've even convinced myself that it HAD been a shiver, or an invisible preamble to some coming quake. But it's never amounted to anything.
So my first thought, after I came down from the third floor and gotten clear of the ICT building, was "THAT's what it feels like. Good to know."
I know that if I live here any length of time I'll experience worse quakes than this one, but I doubt I'll lose any more sleep over them after today. I guess I'm a Californian now.
Comments (2)
REBEL?
You feel the earth move under your feet and interpret it as a rebellion? The earth is always moving under your feet, you (and most of the rest of us) are just not calibrated to sense the slowly shifting moltenness beneath us. Living on a fault zone is a reminder that nothing, even the very ground we walk on, is solid. Earthquakes shake our (rigid) beliefs along with our rigid structures. Deep down, I like to think that the west coast sensibility reflects this...
Posted by pweil![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jantonisse/nav-commenters.gif)
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July 30, 2008 9:18 PM
Posted on July 30, 2008 21:18
Absolutely true! I am much more aware of the smallifying (thesaurus?) facts of plate tectonics when I'm out here. The East Coast is much more worn down, still and easy to take for granted.
But all geologica aside, I'm going to stick to my choice of verb. I don't think it's totally wrong to classify an earthquake as a moment of rebellion. For the most part, the plates move methodically, and do the work of years and inches. Earthquakes are a trauma, a belch of energy from pent-up pressures.
Whether that, too, can be mapped onto a californian sensibility... I'm not sure, but I hope not!
Posted by Jamie Antonisse![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jantonisse/nav-commenters.gif)
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July 31, 2008 6:48 PM
Posted on July 31, 2008 18:48