Orange - the color of traffic cones, the color of warning. All week orange lurks, undermines my renewed determination to really think positive… Smokey orange sunsets – fires burning in the mountains to the east. Orange warns me of danger in this place I have stubbornly decided to call home. Orange rinds decorate the grass around my wooden bench at the Huntington Gardens - masquerading as fat cheese curls. Even nature here imitates the artificial.
I’ve been thinking a lot about earthquakes lately. The air has been hot and windy. My friend TJ once told me that this is earthquake weather, but he said to only worry if a lot of pets run away. There is a sign outside of my apartment for a lost poodle named Poopey who was “last seen wearing a blue and white sweater.” I see it and think “run Poopey, run.” Then I notice signs everywhere. Are there really more or is it me?
A few weeks ago, even before the wind blew in I attended a free LA Parks program. The “earthquake hike” at Franklin Canyon promised to explain “the unique characteristics of California’s fault lines.” It sounded almost as fun as the bug walk the week before.
Penny, the Universal Records data manager and fully uniformed volunteer ranger, informed us that the “earthquake hike” trail was closed “due to angry bees.” We spent most of the morning in the Sookey Goldman Nature Center. Thirteen adults sitting at school lunch tables in hiking boots watching videos of famous LA earthquakes.
Our brief walk around the reservoir reveals some fascinating information; Not too far from where we are standing geologists had found evidence of an ancient quake so violent that it had sheared trees in half from their trunks, “basically decapitated them,” Penny smiles and makes a chopping motion. She leads us back to the nature center with tales of out of control gas fires and buried first responders. She enthusiastically urges us to prepare and displays her perfectly packed earthquake bag.
Until this moment I had always equated being in an earthquake with the motion of getting hit from the side in a bumper car in Ocean City - jarring and unpleasant sure, but no reason to let up on the wide push pedal and keep lurching ahead.
But this was something different - an earth that could buckle and shear – disappearing beneath my feet or slamming a building aside. It is an awesome in a way that I have never quite considered before. I find it harder to breathe.
In the middle of a perfectly good day I stop to imagine the earth suddenly dropping out from under me or three feet to my left.
And now the news, - geologists warn that there is a 97% chance of a “significant earthquake” in the next thirty years. KTLA chooses this week to make this report?! - Now my only question is where will I be? In my apartment asleep? My apartment was built in 1929 so it will be fine, right? All four floors above me will stand defiant and worthy of architecture before plywood. Will I be able to find my glasses I the dark? What if the cute neighbor’s apartment is okay? Will I have to spend weeks a four eyed geek?
Will I be in my coffee shop with strangers? Is that better? I should definitely keep more gas in my car!
You know what – odds are I will be in my car! I am always in my car. That’s probably a fairly safe place to be.
The paranoia is cloying and now I feel it is well excused. But it is not good, I know it is not good. I don’t breathe. I think – ‘haven’t I learned how to talk myself out of this tree by now?’
But this rudder of worry I steer my life with goes deep. It comes from a childhood of fear. Not of earthquakes but of possibilities. I remember sitting on the brown carpet in our downstairs rec room in front of the dark giant console tv. Where I live when I grow up? I couldn’t be an actress – because and I couldn’t live in New York – that’s where the nuclear bombs would go – I had seen The Day After. And Los Angeles was out of the question – they were going to have a terrible earthquake and drop into the Pacific - I had also seen Lex Luther sink California along the San Andreas fault.
So I’ve spent my adulthood relearning life. A ship with hope as my rudder and sails that fly with breath.
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