It was a shimmy, not a shake

And I was cool. If you’d watched me, you would have thought, “She’s so cool.”

I was sitting at my desk, fiddling at the computer, when the floor beneath my feet vibrated tightly. Almost immediately I knew it was a tremor, not something else. I live on West End Avenue where, in the middle of the nights, gigantic creatures pound down the road (garbage trucks?) without shaking anything in my place, so this morning’s quake was definitely not a truck.

Years ago, I was out in LA for some movie purpose when, while sitting in a friend’s office, the support system, i.e., the ground, went haywire. I felt myself going pale, felt the blood draining somewhere out of me. (Where does the blood go when a face turns pale?)

Art, the friend whose office sofa I was clinging to, was at his desk talking on the phone; as I turned white he didn’t blink. Once he got off the phone and looked at me, he waved the thing off. “Just a small tremor,” he said.

I don’t remember what I said in response. I did say something.

However Art catagorized it, that thing was the single most unpleasant physical sensation I can remember. Ever.

So that’s why I’m so cool about today’s shake. It was fast and rhythmic, like a fine percussionist using brushes on a drum. Not like LA, which had no musical theme or controlled movement; LA rocked one way and rolled another like the sort of disorderly and violent amusement park ride I don’t like.

That’s it, we were on the periphery of an earthquake which affected Jersey more than it did New York.