Wednesday, April 23, 2008

the earthday/birthday season got kicked off, 12:30 am on Mon, with another aftershock earthquake, but overall, the birthday was pleasant. i gave my students quizzes so i had a bit of a break before the stack stared at me (is still staring at me, two nights later...)- and, the family took me out, sang to me, etc., and that was nice. the overwhelming reality these days is the stacks- i'll call my novel the old man and the stack if i get out of this class alive. i'm getting them to make a youtube, just so it won't make me another stack. if you want to see what it's based on, take a look.

the earthquakes have been centered near a town called bellmont, and another called bone gap, no question here about which they should use to name them. but both are merely specks on the map, so they are becoming known as the mt. carmel quakes. they say that there was another in 1968, or maybe another set. but by far the most interesting story i heard was this: back in 1990, some guy predicted the big one, on the new madrid fault, which is a bit to our west. he was well organized- had the tides all mapped out in a believable way- and everyone fell for it, big time- called off school for three days. some people even remembered the guy's name. but he didn't last long, after that- he himself died. and his big prediction never amounted to anything.

as for the birthday extravaganza, i can tell you this- it's kind of like the dia del muertos/halloween turning into all-saints. before the 21st, you have the 19th and 20th, both besmirched by mass murderers (waco, ok city on the 19th, hitler and columbine on the 20th)- but then, poof, you're out of aries and into taurus, for whatever that's worth, and it's spring, with birthday/earthday blossoms, all downhill from here. i'm not an astrologer, but someone once told me that aries was the pioneer and taurus the settler, so they're kind of opposites in the sense that they have a different approach. i of course can relate to both, though, and in fact do, almost every minute. you live on a cusp, you get used to the earth rumbling beneath your feet, once in a while, i guess. go stand in a doorway, is what they'd tell you in california, or so i hear.

1 Comments:

Blogger J-Funk said...

as an ode to the earthquakes of the midwest, we had an earthquake drill yesterday at work. Well, actually, I think it's a regular thing out here on the West Coast but I imagined it as an ode to the midwest. It was very weird for me. We just went outside. It seems like that wouldn't be all that easy to do during an earthquake but what do I know.

12:07 AM  

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