For the past few months, I’ve been on a Joan Didion kick. I read the heart-breaking story of life after the death of loved ones in The Year of Magical Thinking. When the California wildfires happened, I read Didion’s essay on the Santa Ana winds.

Since the Santa Ana essay was published in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of her essays, I looked for that book in the library. The catalog indicated the book would be on the shelf. Exciting! I was thrilled to get the book on the first try.

Of course, the book was nowhere to be found. –sad– Then, I found that Slouching Towards Bethlehem was collected in a larger book of her essays, and the library really did have that. — happy again! —

The book waits for me on my bedside table. The book is coated with a layer of white dust. The white dust came from the ceiling. We patched the ceiling. We sanded the ceiling. We used an electric sander with a strong motor. The strong motor strongly pushed and blew white dust all over the house — even to the second floor.

Do you understand what that means?

To reach the second floor, the white ceiling spackle dust had to float down, float across the room, turn the corner and then make its way up the stairs and towards the second-floor ceiling before it could fall gently to the floor and handrail. How? How did it do that?