Earthquake

On January 17, 1994, I was asleep on the 5th floor of the Radisson Hotel on Ventura Boulevard in San Fernando Valley. At 4:31 in the morning, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake, with the epicenter just a few miles from the hotel in Northridge, rocked most of Los Angeles, killing many immediately and injuring scores of others. At the time, I was convinced my life would end, as the hotel suffered enormous structural damage and my hotel room was severely damaged, leaving me to believe that the floors above me were going to collapse on top of me. When all hotel guests were safely evacuated outside and standing in the parking lot, I began to craft the "story" of the morning's events in my mind. I found the whole event ironic, mainly since it occurred on a day reserved for memories of a man who tried so hard to insinuate the most basic level of social justice, of civil rights, in society: Martin Luther King.

Is there anything meaningful we can say about nature at 4:31 am on a government holiday, commemorating and celebrating the memory of a man who possessed enormous and pivotal dreams with the idea of one day unifying chaotic people? Something can be said about the thought of dying. A hotel's rabble from the ceiling barefoot and running is the illusory alley-arm of death undulating in a stairwell dusty with white-wall rain. Three Slavs, arms folded, occupy American space at the people's circuit-busy phone booth, incredulous like a McDonald's smile. The patriarch's beard is a Siberian husky. A few women without makeup prefer the dark air to the cold air. The cylinder awning of a helicopter's searchlight displays previously unseen porous caverns in their skin. Mascara drips like dew on store window fronts broken out like some ranch abandoned. After standing for hours in the parking lot, the hotel staff finally let us in our rooms, gaining access with a crowbar, and bizarrely, we found ourselves looting our belongings. An exceptionally hairy New Yorker who now lives in Phoenix offers me assistance by raking the lawn of the closet rack with poise as he collects hanging clothes. He was the man in the smoky hallway just after the quake subsided, screaming a concern we all had from his boxer shorts, waving his arms and fingers through the air as if to dry them off, a flower. I discovered for the first time that strangers meld quickly into friends in peril and find a base in the spirit, a common ground of adrenaline and fear, and the universal connection to the human experience. A building, the hotel, swaying, and bouncing are the ultimate orgasm remedy for newlyweds. Why would a couple honeymoon here in the San Fernando Valley on the 5th floor of the Radisson on Ventura Boulevard -- are you kidding? Eventually, we drive puffy-eyed, searching for the coffee that cannot be made without electricity, except at Uncle Ron's home, where a poolside grill placates the senses. Demolished to some extent, Ron's chimney opens from the wall like a brick door into a room with broken breakables. Resourcefulness is unique when the sun comes up: somebody's Grandma swigs a bottle of booze early enough for the strongest stomachs. Later that day, we parted our minds by bidding a hospitality farewell to Uncle Ron, the hippie from back then, who displayed a handsome arrangement of salvaged fishing rods dipped into plenty of ripple of water, culminating effect. The freeway, despite the news, was a free flow. A hotel gone wrong will be condemned to some real estate broker's gold tooth in thirty seconds. Can we unify cities that smell of stench and greed and loneliness? There is no need for self-righteous behavior in the aftermath of a town of alleged angels and memories of a black man killed by a white man because the former was an innovator of ideas about freedom, the one who spoke eloquently about social justice. This all appears to be like the swaying building that toppled the backdrop of dreams from which several will not awaken today. As if to say something about nature beginning at 04:31 am.