Explore "Mars is my Destination" by Frank Belknap Long on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Right at this point there has to be a shift in the way I've been / recording events as they happened, because what happened next took / place elsewhere, while I was flat on my back in the hospital. By "what / happened next" I mean. to me and Joan personally and to Commander / Littlefield and the Martian Colonization Board and everything I'd come / to Mars to take cognizance of, and do my best to change for the better.
I know, I know. Ten million separate events are taking place all the / time on Earth and on Mars and by no stretch of the imagination could / they be thought of as an immediate part of this record. But when / the threads all start to draw together and tighten about you in a / destiny-altering way you have to keep the time-sequence in order and / record developments as they take place. Otherwise when they become of / immediate concern later on the entire picture will seem out of focus. / The frame will start lengthening out and the people in the picture will / be out-of-kelter also, and scattered all over the landscape. The only / way you can keep them sharply in focus is to record what happens to / them _when_ it happens.