More time has passed and there you are (are you?) waiting for me. Oh my. Well, this is not a diary, this is supposed to be written in pursuit of ideas. I wake up with loads of them. It's choosing that's hard, and finding time is harder. Okay. I woke up early yesterday morning rewriting in my mind some scenes from a TV show I had scarcely watched the night before (it was a re-run and I was reading something at the same time). The fault I found with the scene I was going over in my head is a common fault: there's no follow-up. Lots of scenes have an improv quality; they start and stop with little relationship to what has gone before or will follow after. What happens after the close-up on the kiss or the knock-out or the walk-out? Cut to another scene vaguely related, but only vaguely to what just happened? Audiences have been trained to make leaps in time without filling in the blanks. Most blanks are easily assumed. For example, on Wednesday a character says, "I'll see you at the dance on Saturday," and the writer doesn't have to slog blow-by-blow through Thursday and Friday to Saturday night. Just cut to MUSIC OVER before the balloons or decorations appear and a woman is fixing her hair in the women's room, and we know it's dance-time. But sometimes we have to know what happened right after that close-up. After the kiss, did the couple part or go to bed? After the knock-out, did the character lie unconscious, or go the hospital or bleed out? I know, I know, there are times when less is more, but sometimes more is necessary. You have to spell it out. More anon. I had a lot to do yesterday.

And while I"m at it, let's say thank you for sight. Last years my cataract lenses got cloudy and I had trouble seeing anything. I had them laser-scraped and I can see again because what would I do at this stage of my life? I still read to live, and live to read, for that matter. Is anyone reading this (is anyone reading this?) old enough to remember The Twilight Zone? One episode involved a near-sighted man who was very fond of solitude and reading. He worked in a busy bank surrounded by people all day and he could never seem to get enough time to himself. He took to hiding out in the vault to read on his lunch hour. So one day a bomb destroyed the city and he was the only one left alive because the thick walls of the vault protected him. (Never mind about fallout and stuff; we didn't know much then.) Anyway, he was delighted because now he could read to his heart's and eyes content. But then he tripped over some rubble, fell and his glasses flew off his nose and shattered (that was before plastic lenses, too, I guess). So there he was, all the time in the world and no interruptions and he couldn't see to read. Is that nemesis or what? Now that I've told the story and see the flows I wonder why I bothered. But it has been a cautionary tale to me. Be careful what you wish for? Yes, and also be grateful for what you have. Now, what I need is Vision.