Persons under the shock of genuine affliction are not only upset mentally but are all unbalanced physically. No matter how calm and controlled they s… - Joan Didion

I am what I am. To look for reasons is beside the point.

"Flying to Monterey I had a sharp apprehension of the many times before when I had, like Lincoln Steffens, "come back," flown west, followed the sun, each time experiencing a lightening of spirit as the land below opened up, the checkerboards of the midwestern plains giving way to the vast empty reach between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada; then home, there, where I was from, me, California. It would be a while before I realized that “me” is what we think when our parents die, even at my age, who will look out for me now, who will remember me as I was, who will know what happens to me now, where will I be from."

She could remember it all but none of it seemed to come to anything. She had a sense the dream had ended and she had slept on.