I went to a memorial service tonight for Joan Didion. There were a dozen people who spoke and I kept having the nagging feeling that no one was telling the truth. Though memorial services are not for telling the truth so much as burnishing it. Joan Didion was fierce. That’s obvious. I think I was in college when I read Play it as it Lays. I found it at the Strand Bookstore and bought it because of the title. I remember that the main character Maria, pronounced it Ma-RYE-ah, was able to cross five lanes on the highway without braking. I can’t get on the highway without thinking of her.
What will people remember about you?
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Betsy Lerner 
I’d like it to be my writing, but it’ll probably be “she made really good pico de gallo.”
My eyes, they sparkle and shine.
“What will people remember about you?”
I don’t know. I won’t be there. I hope that, if I am remembered at all, it will be for the art I have been privileged to make.
Makes you wonder if Joan Didion drove like that.
What will people remember . . . hard to say, and will likely depend on who’s remembering, and that means some will go huh? And others will go, I didn’t know that, while others will nod knowingly.
(They might remember that I can be vague.)
The lemon meringue pie…