basketball upstairs

Ahoy,

Clearly I'm in a foreign land judging as how the ground below me moved last night. Welcome to California.

My first earthquake was during my first week at Cal - some 5 years ago. We thought it was the boys upstairs playing basketball because they had been when we went to investigate earlier in the week and throughout our stay there. But this time was the real deal. And then about another week later I'm told there was another one, but I was in the shower and didn't feel anything. I've come to associate earthquakes with boys playing basketball upstairs because I don't know any better and haven't felt anything big enough to actually knock my things over.

So strange, this place is. Growing up in the most earthquake safe part of the world, the ability of the ground beneath my feet to move is difficult to wrap my brain around. So it moves, you say? So you can't build with bricks, you say? So things can topple over and fall into the ocean, you say? Images of Lois Lane falling into the abyss of the San Andreas Fault Line come to mind. Haven't you ever wondered where Superman is when you're feeling the earth shake and open up beneath you? Not anywhere near you, probably. I'm sure there are lots more important people to save from being swallowed up into the earth. Then why on earth would you choose to live here? There is plenty of seismologically stable land all across America, plenty of it ripe for development, you know? Clearly all that sun has fried your sense of reason, logic, and instinct for survival.

tyranically parched,
jt