It feels like a truck going by...

The first time I ever felt an earthquake, I was perhaps five or six years old, in Los Angeles visiting my grandparents.  I remember thinking that a fully-loaded eighteen-wheeler must have driven by the house, a sufficiently frequent occurrence that I wasn't alarmed at all.  That quake didn't do any damage -- nor have any others I've subsequently experienced.

Perhaps for this reason, I'm characteristically oblivious to earthquakes.  Last year, Tad (my Ph.D. advisor) was giving a lecture when suddenly the room fell silent and someone said, "Was that an earthquake?", and the projector began swaying.  As the TA, perched in the back of the room, I hadn't felt a thing.

But here in the Christchurch area, everyone is finely attuned to any movement of the earth.  And so they should be -- a big quake in September, 2010, damaged many buildings in the heart of the city.  The first time I visited New Zealand, three months later, I walked around a Christchurch liberally decorated with caution tape, bracing steel, and a few security fences.  Still, I got a chance to see a beautiful city teeming with life.  I bought the ring that I wear everyday in Cathedral Square, toured the Botanical Gardens, and saw an exhibition in the Arts Centre.

11 December 2010.  On the left, the University of Canterbury's former campus,
now the Arts Centre.  On the right, the Christchurch Cathedral.

Because I spent only one day in the city, I admired the iconic Christchurch Cathedral from afar, figuring I'd have plenty of time during later trips to get the inside tour.  Unfortunately, this was not to be.

In February 2011, almost one year ago, Christchurch was rocked by another quake -- this time, in the middle of the day.  This time, 181 people lost their lives, and the Cathedral's tower fell.

Today, the heart of the city is cordoned off for repairs, most -- if not all -- of the buildings are sealed shut, and every doorway still bears the spraypainted marks of the crew that cleared it after the devastating quake.  I felt like a voyeur photographing the city when I returned to it yesterday.  Although commerce is springing back in the form of brightly colored shipping containers-turned-temporary storefronts, the streets are only lightly populated.  Most of us seem to be tourists, taking silent footsteps and saying little, awkwardly pointing cameras at piles of bricks and twisted metal.

Left: Chain-link fences block pedestrians from entering the heart of downtown.
Many of the buildings there are still dangerous, especially since aftershocks are
still being felt every day.  On the right, Summer 2011 ads still mark this storefront.
The spraypaint on the glass marks the building as cleared, by a New Zealand team
four days after the earthquake.

The Shipping Container Mall.  Business must go on -- in this 
case, with typical kiwi flair.  Within this one block, you find
an enclave of commerce in an uber-modern setting.

And yet there is the sense that life is resilient, that it goes on.  I cannot imagine the feelings of the city's citizens, if I, who saw the place only once before, feel so utterly heartbroken by what I saw when I returned.  It seems... wrong... to feel such strong emotion about it, since I am just a visitor here.  I feel like an imposter, with an inappropriately keen sense of empathy.