Big Rains

Line squalls, some quite intense. The Scioto River has slipped its banks, the Ohio in spate. Must get below the floodwall tomorrow. Water up to the bottom of the window at the concession stand at the dirt track, which is high enough to flow over the exit from the track and water then pours through and fills the raceway. A lot of water, and several more days of rain forecast. Route 104 flooded. Another lovely sign, a real one this time, in a picture from Cape Cod, circa 1910, NO EELS TODAY. I gigged eels through the ice one winter on the Cape, house-sitting at a place actually called Lucy's Crotch; filled a freezer, then found that eels gigged in winter, when they were quasi-hibernating in the mud, always tasted like mud. Fed the rest to a harbor seal I befriended, who was wintering under my dock. Seals are beautiful animals, those Jersey cow eyes. I'd never been close to a one before, she (a yearling female) never let me touch her but I could feed her from my hand. Smart animals. I gave her 6 inch sections of skinned eel, frozen, and after the first couple, she would just set it aside and stare at me for a few minutes, like I was supposed to put it in the microwave or something, thaw the damn thing for her. I was writing a very bad novel at the time, which I burned, and driving a High School art teacher to and from work (she had lost her license by dint of having four wrecks in three weeks) and I was sitting pretty: a great house that the owners needed to keep heated, a job that required me to be functional for a half-hour in the morning, and a half-hour in the afternoon, a cat, and a seal. I was raising my own hybrid openly then, because no one knew what it was, and I was stoned a lot. I worked hard, took long walks on the beach, but I had no experience, nothing to say. The novel was a conceit. I remember what I thought I was doing, I could probably do it now, I hadn't even set my sights very high. A fairly simple story, coming of age. Things happen, suddenly you confront the demon, you compromise, you settle down. Draining the cubes, it's time for another. This green infringing world, that I find myself in, demands my attention. From the hermit's point of view, living alone was never really an option, who could imagine that? our every impulse is to be with other. If you live alone, it's the only reason to clean house. That someone else sees what you are, a Clean Boy 550, or my Geerpres Floor Prince, which I cuddle, the best wringer I've ever known, however they see you. I'm feeling frog-like, with all this rain, I won't croak, despite your water-boarding techniques. I'm equally adrift wherever I find myself. I need a cave.