The quake song

Having moved to the LA area little over five years ago, it wasn’t until today that I experienced a significantly violent earthquake in our hometown of Fullerton – just across the freeway from the epicenter of the 5.4 quake in Chino Hills today.

I was talking on the phone in my studio for work, when suddenly it all started moving.

What’s interesting to me now is that though I remember the specific feeling of the earthquake, the adrenaline rush of anticipating when it will end, the cycles of disbelief and acceptance and small notions of what the edge of panic feels like… of all this, I remember the sounds the most.

We keep our glasses on a wire shelving unit, which began disposing victims to the kitchen floor. Not many perished, but the crashing and rattling of glass was enough to know. We also have a lot of wind chimes in various forms around different places in the house – most of which live on the front deck. The ones in my studio joined them in exultant songs of the earth! It was nothing less than enlightening, as the high timbers met the rumble of crust.

With little broken but a lot shaken (especially our cats, the breaking glass and shaking house wasn’t their idea of a good time – though our outside cats both napped straight through), it became a sort of coming-of-age moment, as the exhilaration of an enormous power much greater than I could immediately conceive finally welcomed me to California.