I think the more people that leave the more I lose my identity. I have a hard time getting dressed in the morning. I don't know what clothes I like together. It doesn't matter. I even have a hard time at the bookstore. Nothing looks good anymore. Or everything looks good, one of those. The nice thing about large groups of people is that they generate titles. Knox College student. Member of a sorority. German Club president. Things like that. I feel nameless. (Fulbright scholar?) (No, that sounds wrong.)

I am reading Falling Man by Don Delillo. It's really sad. The kind of book where everyone is sad and confused because some giant change took over their life. It's making me sad and confused. Not really sad about my life. Sad about a lot of things.

A few cabins down from ours there is the Walker cabin. The old Walker's are too old to come to the island, so they stay at their cabin on the mainland or they are passed away, I'm not sure. They are wealthy. The younger Walker, a man in his 40's or 50's doesn't work except to sometimes go on archaeological digs. They're very nice. Young John Walker has helped us many times when our boat stalled. He lets us borrow his tandem kayak. He got married once, a few years ago. His wife died of cancer shortly after they got married. Isn't that a sad story? I keep thinking about it. He has all this money, but he spends all his time alone on an island with all these boats. He even spent the winter here. There is a period before the ice is hard enough to walk across. That means that there were several months of the year when he was just alone. What do you think about when you are alone for that long? Does he think about his wife? Is he happy?