i wrote this on the day of the earthquake.
since my summer life is a hazy halcyon landscape of perfect days, punctuated with vegetables from the backyard garden and lethargic card games on the deck and slow, sweet afternoon happy hours, i have imposed a "one activity a day" rule: going to the beach is an activity. same goes for reading a book. or watching half a season of mad men in one sitting.
so, yesterday was the day i fell asleep on a beach with a breeze and woke up with a toasted lower back. today was shaping up to be the day we did the crossword in the times that mysteriously appeared on the kitchen table, when around 2pm, nature defined the day for me.
obviously, How Social Media Is Changing The World is a favorite topic of social media-ists (media-tors?) preening behind computer screens everywhere. my first omfg moment was in june 2009, when michael jackson died and basically crashed the internet. twitter buzz far outpaced reports from any official news sources, which makes sense as twitter requires of its authors nothing more than speculation, sarcasm, and/or exclamation marks. it was a favorite party game of mine through that entire autumn to gather opinions on who else could crash the internet by dying-- it's a pretty short list, which i suppose could also be termed something like "the universe's ultimate a list." in any case, i was fascinated by the lag time between frenzied rumor and confirmation-- rather like seeing an explosion before you hear the boom. sorry, faulkner, but these days, there's the fury, and then there's the sound.
growing up in southern california, i have experienced a few earthquakes-- and by that, i mean actually just a few. (all of these people that are like ZOMG EAST COAST GET USED TO IT WE HAVE EARTHQUAKES ALL THE TIME are sort of confusing me, implying that the left coast is always a-rockin'.) they've all been small, and most of the time it takes a few seconds to be sure of what's happening. (it's like seeing a yeti in plants vs. zombies: "wait... is that?... no way, it can't be... i think it is... oh wait, it's gone. i really think it was, though!") the most interesting thing about earthquakes is how the ground rolls, as though it's changed consistency. everything feels suddenly more elastic, time included.
so when i opened my facebook today and there was a post at the top of my news feed from a high school acquaintance that said something along the lines of, "was that just an earthquake? the whole building was shaking!" i assumed she was in california. and then, at that precise second, the chair i was sitting in because to very subtly dip and roll. the mirror on my wall moved, not far, but perceptibly, from side to side. i thought i was having some sort of psychosomatic hallucination--see the word "earthquake," imagine an earthquake!-- so i asked around the house if anyone else had felt it. everyone told me it was impossible, and that there are no such things as earthquakes on cape cod.
and then the internet exploded.
everyone had something to say about it-- east coasters freaking out or celebrating (i was jumping up and down with glee at having experienced something so weird), west coasters turning on the smarm. but i was the most fascinated by that first status, that managed to get to me before the actual earthquake did. (i was not alone.) even in something as instantaneous as a natural disaster and as impossible to predict as an earthquake, we move so quickly now that there was a tiny bit of fury before the sound and the fury itself.

