Earthquake

You know those days when you just know that you are the center of the universe and everything must surely revolve around you? If you don’t…kudos. For the rest of you, it was kind of one of those days for me. Oh I don’t have any clean clothes (except for the 5 dresses in my bag); oh I don’t get to go for a walk this morning because I slept in; oh I have to leave Antigua in less than a week and go to Costa Rica. Poor me. Right? Yeah…I probably deserved to be slapped.

Actually, I kind of was.

I was sitting at a table on the second floor of the school trying my damndest to imagine the world in 20 years so I could right conditional sentences in Spanish over what it might be like:

-Toda la gente del mundo hablará un idioma, posiblemente inglés.

-Habrán cosas tecnológicas que no podemos imaginar ahora.

-El clima aún será loco…(The climate will still be crazy)

That’s when it happened, right after that last sentence. It started as a slight tremor, the kind that might be mistaken for a big truck passing. I stopped my pencil and looked up at my teacher. There was still a faint tremble getting ever so stronger by the moment. Then a jolt and everyone on the second floor leapt to their feet. This wasn’t a big truck passing. It was an earthquake. The building continued to tremble, the windows shuddered and vibrated, the pictures wobbled off kilter, and everyone in the building shared the thought: Is this going to get stronger?

After about 30 seconds (and believe me, when the earth is moving beneath your feet, 30 seconds is no blink of the eye) it stopped. It took my body a minute to realize that now it wasn’t the floor that was shaking, it was me. Everyone returned to their seats and resumed their studies. Teachers tried calling their loved ones, a few students tried to check the internet on their phones to see how strong it had been in other places. I took a breath. I wasn’t afraid at any point, my sense of self-preservation isn’t that strong, but I was (for lack of a better word) shaken.

I have always known that the earth is powerful and that nature has her whims, but somehow I had never internalized that knowledge into a deep understanding of the connectedness of things. I am tiny. Not only does the universe not revolve around me, it doesn’t even revolve around the planet I live on. Humans are small. We are fragile. We are self-destructive. But we live on a planet that is resilient and that will not hesitate to put us in our place.

*I'd like to add that I was more than 100 miles from the epicenter and Antigua was hardly affected. I feel like this blog makes light of a very serious situation and I wanted to clarify that when I wrote this I wasn't aware of just how much damage was done in San Marcos and the surrounding area. There were a number of deaths and disappearances in that part of the country and I sincerely hope that those who did survive are well and able to continue their lives in spite of the damage done to their homes. I am also deeply thankful to have only felt a tiny taste of the power of the earth and not her full rage and fury.