More shots from 1999
This just goes to show the differences in personality that express in action. Or, in my case, in inaction. But ever since the oil embargo, I have believed in saving energy. Seriously, this was at Gringo Bill’s, in Aguas Calientes, and I think it was the night after we took the bus up to Machu Picchu, the night before we returned and climbed Huena Picchu. In any case, anybody can write in his journal, but it takes a real man to take a nap.
Three views of Aguas Calientes
In November, 1999, my friend Charles Sides and I spent ten days in Peru. (I emailed him and said, knowing he liked to travel, did he want to to go to Machu Picchu; he replied, “Sure. Where is it?”) a few photos from that trip.
Charles in Cuzco: On the steps of the plaza, in our hotel room talking to our mutual friend Daniel.
Notice the stonework at Sacsehuaman, a pre-Columbian ruin on the outskirts of the city. Neither Charles nor I have anything whatever to do with the fact that the place is ruined. It was like that when we got there.
Had a little trouble signing on, yesterday, so couldn’t announce that I finished draft four of Dark Fire.
I’m pretty happy with it. Went from 166,000 words to 138,000 words, which means it is stronger. Now I will let it sit for a bit, then another re-reading should show me the most salient errors or omissions or opportunities remaining.
Getting there.
In July, 2004, Stephen Iordanos and I drove to Moab, Utah, from Denver, where he and I had been doing a trade show (INATS) for our respective companies. We went to visit Dana Redfield, who lived in Moab. She certainly loved desert country. Maybe everybody of a theological bent does. Michael Ventura once pointed out that God loved deserts. Dana would have agreed.
Dana
Sephen and me
Newspaper Rock
Me, taken by Stephen
It isn’t really Smallwood’s, of course, but I think of it that way. When I visited Gettysburg a few years ago, I took a photo of it and later put it on the cover of Chasing Smallwood, to symbolize a pivotal moment in Smallwood’s life.
Recently a man named Joseph Mancini sent me a manuscript about past lives and the civil war, and as soon as i read the initial chapter, I was moved to send him a copy of my book. When he visited Gettysburg a few days later, on a bitterly cold day, he took another photo, from about the same angle, and sent it to me.
Nice gesture, I thought.
For very many people it will be a hard nut to crack if they are told to believe that when men grow old they do not become weak or even feeble-minded, but more psychic and more spiritual. Only, when the body is worn out, we can no longer express the psycho-spiritual which we have cultivated, through the body. It is like the case of a pianist: he might become a better and better player, but if his piano is worn out we cannot perceive this. If you were only to know his capabilities as a pianist from his play, you will not be able to gather much if the piano is out of tune and has broken strings. So that Kant, when he was an old man and “feeble-minded” was not weak minded as regards the spiritual world; there he had become glorious.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 181 – Anthroposophical Life Gifts – Lecture III: Thoughts about the Life Between Death and Rebirth – Berlin, 2nd April 1918
Finished reviewing third draft of Dark Fire. I’m not convinced that it cannot still be improved, but so far I have done a good deal and am happy with the result. From 165,691 words in the first draft, to 152,884 in the second, to 150,497 in the present draft, and that’s with adding material, not merely subtracting. Little by little.