As someone who loves being in control, earthquakes are not really my thing.
You never know how you’ll behave in a “situation” until you’re in one. I was sitting on my couch around 10:30 this morning when my precariously hung overhead light fixture started to shake. This happens all the time, because my upstairs neighbors are running what must be a woodworking intensive at all times of the day. But the shaking kept going. I felt it on the floor too, and it felt like it was intensifying.
The first thing I did was reach for my glasses. If I’m about to crumble under my building I at least want to see it. By the time I could reach for my phone, the shaking subsided.
During the whole event, it never occurred to me that this was an earthquake. I live in a rental building in a neighborhood with “slope” in the name so, things being wonky and unstable are pretty normal. It wasn’t until my friends in other neighborhoods and boroughs texted me that I realized I’m not special, this actually happened everywhere where they have good bagels.
This can be classified as a funny disaster (nobody was hurt, everyone was scared, collective panic is funniest with no consequences etc.) And it wasn’t all bad, it actually made me get out my computer and start writing. It took a trembling of the earth’s crust to get me to take one small step towards actualizing my goals. And that’s fine, people pay hundreds of dollars on writing classes for motivation, natural disasters are free.
Two days ago I had a telehealth appointment with my doctor where she told me that I could benefit from limiting my gluten and dairy consumption. But my Zoom froze during that part so I didn’t hear it. While the earth was shaking, all I could think about was the leftover Lucali pizza in my fridge. Could I run across my living room into the kitchen to get it? If I had to leave my house, if this was a bad emergency, did I have time to rescue the cold pizza as I fled? Was this my Passover story?
There’s nothing like a shaking house to remind you that life is short, and that so much is out of our control. There is nothing more humbling than watching your IKEA dining chair that you stooped from the street vibrate on the floor and then check your work email to see if you have finalized all the details in the dog themed happy hour you’re planning. When the rapture comes, I will be sending an email.
So how do we go about our daily lives when random shit can take us out at any minute? It’s simple, we don’t. I’m packing my bags and moving to one of those animal sanctuary farms upstate. I’m going to run around with llamas and make bread from scratch and howl at the moon.
Life is so precious, we have to remember to tell the people we love that we did not watch the Instagram Reels they sent us. There’s bad reception under the kitchen table.