Plate tectonics

It was a small ripple thirty years ago. A small ripple, that lead to a small crack and with time this crack and this ripple turned into a rumble and a crevice. The two halves being shaken apart, the seams breaking and the clasping of the formerly conjoined joints, began to dissipate. The ripple that was constantly there, starting from a small point and spreading out farther and farther until it enveloped the entire area. There was no escaping it, no ignoring the shimmering of the once calm ground, the tremors and the small bouncing boulders made it clear that while you can learn to tolerate such a ripple, in the end it becomes to much to bear.

The way that you have to delicately carry the plates when a larger one hits, the bracing of the table so the glasses don't shatter on the ground. Inhabiting such a place is a hassle, a hassle that some endure but not forever. I can understand why one would leave such a place but at the same time it's hard to let it go. This place that saw so many things despite it's rocky foundation. There was once happiness in such a place, a sense of calm derived from routine. Overlooking the imperfections, hoping one day the place would stabilize itself. Of course it never happens like this, you would have to knock down and rebuild from scratch. So most people would rather just walk away. Maybe not rather walk away like a clean cut abandonment, but a forced exodus, a feeling of I can't handle this anymore, this place is not safe, and it is not safe for me.

There were several attempts to stabilize the problem, but they always failed. The foundation would be stable for a couple months until the small tremors would start again, barely noticeable vibrations, the rocks kind of shaking back and forth, hopping ever so slightly. Signs that things were going to back to the way they were before. People were hired to try and halt the problem, save the place from falling apart, crumbling into shambles. They tried talking to it, reasoning, making it realize what exactly it was doing. Places like this don't listen though. You can talk at it all day and it will still do what it does. It can't do anything else than what it does. It's natural for it to behave so. They tried though and maybe some of it worked, but always for short spurts. Short spurts that made the place livable for thirty years. Which isn't that bad if you think about it.

But then if you do think about it you have to wonder about how many of those years were happy. How many were spent frustrated, cursing the tremors, knowing that they were slowly taking the place apart. Shuttered up in a sinking ship, a slowly disintegrating hovel. It must not have been that bad for them to have stayed though. I'm sure if it was much worse they would have left sooner. They never seemed that attached to it anyway. Not attached enough to put up with anything that horrible. Maybe it was just complacency, an acceptance of this as normal. The same steps in the same place everyday, the routine of stabilization. The charade of stabilization. It was more than that though, certain chains and ties that locked them to that place. Commitments and reasons that were too logical. Not based enough on do I want to live here, more having to do with we have to live here for now.

The non acknowledgment perhaps hoping it would just solve itself and when this doesn't work the confrontation of the problem and all that that entails. Blaming the place for coming apart, giving it ultimatums that you know it can never hold up. It's in it's nature to defy the choices laid out in front of it. It's like asking a bear to not be a bear. You can't say to it, transform yourself into something more desirable or I will leave you. It would look at you and say but I have been a bear so long this is all I know. I like being a bear, I feel like it is my lot in life to be a bear. Because though it may appear that this problem is a choice that is being made, it is apparent that it is not. It is something that is.

But even this is a cop out, because though it may be natural it is also a choice. It's a convoluted mess a twisted tangling web of rationalizations and contradictions. The bear thing must be wrong, it is more like asking a bear not to act like a bear. Not to change itself to an unatural thing but to change it's actions into something it is not used to. But the thing about the tremors that is different is that there is a cure. A cure that is a long process, a painful process, something that you have to want to do, be committed to. I guess a bear could be committed to such a thing if it knew it's actions would cause its life and the lives of other to be better. But it's not an easy thing, it's not a simple agreement that is made, it is a whole relandscaping of its life, a new phase and direction it must be willing to go for. The tremors refused to accept this choice, they didn't see it as a choice. They stood defiant saying this is who I am and what I do. I will continue to shake and you will either chose to stay or leave. With that the ultimatiums were flipped and they decided that they might as well move on. It wasn't an easy desicion but they figured that it was their only choice. It was sad for them to leave the place that they had loved, to watch it shake itself apart, withering away slowly, the walls falling upon themselves, the dust in the air.