Gempa Bumi

 Earthquake this evening, 6.3, I am told, and it seemed to last a fair long time, although the passage of time takes on a different character when something like this happens. I think that the duration is not really very long, but just seems long because you have it in your mind that it should be ending straightaway, but it doesn't. I was sitting at the Indonesian Specialty Coffee cafe when the earthquake occurred and it felt to me like being on a rocking boat. one of those boats that go the short distance from the island of Bali to Nusa Penida. Everyone came to attention in the cafe, frozen that way for a moment, then some rise from their chairs, hurry out to the street for some reason. Some shriek in surprise, or fear, and some look up into the sky. In the Indomart parking lot across the street people mill about, looking up, or clinging to a friend. And there in the lot I see, of all people, my Aunt Anna Margaret, dead these many years. That, to me, was the most shocking thing about this. How in the world did my aunt get here. Why? Had the shaking of the earth shaken up the heavens just a bit too, jarred something loose from time? Well, I looked away to speak to someone else, and when I looked back, Anna Margaret was gone. And so was the earthquake.