All Shook Up

It's been a long time since I've been afraid to change or take a shower lest a tremor propel me out of doors naked; afraid to have Ben out of sight; or, perhaps more rationally, afraid to sleep under our concrete roof. We camped out under the tin roof of our porch and our neighborhood was astir for most of the night, as collectively the city relived memories of January 12, 2010. Not even Luna wanted to be in the house.

Last night we experienced a relatively small earthquake (magnitude 4.6), whose epicenter was some 20-30 km away in Jimani, in the Dominican Republic. There was no damage, but my own visceral and physical reaction took me by surprise. Long after the ground stopped shaking (it was only a few seconds, after all), my body trembled and my heart raced. 

This moving note was published this morning by Frantz Duval, editor of Haiti's largest newspaper, Le Nouvelliste: Everything is in our bodies. It echoes a comment Ben made last night: "The earth releases its tension, and that tension is transferred into the bodies of those of us living on it."