Word: earths
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When the earth cracks open to dismantle a city, then metaphysical questions come boiling up. What would Muir learn? What does the cataclysm have to teach? That the earth retains its genius for the wild surprise? Or that some profound principle of disorder and annihilating wrath has been set loose in the world...
...natural disasters, the earthquake somehow is the most unnerving. It is the earth talking, after all, and so it speaks with a primal power. Earthquakes in Scripture mean that God has crumpled up the order of the world and hurled it down in disgust. "And the foundations of the world do shake," says Isaiah. "The earth is utterly broken down." Or, agnostically, earthquakes are a wandering, enigmatic fierceness, now and then breaching the surface like Moby Dick...
...disintegration -- the disintegration not only of architecture and pavements and lives but also of the entire idea of order, of process and human control. "What can one believe quite safe," asked Seneca, "if the world itself is shaken, and its most solid parts totter to their fall . . . and the earth lose its chief characteristic, stability?" The familiar world goes rioting down to rubble. Reality comes to rest at a crazy angle...
...stand on a beach during a histrionic blow. An earthquake is not that kind of thrill. The worst part may be the feeling of helplessness. There is no right thing to do just then, except perhaps to flee the building. There is no knowing where the earth will open next. The wild cracking follows no principle but the terrifyingly random. Denial ("this is not happening") competes with fascination...
...certainties vanish. The earth liquefies. It becomes as wild as surf. The solid is abruptly fluid. Normally, earth is the refuge, the stability, the foundation of things. The earth should be alive only to grow vegetables and flowers. Now the earth itself becomes a beast, all teeth and gashes and sudden topplings. Reality has turned molten and violent...