I was thinking of that beautiful essay by Joan Didion about the Santa Ana winds.
There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sand storms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks…
—-
From whence came the term “creative nonfiction”?
—-
This weekend, I’m deciding between beach, art museum, beach, art museum. Maybe both?
—-
In a few weeks, I’ll be reading in Hoboken at the DeBaun Center and then in Princeton, NJ with Amy Lemmon.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The excerpt from the Didion piece certainly captures well what’s happening in California right now – and it also reminds me yet again of how powerfully she uses imagery to evoke a sense of place. She definitely stands shoulder-to-shoulder with many of our great American poets for her careful and thoughtful word choice.
I’ve wondered about that “creative nonfiction” business myself.
Seems to be it used to be called the “personal essay”, and then suddenly that wasn’t good enough any more. I don’t know how this happened. It just came upon us — like the day when you could no longer refer to all single guys as “gay young bachelors.”