LITMIR.BIZ

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find a soft spot in me, a buttock, a hip, an ankle, a knee. “It is,” I say. “I hate plastic. When I wear plastic shoes, my feet sweat. Drinking from plastic bottles makes me feel vaguely off. And it’s so hard to get comfortable here.”

      “Don’t I know it. Turtles have their hard parts, but they have their soft parts, too. Imagine the millions of us who suffered such a cruel fate over the decades they were sold along with these terrible plastic prisons.”

      “You’re saying all turtles are immortals?”

      “Don’t be dull. Among the famous human Eight Immortals (we immortals inhabiting turtle bodies think those eight are overrated, by the way) there was one who was transgender, another who was a poet, another a warrior, another a cripple. Does that mean all such people are immortals? We appear as we must to those who need us. Anyway, I’m the one we turtle immortals agreed would be the first to meet you and explain that our transmissions to you are going to be in story form.”

      “Story form? I haven’t heard of that before.”

      The slider does a classic turtle stretch, spreading her claws and extending her neck and limbs to show the beautiful patterns of her skin including the oblong, tell-tale red patches behind her ears.

      “If you’re referring to tradition, I remind you that story is what distinguishes human beings from so many other creatures and has been an essential part of your biology since your very early days. Long before there was what you call Daoism, your ancestors would sit around fires and share tales of nature and of doom, of excitement and sex and kindship and war. Those tales established what you call archetypes, the building blocks of your culture, those ideas and values and principles that you all handed down from one generation to another, mostly inside clans, even before there was any kind of writing. In those archetypes were to be found the rules that made your societies work, along with the paragons and saints, sinners, too, who served as models for what to do and not to do, how to live and how not to live. Stories in those days were consummately relevant to the listeners. They addressed everyone’s hopes and fears and desires, their longing to believe they went on after dying. Storytelling was the chief means of bonding when bonding meant survival, when the only other thing worth doing was to make babies or hunt food or sit quietly and observe the unfolding of nature.”

      “So is that what we’re doing now? Bonding?”

      “We’re preparing you to accept the transmissions to follow. The lessons. You’ll soon discover that each session will not only have a different message and content but will unfold in a unique and interesting way for you. Don’t get me wrong. They may be challenging, but that is the nature of spirit work.”

      “You’re taking about spirit-writing.”

      “Yes. And I’m only here to remind you of the power of the narrative you will derive from your experiences and share. Narratives define reality for human beings. If you lose your narrative, you lose everything, and the ultimate source of narrative—the wellspring that is always there for you no matter how lost you think you are—is nature. Despite widespread fantasies about a cloud-sitting beard-stroker running the show, nature is actually all there is, all there ever has been, and all there ever will be.”

      “Very Daoist,” I say.

      “Yes, indeed.”

      “Would you tell me where we are?” I ask. “This plastic place? You must have chosen it for some reason.”

      “You really don’t know?”

      I frown. I don’t know quite what she means.

      The slider sees my confusion. “You had it for a moment,” she says. “You recognized the smell.”

      Once again, as I did a few minutes ago, I inhale deeply. There is something there. Something familiar. Not one odor but a complex. I search my memory. My grandmother’s potato knishes? Carpet soap? Furniture oil? A shaving cream I used at puberty, something special that my father gave me that numbed my tender young skin against the razor? Just as I’m beginning to puzzle it all out, a shadow appears between me and the turtle, cast by whatever source of light illuminates this place. The shadow moves, resolving first into the head of a wolf, then a dancing chicken, then the jaws of a crocodile spread across the sky above me, then the tall ears of a prancing rabbit, and finally, double-sized, a flying, predatory dinosaur with a probing, fearsome head.

      “Someone’s making hand animals,” I say.

      The Red-ear’s beak does its best imitation of a smile. “And who do you suppose it is?”

      I see the boy right before I answer. He’s charmingly buck-toothed, with bright, kind eyes and long eyelashes, a generous nose, thin lips, and a thatch of thick, black, much-missed hair. He’s humming as he makes the hand animals, and, before long, he’s crooning a Bob Dylan tune. I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans. His voice isn’t bad. In fact, it’s rather good. On pitch. Strong. I take some pride in it, because he is me—perhaps half a century ago.

      “Remember anything?” the Red-ear asks.

      “Of course. I’ve always loved that song.”

      When the boy bends closer, the world behind him resolves into my childhood bedroom, the first place where I kept and loved turtles. The white bookshelves are there, full of books about animals, and there are photos, my own, of salamanders, frogs, snakes, and landscapes that calm me. Since I’m obviously in my boyhood home, all those smells now make perfect sense.

      “Do you remember that it was your allergy to animals with hair that first drew you to turtles as pets?”

      “Of course I remember. I’ve got a Mexican hairless dog now.”

      “You killed a lot of your turtles,” says the Red-ear. “Some died of lack of calcium, their shells paper thin. You flushed them down the toilet. Others died because you kept them too cold, and they never ate quite enough. One died because you thought he had escaped, didn’t realize he was buried in the dirt, put the tank away, and let him waste to nothing in your clothes closet. You killed some more when you used too much poison, or the wrong kind, when trying to rid them of parasites.”

      “Stop,” I say.

      “A few burned in that accident where you left scalding hot water running while they teetered in Tupperware on the edge of the sink. That was the worst. They suffered so much. And you. You cried and cried.”

      I find myself crying now, even as the young version of me continues to sing. Tears for the animals nobody cares about, tears for all the turtles dead on the road, tears for the ones that ended up in my own toilet, tears for my own ignorance of what my pets needed, tears for not understanding their needs, feelings, and worlds.

      “Please,” I say.

      “None of it was intentional,” says the turtle. “We know that or we wouldn’t be here. We know how much you love our kind.”

      I let out an anguished howl. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know better! I’ve spent thousands of hours taking care of turtles since and I’ve done a much better job!”

      “We know that, too. You’ve redeemed yourself a bit, and this spirit-writing will redeem you further.”

      Together, we watch the boy with all that beautiful hair dance around his bedroom, circling the little plastic lagoon in which we huddle. I think about how fleeting life is, and how we can do nothing with the days we have but take care of each other and live in daily, hourly, minute-by-minute grateful appreciation of nature.

      “What do I need to do to make it happen?” I ask.

      “Stand in meditation. Wait patiently. One of us will appear. Each visit will be different.”

      “What can I expect to happen?”

      “Well, all we really know of all those famous episodes of spirit-writing is the result. Neither of us was there for the process. We don’t actually know what went on between the immortal and the sage, between the deity and his or her recorder. We can presume

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