Lightly Child, Lightly.

It’s not you.
It’s anyone.
Sometimes I don’t want anyone around.
Some afternoons I lie on my bed and the light comes through the shutters on the floor and I think I never want to leave my own room.

-Joan Didion, Run River: A Novel


Notes:

  • Photo via Mennyfox55. Quote via purplebuddhaquotes
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Saturday

sleep-rest-weekend-Saturday

It’s not you.
It’s anyone.
Sometimes I don’t want anyone around.
Some afternoons I lie on my bed and
the light comes through the shutters on the floor and
I think I never want to leave my own room.

— Joan Didion, Run River


Notes:

Seize the Moment

joan-didion-c-brigitte-lacombe-crop1

“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

Joan Didion


Credits: Image & Bio – Biographile.  Quote – WhiskeyRiver

Related Post: Blue Nights

Blue Nights…

Joan Didion - By Alisonperry.netEarlier this month, I shared a post on Joan Didion’s essays titled “One runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”  One of my new blogger friends, Lori @ Donna & Diablo, mentioned in her response to my post that she planned to see Didion and was more excited about meeting her after reading the excerpts.  I asked Lori if she wouldn’t mind sharing her thoughts about the meeting in a Guest Post.  (I had never met a writer/author so I was looking to live the meeting-the-famous-author-moment vicariously through Lori’s post.) She graciously agreed.  Lori also also mentioned that she didn’t know if it was good enough to post.  I’ll let you make up your own minds.  (Note to Me: If I could BANG LIKE on my own blog and keep BANG, BANG, BANGING LIKE, I would do so now…).  Here’s Lori from Donna & Diablo on her meeting with Joan Didion…ENJOY!

[Read more…]

One runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home…

Back in 2005, I read Joan Didion’s book “The Year of Magical Thinking” after hearing much acclaim for the author and the book.  I was underwhelmed and said so in my Amazon Review at the time.  Yet, it rankled me that so many others were on the other side. (Why? Perhaps, I just missed what was readily understood by the intellectuals.  Maybe you just didn’t get it Pal.)

emilydaisypage - Self PortraitSo, more than 7 years later – I trip across a post at Brainpickings.org on Joan Didion’s 1968 collection of essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.  My head immediately snaps to attention.

Oh what delicious irony…the excerpts are “On Self-Respect.”  (Excerpts on ‘On Self-Respect.’ Deepak Sharma would say ‘Nothing is a Coincidence.’)

The post left me shaking my head.  (Sweet Jesus.  I did miss something.  Apparently I missed everything.)

On to the excerpts…

[Read more…]

%d bloggers like this: