all of it
from Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That,” via Cool Tools’ list of 100 best magazine articles ever:
All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better, but I did not bother to weight the curtains correctly and all that summer the long panels of transparent golden silk would blow out the windows and get tangled and drenched in afternoon thunderstorms. 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.
Once in awhile I run across someone who writes so well it makes me ache, and want to write. I haven’t read Didion before, but she’s one of those. This piece is about being young in New York, before I was ever born. I’ve heard of it, but never read it before.
