Observation #20, 12/6: Somewhere nearby there is a faultline

(Theme: Paranoia)

The hill is slowly slipping down over the sidewalk, headed for the street. The curved trunks of trees, hooked like canes, fighting the pull of gravity, reaching skyward, attest to the slow certain advancement of the whole Arboretum, the forest threatening to crash downward, a train wreck in slow motion. Thin sick rivulets clotted with mud leak out under the strain of all that water, all that rain, storm system after storm system saturating everything, calling out the road workers and their yellow-lighted trucks - won't you prop up this hill for us? In some places they've laid out heavy netting meant to hold back the slow sudden advance of nature but it looks like thin mesh against the hulking mass of all that earth, all that stone looking down on the access road running parallel to campus. And walking along that road, the sidewalk is clear but its pores are filled with silt, the remains of the slide those workers scrambled to clear before working hours and my boots have poor traction, and I slide. It's a short leap to imagine it all coming down and how would I react, what would I do, where could I possibly go? First I see myself sprinting for the environmental science building but I know enough about velocity about speed + direction about force and weight to know I wouldn't make it. Second I see myself curling up into a ball but what good would that do except to kill me quickly, or would I be buried and slowly crushed, drowned? Third I see myself making for the slope, hoping to climb on top of something, to ride a tree down the slide like riding a wave, I've body boarded enough, but then there's that problem of speed + direction and tumultuous motion and force and I already know what happens when a wave decides fuck you, today's not your day. The hill puts itself back together. I walk home. There are no more scenarios to invent because they are exhausted. If it happens today, I am dead. No matter what I do.