Sway with Me

It is 340pm in the afternoon and I am standing perusing the shelves in a spiritual bookstore called Mystic Journey on Abbot Kinney Blvd. in Venice, California. Tom is there also, looking about on his own.

I am engrossed in the titles on the shelf before me when I become aware of two things occurring - one is the loud chiming from the large standing display array of chimes and gongs behind me and the other is the swaying motion of my body. I think to myself that something is amiss but perhaps it is my imagination. Then the swaying becomes more pronounced and I try to comprehend how it is that the sound of chimes is causing me to sway in this uncontrollable manner.

I turn around and Tom is now standing before me speaking about a book in his hands but I am not paying much attention, instead I notice that the temperament of the people in the room has shifted. It hits me that this is an earthquake and in fact the strongest tremor that I have ever experienced. Tom does not seem to notice it until he is looking at me directly and then it registers that the distance between us is shifting in a dizzying way. Nobody panics but there are people already making phone calls to dear ones before the tremors subside after a minute. I overhear a phone conversation about someone's swimming pools overflowing.

As Tom pays for his book the cashier tells him that there was a 7.2 earthquake in Baja California, incredible that the epicenter was hundreds of miles away yet felt so strongly.