At the end of the pier there were some dry spots along the low concrete wall, otherwise everything was soaked. The waves were whipped up by the wind and I think understand the word “riptide” because the tides ripped along wave-breaking shapes. Water smashed into the outside of the pier, coating the concrete in a thin but fresh layer of lake water, at once washing off the dirt and replacing it again.

I thought thoughts that belong only at the end of the pier. What matters is: I pulled myself up onto the wall and sat on the dry spot and I figured it might be something to get soaked. Time passed. I remained seated and dry. The wind pulled thin hairs out from my braid and stuck them onto my neck but otherwise I had nothing to say other than what will not leave my sketchbook.

A wave then slams beside me and it is as if a bomb has gone off because my body panics and my brain panics and my mind thinks about how it is pretty neat to have my leg wet. I look to my left to watch the wave continue and I linger on its force.

I begin to see the premonition of a configuration of space and things where the wave hit me and somehow pulled me back into the water. My throat seized up and my body vibrated a non-physical vibration because now I was very nervous. I could imagine so clearly: I would have died if the water pulled me in somehow. The wave’s strength–one of many grinding along the pier–would have shocked me, along with the cold water. That sort of panic, I imagine, debilitates, and so I would begin to drown in short order. I imagine how scared I would be as the water pulls me away and I can do nothing to stop what’s coming. The inevitability is theoretically nice but in practice such a brutal thing that I grow light-headed as I reflect.

My premonitions are always mechanical as they are theoretical; “this could have happened and this is how and why, now imagine the sensation” my body and brain tell me. They are never so organic and practical and so I never know what I would really think, or see. What would I see as I began to drown? I have no clue. I could only imagine, and in my imagination I saw my mother and a variety of vibrant things that would amplify the ordeal. My notebook and the proofing sourdough loaf I will bake tomorrow morning.