what I dream about when I dream about earthquakesam

Dreamt about earthquakes in high-rise buildings. Other things, too, I'm sure, but I don't remember. Earthquakes stay with you. It's what I was afraid of when I was little and the stairs would end in space, and I'd lose my balance, or the slope of a road would become impossible not to fall from, or I would start falling. Is this the nature of the world? We're told plates shift almost perceptibly, slowly, changing the face of the earth so gradually that man cannot witness it in his life or ten lifetimes.

But the earth is like evolution. It spasms. We walk the line and ignore the zags because they are rare and either cannot be foreseen or cannot be avoided. It's those spikes, those landfalls, those soaring temperatures and plummeting meteors and explosive events that are of consequence, and yet, we're supposed to ignore them. They are rare after all. You can't live your life in constant dread. But things that are rare still happen and enough. Impacts occur. People do get struck by lightning. Even twice.

There's nothing we can do to stop the forces of nature. Nothing at all. But there are things we can do to stop the human forces that inflict terror in lives. We can vote for Obama. We can recycle and buy reusable tote bags. We can ask less of the ecosystem and more of ourselves. We can save this beautiful, dramatic, dangerous world, or it will save itself--and let me tell you, I'd rather take my chances in a world we've care for than one that we've pushed to the brink, one where the zags become the line, and anyone with two feet falling off the edge.