Item: 1 earthquake informational booklet (Part II)

If you look at the map that shows the Pacific and North American plates, it seems that you almost couldn't have picked a more dangerous spot for a city than the place Los Angeles is located right now.

There's nothing to do about it, though, except to laugh, and I notice that there's frequently a sort of swagger in that laugh.   It has something to do with fear and also with fascination, with being very familiar with a landscape that might not be there tomorrow.  When I lived away from here, I hated the thought that the Big One might take place without me.  Even if it was tragic and horrific, like it probably will be, I would have felt disappointed, and disloyal, to have escaped it.

But there are lots of small shakers too, and I remember a few of these that happened at times when I was becoming bored with the patterns of life, thinking that I knew already how a week, a day, the rest of my life, were going to go.  It only takes a few seconds of feeling the ground give way to throw that all off, to re-learn the meaning of unpredictable.

Even when nothing is shaking, the topography is slowly shifting.  The LA City Hall is now 9 feet further north than when it was built in 1924.   I'm moving in a new direction now, and I don't even know it.