I have spent the past three days in a very strange place, a weird facebook-filled limbo of isolation and trepidation. Occasional jailbreaks have maintained my sanity, some better than others... a frenzy of ferreting food from the supermarket? Less so. Feeding melon bread to the pidgeons in the park while watching giggling children try to fly a kite on a sunny, breezeless afternoon? More effective.
But the gap between the bright, assuring, concrete reality of the outside world, and the dim, close, cluttered hole I've spent most of my days in... It's only part of the bizarre dichotomy that has split my life in two lately.
I feel like I'm walking a blurred line that separates the mundane world, with its meticulous tasks and petty heartaches, from the world of single-minded survival. The latter is like a kind of tunnel vision, where all the details fall away and only a few things matter, ever have mattered, ever could matter. Food, shelter, friends. That last thing surprised me the most. A natural introvert, I've often spent more effort seeking solitude than company--a bookworm and a shut-in if left to my own devices. This semester I've begun to need people in ways I never imagined I could. I've had to give up my autonomy as an island, but I can't say that I regret it. Perhaps I am finally joining the human race. In any case, since the earthquake hit on Friday, I have felt most comfortable when surrounded by friends and acquaintances, and most disoriented when alone with the news reports and the uncertainty.
The tremors have been stressful. I haven't counted, but I'd say we get at least 5 of those a day, and a few wake me up at night. But it's more complicated than that... A lot of times I just start feeling dizzy, and I ask my friend in the other room and she feels the same way--or someone I'm talking to on skype will say I'm swaying just a little bit... It's pretty disorienting. Let me put it this way: I'm never sure the ground entirely STOPS moving. In fact, after 3 days, I've caught myself noticing stillness more than tremors. But yeah, a richter 3 or 4 gets my attention. And it's hard. I mean, they all start THE SAME WAY... The big ones on Friday started just like one of the little giggle-it-off quakes we had last week... Every time a 4 comes along you play a little game in your head. Like, "does this feel like it's getting stronger? It's been a few minutes, at which point do I hide under my desk? When do I grab my evac bag and head for the door? Am I about to die or should I keep working on this essay?" And you must decide: am I wasting valuable seconds I could use to escape this concrete deathtrap? Or, should I take a deep breath and continue whatever I'm doing? Cold sweaty fingers clutching my evacuation bag, my life-line, my diving bell when I am plunged into whatever chaos awaits. At times you feel numb to it, but then a few hours later it's like the big one could be right around the corner.
And so three or four times a day, and a couple times a night, mag. 4 aftershocks shake me out of anything approximating complacency. Each one threatens to unravel the rich tapestry of daily life until everything hangs by a few tenuous threads: cunning, speed, an arbitrary bit of luck... so you dig through the fabric of your existence, wondering if the crucial threads will be there when you need them--but you can't know, and you really can't prepare. That is the disconcerting thing about earthquakes: you have no control. Nothing to run from, and no real guarantees to run to. Just the world coming apart at the seams.
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