Joan Didion

I like this article a lot.  In short I tried to think. I failed.   This is resonant with me. I like that she focuses on specifics, on real things, rather than on abstract intellectual ideas.  It was insightful to read what she wrote about the significance that images have in her writing.   I've been trying to articulate something similar to that, in talking or thinking about images I get from reading.  I'm not sure why, but it seems more common for people to get intellectual when they talk about reactions to something read...the perception/interpretation of some supposedly greater and more universal meaning than the one that is simply there, that is the image in the reader's or writer's mind.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  I think it's important and meaningful sometimes.  But it also leads to a lot of bullshit intellectualism that doesn't really mean anything.  So it's nice to read something simply recognizing that specifics are the most important thing.