Earthquake

A 4.8er rocked the most unlikely of places: NYC!

If there was one thing you could count on New York for it was this: no earthquakes.

Well that certainty was thrown out the window when a 4.8 shaker, epicentered in New Jersey, jolted the Garden State, the City and places as far south as Philadelphia Friday morning.

I was at my desk at home when I felt the big shake.

My dog, Pepper, was beside me when she was startled awake from her morning nap and looked right at me as if to say, “Hey Hooman, did you feel what I just felt?!”

I hadn’t felt an earthquake since I lived in LA.

There I experienced a number of quakes and a really big one: the Northridge quake of ‘94. That was a major jolt and then a roller that felt like it went on for a good 5 minutes. At the time, I was living in a one-bedroom flat a block from the ocean in Venice Beach with my then-girl friend, one-day wife, Betsy. That morning, when the ground-wave finally subsided there was an eerie silence which was broken by our neighbor who exclaimed, “Fuck! The cable is out!”

I experienced another big earthquake about a decade later in Tokyo. It was the middle of the night when I was awakened by a major rolling quake.

Unlike the Venice experience, the Earth’s movement in Tokyo wasn’t followed by a silence.

Instead, I heard a series of buzzes, whirs and ticking. It was very strange. This was the sound of some sort of mechanism.

I came to find out the next morning that it was the earthquake-proofing inside the hotel’s construction. The mechanistic sound was the system protecting, stabilizing and settling the building.

I had never heard that before but it sounded quite smart.

Nothing makes you stop and think like an earthquake.

It’s like a supernatural way to force you to pause. And to reflect on what matters.

Fortunately, this was not a big, devastating quake. I didn’t even hear there were any injuries, thank God.

But nonetheless, this quake stopped me in my tracks.

Maybe it stopped you.

Fact is, I was going to write about something else this week.

But this is a good reminder.

We’re not in charge.

The Earth is.

Image: Midjourney.