Stray Thoughts

Having read again Charles de Gaulle’s war memoirs, I am again struck by these, his final words of that three-volume work:

“Old Earth, worn by the ages, wracked by rain and storm, exhausted yet ever ready to produce what life must have to go on!

“Old France, weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal!

“Old man, exhausted by ordeal, detached fro human deeds, feeling the approach of the eternal cold, but always watching in the shadows for the gleam of hope!”

If you are not familiar with de Gaulle’s life story, I can only assure you that if it were the plot of a novel, no one would find it believable. Beginning in June 1940 alone, with nothing, he step by step planned and brought into effect the reconstitution of the French state beginning from a state of entire collapse. An amazing story, an amazing man.

 

Finished the first draft of Dark Fire last night. It comes to 166,000 words at the moment, with another chapter to be added on rewrite. But rewrite should slim it down considerably even after the additional chapter. It has been a long satisfying six-month effort, after so many years of unfinished attempts.

 

Got a good report today on my one-week checkup. Two pix show the difference between the first spreadsheet’s schedule of eyedrops required and the spreadsheet for the next month. Those pop-eyes in the first shot are intentional, to show that the bloodshot eye has not almost entirely cleared up, as promised.

Out with the old, in with the new:

With my old dear friend (and Hampton Roads author) Dana Redfield in the Utah desert, a good long time ago. Just came across this.

If you aren’t familiar with Dana’s work, she wrote three great novels — Ezekiel’s Chariot, Lucy Blue and the Daughters of Light, and Jonah — and two non-fiction books about her own abduction experiences, Summoned and The ET-Human Link. Dana’s novels are particularly delightful, being teaching tools without preaching. And her humor! So funny!

Dana with our mutual friend Stephen Iordanos, owner of Quanta, a Canadian distributing company,  Stephen and I drove to see Dana after attending an INATS trade show in Denver. Can’t remember what year this was.

And this is Newspaper Rock, which I swear is a portal into other dimensions.

As of this morning, I have finished 23 of a projected 25 chapters of my novel Dark Fire. I realize that I am going to have to extensively revise it once finished (and after a pause for breath, after six months’ work), but what long looked impossible looks like maybe being accomplished. At any rate, I am 153,000 words into it, and happy with it so far.

Of course, after completion comes the discouraging part — trying to find a publisher. But, one obstacle at a time.

Milestone. Drove for the first time since eye surgery, and was able to drive without distance glasses (my unaffected left eye is nearsighted; i have always had to rely on the right eye for distance — and it had gotten impossible to drive without glasses. So, little by little. I am told the focus should continue to improve as swelling within the eye goes down.

I actually made a spreadsheet to list what eye drops i had to use when. This goes on until my one-week checkup, and then I hope I go back to using only the one drop in each eye that I use to control eye pressure.