Fwd: RIP Joan Didion..."to live in it".....the Joan Didion sublime

[Mark Kohut]

She came of age with her own voice. How rare.


“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that
progress is necessarily part of the package,” she once wrote. “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.”