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| December 31 8pm |
“Time passes. Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms, to what we think we remember.”
Blue Nights – Joan Didion
“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think 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
Since I returned from Buenos Aires I faced 12 days of Vancouver Suns and New York Times. Well, perhaps, fewer Suns as they don’t publish on Sundays. I put the Suns into chronological order and read the comics and noticed that Vancouver was free of scandal while I was gone. It is comfortable to be back in a boring and stable country that Canada is.
The New York Times were as usual very good but I immediately singled out the Joan Didion obituary and several articles about her.
Her quote on time amazed me as it resembles what Jorge Luís Borges often wrote that to remember we must first forget.
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| Rosemary Elizabeth |
To illustrate this blog I am using the photographs I always take in the Air Canada airplane bathrooms. When you enter them they are bathed in this strange blue light. As soon as you lock the door the good lights turn on.
Traveling in December made me realize that I was a pioneer in surviving airborne difficulties. The worst one (sort of) is that in my flight from Montreal to Buenos Aires via Sao Paulo and back to Toronto all announcements were made in four languages. There were lots of them when I was trying to sleep at night. Many involved reminding us we could not smoke or drink booze we might have brought into the aircraft. The most repeated statement was:
We apologize for the delay and we appreciate your patience.
