The ground behind our house took to wriggling like a bookworm with ambition, and then, finding its legs, ran like a centipede late for supper. The whole place began to shake with a purpose that suggested it had long been considering the matter.
Mary, who had been peaceably laying out tomorrow’s respectability, froze and demanded of the air, “What is it? What’s going on? What’s happening?” She addressed the questions to the universe, which, as usual, declined to answer.
Alex, installed before the glowing oracle in the living room, took a more practical view. “Quit it, Tom! Stop shaking the chair!” she cried, having settled upon me as the culprit and being satisfied with naming him.
Now, as for me, I was seated upon the most democratic institution in the house, the throne, the head, the last redoubt of privacy. At that precise moment, privacy resigned.
The jolt lasted perhaps ten seconds, which is a long time when seated upon porcelain and contemplating your legacy. It was so vigorous that my seat, unasked and unlicensed, converted itself into a bidet of startling enthusiasm.
“It’s an earthquake,” I announced to Mary, with the calm authority of a man contradicted by plumbing. “You might inform Alex,” I added, “so she will cease accusing me of engineering the furniture from here.”
Mary carried the news. The earth, having made its point, settled back into respectable stillness.
Alex forgave me. The chair survived.
As for me, I rose from office with a new respect for geology and a firm conviction that, in matters of natural disaster, a man should never sit too confidently.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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