On a pier.

This post was originally published at my old site.

“Something is going on and will not stop. You are outside the going on, and you are, at the same time, inside the going on. In fact, the going on is what you are. Until you can understand that these things are different but are the same, you know nothing about the nature of life. I proclaim this.”

Weird things happen — dissonant events we don't put in context or remember. Dissonance is painful.

It's said we rationalize or simply fail to remember things that don't match our other experiences. We trust our senses, but there's also this gnawing fear that we are missing something important.

I was 14 or so when the wife of one of my father's co-workers hamhandedly approached me during a corporate retreat. Maybe she was just goofing around; certainly she was drunk. But I remember almost nothing of what she said nor how she said it. 

We were at the Blockade Runner hotel in Wrightsville Beach. I sat on a bench at the end of a long, wooden pier, fishing. The sea was calm. It was after some sort of outdoor dinner. Maybe a cookout. It was dark, very dark.

Most of the adults were far from me, at the base of the pier. But she walked out a bit ahead of them, toward me at the pier, and sat uncomfortably close to me on the plank bench I was fishing from. Might have had red hair, but that could have just been how the light made it look.

She sat close. She smelled like liquor. It was the first time I remember feeling a woman's breath.

The rest of the adults soon caught up to her and pulled her away and took her to the hotel. I was embarrassed.

But I wish I could remember what she said. Or what the adults said when they coaxed her away. Or what I had said, or thought, or what the fish smelled like, even.

I suppose I could always take a guess and say they smelled fishy.