5.6

I skipped class last night. I had to. I’m in school for writing and I haven’t written anything meaty in weeks. Lately I’ve been oversaturated with the amount of reading I’m supposed to be keeping up with. So I skipped class, went home to write and rest.

I was in the kitchen, cutting up a baguette before it went stale to eat with hot salami and Manchego. I was slicing through the bread and I heard the Jesus fountain on the fridge shaking against the coffee maker. I thought to myself, Christ I must be really cutting this up pretty hard. Then I noticed the fridge itself shaking. I thought, what the hell is exploding or trying to come out of there? Then, from her bedroom, Erica exclaimed that it was an earthquake and that’s when I felt the floor tremble and the sound of everything around me rumbling against each other. We both made our way for the doorframes and waited. I felt dizzy, like vertigo.

The quake went on for a few more seconds after that, the dizziness didn’t subside right away. We were both excited to get the report on its magnitude and where it struck. KRON 4 interrupted the Dr. Phil broadcast of people with body dysmorphic disorders and spent the rest of the hour discussing the 5.6 tremble that happened 9 miles out of San Jose.

What I love about earthquakes is their unexpectedness; you never know when they’re coming. When they do, you don’t know how long they’ll last or where the epicenter was. We’ve felt stronger quakes in our apartment before but they had been so close (practically just below us).

This was the first one that was far away and yet we still felt it. Last night’s quake was also the strongest in the Bay Area for a while.