When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
One of Joan Didion’s friends, the writer Susanna Moore, had the best anecdotes about Joan, each one came with a withering one-line quip delivered by the tiny oracle with complete certitude. The one I can’t stop thinking about is: Crazy is never interesting. The sophisticated audience nodded and laughed with recognition. Half of them swallowing their pills at night and crying to their shrinks: depressed, imposter, impotent, sad, unloved, unappreciated, lost alone. I first found poetry and art through Robert Lowell. And Sylvia Plath. Anne Sexton. Vincent Van Gogh. Mark Rothko. Goya. Crazy is never interesting. Agree, I run from crazy writers now. I worshipped them in my twenties and thirties. I sidled right up to the crazy, the abject, the abusive, the hilarious, the cunning, the desperate, the mean. It’s not that I no longer find them interesting. I just care a little more about myself.
Are you nuts?
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Betsy Lerner 
i just read Joan’s Democracy. I was struck by how she used the line in that book that she credits to Quintana in Blue Nights “I just want to be in the ground.” So unsettling to see Q’s neurosis manipulated that way.
Completely and absolutely!
I prefer cuckoo. These days who isn’t?
Not at the moment.
“Are you nuts?”
Roasted and lightly salted, served with fava beans and a nice chianti.
I think everyone is a little nuts.
Here’s an interesting aside, at least it is to me. My granddaughter was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, or what used to be called Asperger’s. My daughter has schooled me that “autism is autism, Mom.” The funny thing is, I notice quite a few behaviors my granddaughter does that I do too. I was never diagnosed with autism. 🤷♀️
I sometimes think every single quirk of our brains must have a diagnosis these days.
I’m a wing-nut. Weird shape but useful.
Gotta say that normal isn’t exactly fascinating either.
Kinda boring. Besides, there is no normal; we’re all loony tunes.
No, I’m pretty grounded, a bear that forages in the wild but comes home to hibernate.