"Just Writing," Thursday, October 24, 2013, 2:24 PM

Pier Park

            Thursday, October 24, 2013, 2:24 PM, "Just Writing"* Pier Park, puffy clouds on blue sky, fall colors, cold wind.  If I were writing a "piece," which would need to flow in some orderly fashion, I would describe the park, which is on a peninsula that juts out into Lake St. Clair, but if I were just writing, I would probably not describe the marina for new reader.  Because who is the new reader when I am "just writing?"  Mostly, if I am "just writing," I am writing for myself and I already know about Pier Park, having been here hundreds of times before.  I know about the tennis courts and the red wagons for carrying stuff out to the boats in their slips.

            But because it occurs to me that I might be posting this as "just writing," I think I need to explain in case anyone actually looks at what I have written.  But doesn't that defeat the point of "just writing?"

            Brian Powers kept me late.  Of course we started late, and I was so tired and a little depressed and didn’t really want to be there.  Some black guy in medical scrubs was in with BP taking my time and I was resentful and seriously considering leaving--I was composing a note to him in my head.  "Was here, but you were not." or something equally offensive.

            I resent being kept late because I have so many other things I need to attend to.

            I settle my hat more firmly on my head against the wind.  I'd be sad if it blew into the lake.  The roses and hydrangeas are still in flower, in spite of the cold.  A guy with white hair is walking on the path ahead of me.  The horizon is dark, the sky pale, the clouds receding into the distance growing smaller and smaller, a single sailboat perches on the horizon, the tress rustle in the wind, the leaves rattle across the ground.  The white-haired guy is walking faster than I am and the distance between us is lengthening.

            A grey-haired person walks toward me, hands in the pockets of a parka, looking down.  It takes me almost until she reaches me to determine it's a woman.  Her hair is pulled back and she could be a man from the front.  Her face is very wrinkly and she looks sad. 

            I jam the hat on tighter.  I pass a man fishing and two workers rolling hose.   One Echinacea not gone by.  All the others have been cut down by the workers and hauled off somewhere.

            I see a shining on the horizon where a spot of sun comes between the couds.  It's not shining here . . . and . . . now it is, but the wind is icy.

            ML is coming to dinner tonight.  (ML is Mary Louse, my mother-in-law, age 91.  I would not have to say that if I were just writing for myself, since I already know, so I must think I might be going to post this.)  I need to hurry home and clean up some.  Keith is making spaghetti for dinner.

            I pass another fisherman, this one with two poles.  Every time I come here this fall, like every fall at this time, there are fewer and fewer boats in the slips.  I turn around at the end of the pier, walk back the other way and notice that the same fisherman now has three poles set up and a fourth leaning on his cart. 

            I had terrible insomnia last night and was awake (and up out of bed) until after 3 AM.  BP suggests thyroid issues, lyme disease.  I'm very tried.

            They used to have big thick "nautical" ropes strong along the wharf here, but now they've replaced them with aluminum piping (fence, rails).  They've been working on it for a while and it now seems to be complete.  It feels safer (for someone like me who sometimes stumbles or staggers), but isn't as pretty.  Or, maybe it's pretty in a different way. 

            The guy with the white hair, who is all dressed in grey, just came up from behind and passed me.  He "lapped me,” in a way, but not really, because I walked to the end of the Pier and back and he did not, not now. 

            I went to the NaNoWriMo website for Detroit today and looked at the faces of the people running the site and they look like teenagers, or very young twenties.  I could be their grandmother.

            The color of the horizon has changed yet again.  It is now a translucent green, turquoise green.  The single sailboat is still out there.  Starting at Pier Park, I follow the land around to the south as it shrinks and shrinks and disappears, leaving nothing but open water.  It's a long span around to the north to land again in the distance.

            I have no particular desire to go out there.

            My desire to be in the woods may be, if BP is right, causing my terrible symptoms--that is, if I have Lyme disease.

            He thinks I might.

            I could have both thyroid issues and Lyme disease.

            It always amuses me when the boats start peeing.  (Bilge pumps.)

            The woman of indeterminate gender with the blue parka and grey hair walks toward me again.  She and the white-haired man with the grey clothes and I seem to be the only people walking here today.  We each apparently have planned different routes.  I am walking another pier and the water below the pier here is shallow and the bottom is sandy.  The waves make wave-shadows on the sand and the sun sparkles on the waves so that there is a multitude of overlapping patterns.  As I walk out the pier, the water gradually deepens, shifting the patterns.  Out at the end, there are weeds, a few here and there rising from the sand and undulating in the water. 

            I walk along the sandy shore of Lake St. Clair, studying the mountain range patterns created by the lapping waves.  Pockets of rotted seaweed under the sand collapse and I get my socks wet.  I am wearing sandals with socks.  Clean Darn Toughs.  No longer clean. 

            There is a pumpkin nearly buried in the sand at the edge of the water.  Cottonwood leaves floating and gathering at the edges.  Rain pocks in the sand.  No other human footprints, but goose tracks.

            There is an abandoned red plastic pail and a blue plastic shovel and large plotches of heron doo.  There are no children here today, the pool too is empty of people and the water, which is only about two feet deep, is turning green.  Small bird flutter through the weeds in the beach accretion on the other side of the fence.  The buoys are wound around carts and strung from the pool fence.  The lifeguard chair has been removed from the beach and a sign says, Warning.  I can't read the smaller words underneath.  Oh, now I can, "No lifeguard on duty, swimming in this area could be dangerous.  Another sign says "restrooms closed for the season."

            No kids are playing in the tot lot, either.  It's a little chilly, but I would have brought my kids here. 

• *I originally saw this here:  In Blue Ink.  
• You can participate here:  Just Write 107
• Learn more about it here.  Details.
• My previous post, which kind of reads like a story, I think, was something I wrote "Just Writing" as I walked.  (But I only included that one section here:  Tent camp.

This isn't a Tuesday and I don't know if I am writing from "the gut" or not.  I'm just writing.  Like I do almost every single day.