Picking Stones Chapter 27

"Coincidences"

---

Table of Contents

Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)

---

Coincidences

Feet stood on red granite. My hands clutched the aluminum railing tightly, its briny coating bristling between my palms. Breath of the crowd held, water sucked back to the sea like a vacuum and pulled and pulled until it came crashing back into the carved granite, sending a shock wave of thunderous sound and gallons of water all around us. The card couldn’t get wet! I lunged backward and slipped on a pool of water trickling off the cliff. She caught me and giggled, holding the hug tight. Another boom sent water and thunder all around us again. I smiled.

It was day two of the trip, happening faster than I had time to appreciate it. We were at one of Acadia’s most famous attractions, Thunder Hole, an inlet on the rocky coast carved over the millennia from the sea bashing into it. When the tide comes in it forces all the air out of the chasm and sends it exploding up to an adoring crowd.

It was happening again, the tide pulled back, and water swirled in the gap. I imagined seeing a hand popping up from the whirlpool, clutching for something, anything, before going back down. Ramona’s lips met mine as I grabbed for the card that I found still dry. Sigh of relief. The card was alone in the pocket; I had forgotten the matchbook Peter gave me in the rental when I dropped it off.

A phone was shoved in my hand, water sprayed everywhere, my eyes burned.

“Mind taking a photo?” a young girl asked. She stood next to her boyfriend who was busy staring at the whirling water beneath us instead of her. “Not at all.” Did she give me a choice?

“Smile.” Click.

“Here, let me take one of you guys.” Her boyfriend was already looking away again, fiddling with his pockets.

Ramona and I held each other, a picture was taken, our first together. “Let me know if it came out alright,” the girl said. Something fell on the ground at the boyfriend’s feet; he didn’t notice. The girl handed the phone to Ramona who smiled. I bent over and reached for what had fallen.

“Here, you dropped something,” I said. Before my hands could grab it, I stopped. It was a black matchbook with a yin yang symbol, dark and brooding as it lay clear as day against the red granite. It was the same one Peter had given me.

“I didn’t drop anything,” the boyfriend said without looking over at me or the matchbook.

Crash. Thunder sprayed water everywhere. The matchbook was swept into the waves, seconds away from having been mine. I stood up and watched the little black square swirl into the whirlpool and vanish into the waves.

---

The car drove down the main road through the park, its views were spectacular. On our left was the ocean, on our right was a mountain towering over a lake. I didn’t mention the matchbook to Ramona. It wasn’t worth the time. Maybe I had imagined the whole thing. I didn’t think so.

Green trees whirred past me. I tilted my head and felt the cool glass meeting my forehead. Time stopped. The forest peeled away and left a single tree in its place. I admired its skinny branches and green needles springing to life out of them. The tree was just like me. It was living; it was breathing. Growing older by the day, just like you and me. That tree came from the same ball of energy out somewhere in the universe as we all did.

My eyes were at the top of the tree, clouds gently brushing its tip. It looked so small from that vantage point. Then the tree spun and I spun with it, weaving together as the light from both of us combined into something. The stars and the sun and everything in between flying around us until—poof. There is no I, or the tree, but just one beautiful ray of energy existing in space.

We were always there. Even now. We’ll always be there. Even when we die. It always is. And the beauty of all of it is that the experience you have now will never die. You and it both carry over, into eternity. Brought to a peace that always was, and always will be. It made so much sense. A pity that I hadn’t seen it before.

Your perception of now. Your perception of that tree and the sky is one of many that life can offer you. If you don’t want to see, you’ll be blind your whole life. But if you’re open to anything you’ll experience everything.

“You realize what song is playing, right?” Ramona said.

Music was coming from the speakers, the volume knob rolled right. She smiled at me. If death took me then I wouldn’t have put up a fight. It was the song she had played at her apartment. Was a song powerful enough to transport you through time and space? The guitar strumming ended, I felt a hand squeeze mine.

Time for a quick commercial break, the disc jockey announced.

“Oh God,” I said and sat up in the passenger seat. “Listen to this.” It was an ad for a restaurant up in Bangor called Imperial Szechuan. “That’s the name of the restaurant where I met that guy Peter.”

“The guy who told you about the I Ching?” she asked. I nodded.

“Cool.”

“Weird.”

---

We stood on the bank of Jordan Pond. Two mountains like bubbles stood behind the glass-like water. A heron swept down from the sky and landed fifty feet away from us. Its two legs dunked into the pond and sent glimmers of the sun bouncing across the water. The bird stood there with its beak pointed at the mountains. The crowd around us oo’ed and ah’d at the creature’s grace and it stood there basking in its own glory.

Her parents were arriving in two days. Since arriving in Bar Harbor the two of us lived in blissful ignorance of the fact that we lived five hours apart. The thought entered my mind there and I forced it out, why spoil the fun we were having? A part of me knew that she’d never move to Queens, with her own business and life in Portland. A part of me knew that me leaving the city was almost impossible, there was too much that I loved there, even if I hated admitting it.

“I feel like I love you.”

“Me too.”

We trudged through the muddy path which soon turned into wood planks. Hand in hand. To the right, through some trees, was the Jordan Pond. I looked hard, found the blue head of the heron, and stopped to admire it. He stood in the same place, unbothered, his gaze set on the mountains ahead. I felt the cool air sweep into my lungs. The bird’s feathered body was gray and dark. Its orange beak turned, and I realized it could see me through the trees. We stared at each other, and I held my breath. What was he trying to say to me?

It seemed like the two of us were alone out there, face to face. Hundreds of feet apart, but right up close. What was it trying to tell me? Beneath it the water offered a perfect mirrored image of the bird. It gave a nod. I returned it. Then its wings opened, I couldn’t tell if the mirrored version spread them first. The bird was sent there for me, for something. In a flash, it flew off, gone.

“Want to rent bikes tomorrow?” Ramona asked. “Biking the carriage roads is the best part of this entire park.”

“That sounds fun.”

Once we were in the car I called for a reservation. Two bikes were set for us for the next morning. The card buzzed in my pocket while we drove back into town. I thought of the game, the game of Nim, and wondered whose turn it was. Nim’s, or mine?

---

That night we were walking down the main drag of Bar Harbor, a ten-minute walk from our hotel. The town reminded me of somewhere in The Hamptons, even though it wasn’t anything like it. I had seen so little of the world that there was nothing else to compare it to. Restaurants were packed and the shops were flooded with people. The week’s weather had been a record breaker. Low sixties and sunny, practically summer for Maine at that time of year. Ramona said she’d never seen anything like it; we’d gotten so lucky.

My mom had called earlier. I spoke to my dad, too. Both seemed to be oddly happy, and sounded like they had just seen me. I guess they did the other night. “Let’s go in here.” She dragged me into a bookstore, more manicured than the ones I had grown used to.

There were board games and stuffed lobsters, not the edible kind. I wondered where the old author, McCarthy, had been in my vision. I saw Orla, my parents, my father’s dead friend, and Ramona. Everyone who had significance in my life up to that point, except him. He had been absent. I had barely given him a second thought. I guess, why would I, right? We had no connection, no relationship. Can you have a connection, a feeling for someone, without having met them? Of course you could. Plenty of dead men have inspired the living. They must exist somewhere. Through ink, on pages, in our hearts, in that place I saw. So, where was McCarthy now? I guess he didn’t want to say hello to me.

My eyes caught a name on a book, Graham Gordon. It was the book I bought back in Portland, I’d read it front to back twice since I first got it. My chest filled with something, feeling, warmth. The book had done so much for me. I felt like I owed Gordon something. He was alive somewhere. We can be inspired by the living just as easy the dead. Maybe one day I’d meet him, I hoped. I grabbed the book and placed it in a more prominent location on the bookshelf, it was the least I could do for him.

I wandered through the store until I found Ramona. She was holding a blue and orange book in her hands; I recognized it before she turned to show it off to me. “I think I’m going to get this.” She handed me the dead author’s last book and went back to digging.

---

Thank you for reading. If you’re enjoying this book and would like to support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can also buy me a coffee. Or a stuffed lobster (edible or otherwise).

---

---