Nothing day...for writing...

Had surgery done on my eyelids, this morning, then spent half the day lying on my couch with a bag of frozen peas or corn across the stitches. Even wrapped in a cloth, it got to be damned cold, and the cuts are still sort of bleeding. I'm using white dishcloths for this so I can see where the bleeding still is and how much. And my eyes feel very tight. But supposedly this will make it easier for me to see...so we'll see.

But at the moment I look like a raccoon...

Thinking about APoS now. In fits and starts. Nothing specific, yet, but the ideas that I need to hew to are simple -- Part One is Brendan as a boy trying to live his life, Part Two is him lost and fighting to find a place in the world; Part Three is him now a man of destiny. It's rather Russian in thought -- man trapped in his fate -- and despite Russia's terrorism in Ukraine I refuse to let go of using her great writers as my guides.

Besides, the ones I like are all pre-Soviet Russia -- Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Chekov. All 19th Century. I like their focus on the human condition, and their elegant characterizations of those who inhabit their stories. Anna Karenina is my favorite book, closely followed by War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov. I used Chekov's short story, Champagne, for a short script that got a lot of notice, when I was in film school. Even got shot by a few students as their project.

What's funny is, I couldn't get into Dr. Zhivago as a book or A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich...but I do like Russian cinema. Films like Solaris and Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. Not sure what this means about me...