Rice Paddies & Grumbling Giants

The rice paddies here grow a brilliant green in the sun. It's a color that I've never seen before which tells me that this experience is good. The road I take to work meanders next to that rich color of life and the movement of the car gives energy to the paddies. They become a wide, lazy green river moving against me. Verdant hills rise from the river and border the serpentine valley. In the forests that cover the hills, Japanese cicadas sing in continuous waves that build, crash and crescendo into one another. My neighbors tell me that they will sing until autumn. The sound is a melody that astounds me. I'm relieved to be astounded again. My senses have been craving something new.

The earth is uncomfortable. He's trying to rest but can't find the right position. You can hear his cantankerous grumble before he moves. The sound, cavernous and dark, builds from the east and undulates toward my door. As soon as I make it out for what it is, the furniture begins to tremble. I hope that the sudden vibrating living room is only a tremor, but the giant whose back on which my apartment rests is capricious.

One night his insomnia was contagious. I laid awake in a loft above my kitchen and the earth decided to move his resting position. He grumbled and rolled and my lofted bedroom became the top of a bobble head doll. At the height of the shaking, I clutched at my toppling desk with one hand and at a pair of pants with the other. I was getting ready to make a run for it. The ceiling beams sounded cracks while the wall beat against my shoulder. I tried to plan my escape but realized that strategy is hard to summon while your home is trembling violently. By the time I convinced myself of how to flee (shrieking and half naked was the best I could come up with) the trembling quieted and then, disappeared. The beams were still in one piece. The walls only shivered slightly and then stopped. And my heart raced. Everything was in one piece, making me believe that the earth had found a position to rest in for the time being.

My wanderlust has brought me here, to green rice paddies and a shaking apartment. I am happy to be here, on the move once again.