When the Earth Moves

 

                                                     I just sat when the Earth moves.

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When the Earth Moves

“The world is not outside of you. The world is you.”
—J. Krishnamurti

An 8.8 magnitude earthquake just struck the Kamchatka Peninsula.
That wild, remote stretch of volcanic land in the North Pacific—
I’ve been there while fishing on board the FV. Iceland.
I remember the sky, the silence, the trembling energy of the region
as if the earth itself was in meditation—until it wasn’t.

I once flew the rim of a volcano there,
in a tiny Cessna with Dwight Blackburn, a bush pilot.
who flew out of Sand Point, Alaska.
He knew how to ride the currents of air like a seabird.
That flight showed me the open throat of the earth—
raw, black, steaming—spewing mud like it was ready to speak.

And strangely, it reminded me of something far simpler:
the little crab mounds in Kampung Selut,
My childhood village.
Each mound is crowned with a perfect hole.
From it, mud would be pushed out during high tide—
the breath of the swamp, the speech of silence.

Volcano or crab mound,
Alaska or Kampung Selut,
It’s the same gesture—
The Earth is not still.
She pulses, heaves, speaks, remembers.

And today, she roared again

I had the privillage of experiencing the Loma Prieta Earthquake in San Francisco sometime in 1989. It occured during the World Series between the SF. Giants and the Oakland A's.

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