Just a week after bell hooks too. This is such a gutting year for writers.
I’ve been very privileged to not have experienced much loss in my life, but The Year of Magical Thinking gave me this strange comfort in how to prepare for grief. That book was so illuminating, especially since the pandemic has had me bracing myself for that inevitable grief. I truly hope she’s at peace. RIP Joan 💔
RIP. Her essay "Goodbye to all That", a love letter and goodbye to New York and her youth, is one of my favourite pieces of writing. I felt, and feel, every word of that essay so very deeply.
It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was....That was the year, my twenty-eight, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and ever procrastination, every word, all of it...All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore.
Oh no. I'm truly sad about this, but what a life she lived. I still love her packing list, lol.
The Year of Magical Thinking changed my life and how i deal with grief. I read it after my sister died and have re read it every time i've lost someone.
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I’ve been very privileged to not have experienced much loss in my life, but The Year of Magical Thinking gave me this strange comfort in how to prepare for grief. That book was so illuminating, especially since the pandemic has had me bracing myself for that inevitable grief. I truly hope she’s at peace. RIP Joan 💔
Reply
It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was....That was the year, my twenty-eight, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and ever procrastination, every word, all of it...All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore.
Reply
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The Year of Magical Thinking changed my life and how i deal with grief. I read it after my sister died and have re read it every time i've lost someone.
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