Two Turtles

I was talking with Emily, and she agreed there had been no turtles on the roads this year; then today, stopped twice to take box turtles off the road. I gain a certain amount of grace by not allowing them to be squashed by pick-up trucks. St.Tom of the turtles. I often put them in the foot-well on the passenger side (especially if there's any traffic) and drive them somewhere more remote. I'm way out of my league here, dappling in what my influence could possibly mean. Leads to a long internal dialog about whether or not we should ever do anything. I know that we should, but I can argue both sides of this convincingly. I often carry turtles down to the headwaters of a creek, where I think they'll be happy. How stupid is that? Still, it seems like the right thing to do. I speak as one who has failed to stop several suicides. I don't have a clue, actually. I wake up in the morning, it's usually still dark, some bugs and birds play, and put on some shoes to go pee outside. Everything is wet, the humidity is 110%; where I touch the island, getting a drink, everything is damp. The books are fine, because they're off the floor, but this humidity thing is becoming an issue. Mostly I ignore things, and they go away. Hot day and I have to run the AC for Black Dell, but it also dries the air in the house. I read a John Lescorart novel B had loaned me, and it was pretty good. I needed some fiction. Then another John Sandford novel they had held for me at the library. A two-book day. I can get back to non-fiction tomorrow, as I have some facts to check for the Janitor College edit. Joel called, while he was in dialysis today (it takes five hours), to tell me I might have been hasty in judging a book. TR doesn't actually call, but I hear his voice anyway, telling me he needs some text for the libretto. What I have isn't much, a couple of word-lists, but I do think they'd sound interesting, sung over some percussion. Then a third call (three calls in one day is like week's worth of calls in just a few hours) from a friend in Nova Scotia, who went to Canada to evade Viet Nam and never came back. He loves it there, earns a bare living harvesting seaweed and guiding kayak tours. He'd tracked me down, using the net, talking to mutual friends, and wondered if I was the same guy that had written this particular book which he had found a review of, on line, in a rather esoteric journal. I admitted I was, yes, probably that guy. I knew what he was talking about. It bothered me that I could be tracked down, I thought I'd covered my trail. Thought, in fact, that I was invisible; but like with Peter Pan, you can track my shadow.