{"id":6521,"date":"2020-11-17T07:40:49","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T15:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=6521"},"modified":"2020-11-17T07:40:51","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T15:40:51","slug":"the-throw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/the-throw\/","title":{"rendered":"The Throw"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-6521\" data-postid=\"6521\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-6521 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p><em>Not too long ago I saw a middle age woman in obvious psychic distress at the beach. How did I know? I just know. I&#8217;ve seen so many times in women and men at the beach in my 23 of living at the Oregon Coast that I know it when I see it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>She was just sitting on a bench facing the ocean and staring. It wasn&#8217;t a tourist kind of stare. It all brought to mind an incident I observed well over a decade ago that has always stayed with me. I wrote it years ago for a book that was never published. Here it is, somewhat amended:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Suffering from a slight red wine hangover and feeling exiled off Main Street, I hit Nestucca Spit at dawn on a Saturday without the dogs to clear my head and detoxify my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The salt and brine smell especially stiff this morning. It makes me think of the bloody Mary I don\u2019t want. For five minutes I walk south down the Spit and gaze upon the incoming tide\u2019s multiple white layers. My hangover begins to ebb, but I keep walking. The dogs do their unusual non-hangover things and make me smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I turn around to take in Haystack Rock and Cape Kiwanda and see a smallish barefooted woman on the Spit, one hundred yards away. I see her saunter at angles toward the waves. She almost appears to dance. I clearly see her remove a ring from her left hand and clasp it with her right. She stops at the water\u2019s edge, lets the tide rush over her feet, hesitates for a moment, then cocks her right arm back and throws the ring west with all her might. I know the throw didn\u2019t come from a jilted fiance. Only married people throw like this. Or soon to be unmarried people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the throw, the woman stares west for thirty seconds and then retreats from the water, no longer sauntering. After a bit more time, she vanishes into the dunes to return from wherever she came, but, of course, without a ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder how she will explain its absence.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not too long ago I saw a middle age woman in obvious psychic distress at the beach. How did I know? I just know. I&#8217;ve seen so many times in women and men at the beach in my 23 of living at the Oregon Coast that I know it when I see it. She was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6522,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6523,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6521\/revisions\/6523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}