Not Yet The Big One

While our professor was midway demonstrating how to present a conference paper, the ground suddenly started shaking and the glass windows rattling. We were stunned for a moment until somebody said, earthquake. That was the signal each one of my classmates started ducking under the slim tables. I think I was the last one who did the same. Looking back, I thought it was so natural for them; but for me, who comes from a different context and obviously had not absorbed much those reminders on what to do in times of an earthquake as to make them part of my own make up and system, my delayed reaction was well, perhaps a manifestation of my own lack of disaster preparedness consciousness. I still remember in July 16, 1990; yes, that Big One which hit Baguio and Cabanatuan City. I was about to go out of the SM Cubao then when the glass windows of the mall started trembling. The guard's immediate reaction was to close the door but I remember some of us shouted at him with the question: ano ba gusto mo bang makulong tayo dito sa loob. The guard was the first one to have sped out of the mall.
I remember that guard because in a way his reaction was also similar to mine own yesterday. I thought his , was less of an abandonment but a very natural human fear and strong primeval act of self-preservation. Which is not always a guarantee for it, though. That is why I remember all those disaster preparedness plugs I used to read in my own radio program which perhaps I did not take to heart myself. And that explains why while my classmates were already under the table, I was sizing up the walls whether they will fall down on us. I was also remembering the escape door. I'm certain fear also gripped me. I was aware that seismologists were awaiting an earthquake along the Hamilton Fault which is within the Bay Area and which shakes every 140 years and it was supposed to have been at the end of last month. So I remember mumbling a prayer.
The quake lasted about 30 seconds and because we had our laptops, we immediately knew that the epicenter was only 7 miles from downtown San Jose and that it was a 5.6 intensity, and coming from or near the Calaveras Fault. No major damages. The buildings were still up. No deaths. No injuries. That was not yet the Big One.
Thank God.

What made us laugh after we gained our composure though was the timing of the quake. My professor's conference paper was on Robinson Jeffers' poetry which is noted for what a critic called "geologic sublimity", its concern for a forgotten past when the earth's current geography was still being formed by earthquakes and the movement of tectonic plates. Think of images of the Mauna Loa spewing lava into the sea and you'll get the metaphor in his poems. Its so primal which really makes the "sublime" a very dangerous place. We thought Jeffers was around just as he had written in Tor House ("My ghost you needn't look for; it is probably/Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not dancing on wind/With the mad wings and the day moon."); and which we were reading at that time. Somebody snapped: a "geologic special effects." What a way to remember early la dia para los muertos. Happy Halloween!

Comments

[i spy ellas]

Padi,

Kumusta ka diyan sa Bay Area ? pig hahalat baga daa an the BIG ONE, a redux of the 1908 disaster which killed more than 3,000 San Franciscans and other Bay Area residents. BTW, what comprises the Bay area baya ? San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, ? could you post a cartographic map of these areas ?

On the lighter side, kumusta na an paborito kong NBA team na GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS ? paborito ko an coach kaini ta out-of-the-box siya magisip. Ano an chances ninda sa playoffs ?kumusta an saro pang team diyan, SACRAMENTO KINGS ? ano an chances kaini ? su mga Bay Area Bands kan 60s buhay pa ? I'm referring to the GRATEFUL DEAD, COLD BLOOD, and TOWER OF POWER ( Emilio Castillo). Si Carlos Santana, aram ko buhay pa.

Bakung si Jack London, taga Oakland ? siisay pa an ibang mga literati diyan na an origins sa Bay Area ?

Porfirio Rubirosa