A soft rocking sensation, that’s how it begins. Then, as with a storm, the roar comes after the light, a deep roar from below. And you know it’s a quake. It shakes, shakes, shakes, shakes you and all around you…up, down, sideways, undulate, jump, tremble, move even more, a little shiver… and it stops. Silence, a heavy deafening silence follows until you realize what happened.
My great-grandparents arrived in Chile on August 16 1906; their ship touched the Valparaiso shore right on time for them to see the spectacle of houses falling down the hills ('tremblement de terre', 'erdbeben' where their thoughts for sure, if not just 'merde' and 'Scheiße'). My grandparents witnessed the strongest earthquake ever recorded, May 22nd Valdivia 1960 (and added 'terremoto'and 'mierda' to the list of expressions). My mom accounts for first hand experience of four in her sixty years of life and maybe one more to go. I was in Santiago for March 3d 1985 and in the north for the July 1995 one. There have been other 22 severe earthquakes in the country in between the Boudet-Rommel made it to Chile and this last one, a century after.
A seismic background should be accounted for as one of Freud’s developmental phases. You never totally left your cot. Even more, you may enjoy the movement. I can remember waking up in the middle of the night with that mix of fear and excitement, staying in bed, all alerts on thinking “a little bit more, hmmm, stronger, c’mon… a little longer” wanting but not wanting for it to go on. Those are the small ones, the earth beneath you stretching or changing position. But beware of what you wish for.
Then comes the big one... When all you want is for it to stop, to stop, please, to stop. And it goes on for a few minutes that feel like eternity. Victor Jara wrote ‘life is eternal in five minutes’ and Amanda held to Manuel as if it was forever. We do the same. You hold whoever is next to you, or the shadow of whoever is not longer there. Call out to your phantoms, gods, nature or your sofa or table to remain strong.
Maybe fate gives us a big shake from time to time to recover a lost equilibrium on what is really worth or important and what is not. You will remember forever that earthquakes appear in your personal history every few chapters. That nothing, not even the soil where you plant your roots in should be taken for granted. That magical realism exists and furniture knows how to walk, the fridge strives for independence, paintings fly away at the first opportunity, flower vases get bored of the water and the flowers and send them out at the first chance; and that afterwards strange people shadows throw pajama parties in the park in the middle of the night; that you have no choice but to eat ice-cream for a day.
But also that destruction, sorrow, lost and suffering are to come and after the silence so does life, normal, everyday life… until the next one.
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