pier

We all have our piers, and we would be stranded – and none the happier – were they to disappier. We say no person is an island, but in one sense we all are, or at least it shore feels like it: there are always fluid expanses between us and others – sometimes gulfs, sometimes straits (at times dire ones). To embark on our contact with the world, we need to extend ourselves outwards into the open waters. As others likewise build their piers, and we can launch our communications, we form our pier groups to group with our peers.

What is a pier, really, literally? A popular diagram of late shows differences between a quay, a wharf, a pier, and a jetty on the basis of whether they are fill (or stone, or concrete) or piles (wood or metal) and whether they are parallel or perpendicular to the shore: according to it, a quay is parallel fill, a wharf is parallel piles, a pier is perpendicular piles, and a jetty is perpendicular fill. In the real world it’s not quite so simple, and wharf, pier, and dock are used in overlapping ways. But you can generally count on a pier being perpendicular to the shoreline and built on piles.

You can’t, on the other hand, count on what it’s used for. Wikipedia divides piers into three types: working piers (for commerce boats), pleasure piers (as at Brighton and Santa Monica), and fishing (angling) piers. I like this division, mainly because it is also a suitable division of our peers in the world – some we work with, some we play with, some we just… angle with (see LinkedIn).

Pier is also a personal name, as for instance the Italian filmmaker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini. There are quite a few Piers in the world, mostly Italian. (There are also people named Piers, but I really don’t want to have to talk about the best-known current bearer of that name.) Of course Piers have their peers and piers, but in this there is irony: piers are normally built on wooden (or metal) piles, but Pier, like Peter, comes from Greek Πέτρος Petros: ‘stone’.