California Multilogue Five "Headless Hydrae"

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-JA

To build a house on a hill is no mean accomplishment. You have to get the angle just right, cantilever the foundation or whatever, pour the concrete and stay on top of it or you get a place like my old apartment in Chicago where all the pens and dog toys eventually gathered in an uneven row below the front window like the house was leaning forward to hear better the house across the street or to tell its secrets. It was old and bent and sinking the way buildings do into the dirt. Gradual descent. Out here there's the added peril of none of this being permanent, everything on shifting plates, no trust in granite or the works of women and men.

I still don't know what an earthquake feels like. In Michigan a truck going by on the cobblestones would shake the whole house and you could hear the windows rattling in their panes. When the Blue Angels swooped in overhead it was even worse, with the noise infiltrating and taking root in your bones. Once in Oregon I noticed a coffee cart shaking and the glasses rattling around then returned to whatever I was reading. Found out later that was one and I was a little disappointed.