{"id":265,"date":"2012-09-30T02:23:58","date_gmt":"2012-09-30T02:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/laurajosephart.com\/laurajosephartWP\/?p=265"},"modified":"2014-09-18T02:31:28","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T02:31:28","slug":"what-is-happening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/laurajosephart.com\/laurajosephartWP\/?p=265","title":{"rendered":"What is Happening?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sunday, September 30, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

My boat strikes something deep.<\/em>
\nAt first sounds of silence, waves.<\/em>
\nNothing has happened;<\/em>
\nOr perhaps everything has happened<\/em>
\nAnd I am sitting in my new life.<\/em><\/p>\n

– Rumi<\/em><\/p>\n

In my reading this week I came upon this little quote by Rumi and was visited again by something not so little that happened to me over twenty years ago.\u00a0 It was October and my husband and I had just arrived in San Francisco following a Napa wine trip; it was our first time in the city by the bay and we were eager to explore.\u00a0 After parking our rental car in an electrically powered garage and checking in at our inn on Union Street, we immediately headed down to the Marina district late on this Tuesday afternoon.\u00a0 Animal lovers that we are, the first thing we did was go to the pier to look at the seals sleeping on the docks.\u00a0 As we stood there we thought it peculiar that the seals began sitting up one by one and looking up at the sky; and then suddenly it felt like a big wave hit the dock and water lapped up onto our shoes.\u00a0\u00a0 At first we were nonplussed, but then the French tourists in front of us, who had known no English when we had spoken to them a few moments before,\u00a0 began running and shouting \u201cFucking earthquake!\u00a0 Fucking earthquake!\u201d\u00a0 We were stunned.\u00a0 It felt\u00a0 like only\u00a0 a few seconds had gone by and nothing around us seemed to be changed; we had not even been knocked off balance.\u00a0 Truly, what was all the fuss about?<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s what really happened:<\/p>\n