An earthquake is in a way a dance between two tectonic plates. One moves towards the other and the latter retracts, animated by the impulse of the opposing plate. One tucks itself under or beside the other, and while they settle, they send energy upward, animating everything they sustain, shaking the land in tremors, in sways. For thousands of years, the Cocos and North American Plates have coexisted under the Valley of Mexico, in the tension preceding the dance. Every so often, they stoke each other, moving subtly, thus slowly changing the setup of the board sitting on the Earth’s surface: volcanoes, valleys, rivers, lakes, mountains, and, more recently, a city that stands like a cardboard scale model, wobbling between two uneven tables. This human-scale model sinks at its very center with the weight of concrete and rock, as it sits on the bottom of a desiccated lake: a floor made of mud, algae, water, salt, and microorganisms sedimented for millennia. [...]
Mud
in ENCYCLOPEDIA