In The Arms Of The Angels

Or that's how it looked to me, when I came upon this image after the recent non-serious but sneaky, creepy, loathsome little 4.2 quake that lifted Berkeley to the top of its P-wave crest and then dropped it, this city, with a nasty bang.

I, however, was in the hot tub, so I cannot personally speak to the nastiness. Others, yes. This one, no. I can only report that any number of people were waked from a deep sleep with that sickening heart thump, This is it. Things aren't parsed, in dreams, except by their extremes. wonderfully irrational means of dreaming. The joys are beyond bliss, extend forever, and fear feels itself naked, without reservation at all.

What I saw in this map of the faultlines in California—the San Andreas , that long red scar up the coast, and our fault, the Hayward, the short red line across San Francisco Bay—what came to mind was an embrace. Which is an odd thought, for these are the two big nasties of Northern California life, the Hayward considered really ready to go off ... yet such was my water-logged image, we here held as if in a nest in the notch of a tree.

We live on, ignoring what cannot be helped and will happen, one day, in some horrible way. For now, I commend unto you the view as I write this ...