Riverfront

Walked about. Went to Tim Horton's for a breakfast sandwich, but I don't like their coffee and Market Street was closed so I went to Kroger, where there is a Starbucks embedded. Then down to the river where I watched the water flow. Detritus, plastic crap in eddies and a muskrat poking his nose around. Quicksand down on the riverbank, or not quite quicksand but a mixture of sand and sludge that would make wish you hadn't walked there. Down where the Scioto flows into the Ohio the colors were different and it was actually possible to see the flow integration. I study that for a while, and an island of silt the river has built downstream of the confluence. A transient island, the next high water will take it away, but it's above river level now and boasting a few grasses and sumac. Because the river is channelized, there are severe eddies, significant eddies, severe is probably too strong a word. This island resembles the bar at Chatham. Silt/sand moving from one place to another. I need a rubber raft and a paddle. I'd love to sit out there, on a folding lawn chair, and watch the river. It's the best show in town. Watching the wake of a string of coal barges it occurs to me that water is like sand. The leeward side is shallower, the windward steeper. What a surfer rides is that differential. 20% going up and 35% coming down, you catch it right, you ride it all the way to the beach. 15% times the volume and it's a large number, the BTU's or ergs that could be generated. Or that awful scree slope of talus. I read Annie Dillard all day. She's so good. Lost a paragraph to user error. Too bummed to attempt a reconstruction. I miss Arial 10, because I could often reconstruct by the shape of the line. I made a pot of red beans with Andouille sausage and peppers, wrote about that, I remember. Wrote about sand, the process by which it spreads, saltation, and my fascination with words. Vow to never again be caught at the museum without an unabridged dictionary, I'm sure I can spare one from the ridge. Where lives my OED is truly my home. And my various encyclopedias.