17/12/09

the quasemoto


Kozak Collection, Earthquake Engineering Research Center

Today we had an earthquake, and the Portuguese shifted from the traditional "good morning" to the "did you feel-it?". The world was then divided between the yes ones (the privileged who had a story to tell) and the no ones. That is why the morning was so particularly exciting. After all, it is now common knowledge that the Lisbon earthquake, back in 1757, became the first wide world news event, the most exciting theme of the time. 
I did feel it too: it went through me like a wave, with no resistance, as if god and the devil had passed by. I can't understand this love for fear. If everything has its own purpose - and fear is precisely what keep us alive - how can one understand the attraction for danger? Is there an answer in the biology of fear or should one search for it closer to banks of psychoanalysis?