pass into nothingness (somewhere towards the end)

'a thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

its loveliness increases; it will never

pass into nothingness;' - john keats, endymion. 

joan didion mourns the loss of her husband (and then of her daughter) and finally of herself. what galls her particularly is that the memories of her husband and daughter will die with her. the objects saved from her family's wreck for the sake of memory she no longer values because of the pain those memories bring.  

joan was beautiful when younger and she makes a beautiful frail-looking old person. and the sentences she writes are flint hard.

'I had lived my whole life to date without seriously believing that I would age.'  she says and beyond the ageing there is only illness and death. 

diana athill in somewhere towards the end, is essentially a sensible, practical woman (she says so herself). she notes the essential luck of people who can make things, and, towards the end of her life, she discovers that she can write (and that people want to read it). she discovers gardening. she accepts the necessary caring.   

'much as I wanted to continue to write, I found it impossible unless something was itching to come out.'. she accepts the necessary reductions. even when the writing leaves her the essential optimism remains.

and similarly in days of rain rebecca stott deals with the legacy of her family's time in the exclusive brethren and her father's wanting to turn this into words (and her wanting to turn this into words). like plato with socrates she writes him. 

of course colette simply announces she's given up writing for gardening.  

today a greyish day(maybe with rain). horsemouth dashes to get this post in (before the connection pops again).