Mexico City re-living the trauma of the September 19 1985/2017 Earthquakes every year, by making an earthquake drill with the sound of the seismic alert, is the kind of stressing ritual they don't prepare you for when you come to live in this city.
Inevitably, we all end up sharing our stories with someone new during the drill while we wait to return to our activities. "Oh, I remember I was at school that morning", "I was in the shower and thought the house would fall on me", "I was late for work that day, so I missed the wall that fell on my car by mere minutes", "I was pregnant with my kid, she's in 3rd grade today..."
It's cathartic, sure. But it also feels kinda like tempting faith again. Collective whispers sharing horrors in different cities across the country, as if summoning the tremors from the depths of earth. Of course, it doesn't work that way, but the unsettling feeling lingers for hours. The sounds of the alert feels like a ghost hanging on that sound byte on someone's phone, or the start of a song on the radio, or the horn blaring at a distance that you're not quite sure is something mundane.
We then remind ourselves how lucky we are to be here. We look at the walls that didn't crack, at the ground that keeps trying to devour our poor city planning... then we wait for another September 19 to repeat the whole ordeal.
