Preview of 'What I want to say', the new collection of chronicles by Joan Didion

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Achieve serenity

"I'm only speaking for myself," said the young woman, "but in the seven months I've been on the show, I've done very well." I played exclusively at Gardena, low hand poker. I played at night, after putting the children to bed, and of course, I never got home before five in the morning, and my problem was that I couldn't sleep then. I would mentally review each play, so the next day I was, you know, tired. Irritable. With the kids.

His public speaking tone was that of someone who has been inspired by ads for painkillers, but he wasn't exactly selling a product. I was making a "confession" at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting I attended recently — nine o'clock on a winter night at a Gardena, California, bungalow neighborhood social club. Gardena is the covered poker capital of Los Angeles County (no open-ended poker, no alcohol, clubs closed between five and nine in the morning and all day on Christmas - this is not Nevada but California, where there is only poker covered and only by decision of local legislators), and the seductive proximity of the poker clubs floated over that meeting like a paraphysical substance, almost as palpable as the portraits of Washington and Lincoln, the American flag,the plastic hydrangeas and the table the Snack Committee had set up. The action was there waiting, just around the corner, and in our heated room, fidgeting in the folding chairs and

, there were forty people craving it.

"This city of Gardena," a young man whispered under his breath, "has destroyed me."

The young man in question, who said that he had been a fairly good student of mechanical drawing at the Van Nuys Institute, was twenty-two years old and had his hair combed in a 1951-style toupee, which perhaps suggested to what extent this boy, like the rest Of the people in the room, he

.

"I didn't lose any fortune," he counted, "but I did lose all the money I could get;

I started when I was in the marines, I met a

, I was making easy money, and you can say that it was that time in my life that ... um ... led to my downfall.

The cloud of smoke became thicker and the testimonies more intense.

I hadn't heard so many such revelations since I used to engage in conversations on Greyhound buses out of the mistaken belief that it was a good way to learn about life.

"I had just embezzled a large sum of money from my boss," they counted among them, and "I was going to a meeting in Canoga Park when I turned onto the highway, that was last Wednesday.

I ended up in Gardena and now I'm on the brink of divorce again. '

Mea culpa

, they seemed to be lamenting, and many of them had lamented the night before, and the night before:

in the vicinity of Los Angeles, in places like Long Beach, Canoga Park, Downey or Culver City, and the ideal is to attend five or six a week.

"I've never been to this Gardena meeting," someone explained, "for one very simple reason: every time I pass Gardena on the highway I break out in cold sweats;

But I'm here tonight because every night I manage to go to a meeting is a night when I don't gamble, and with the help of God and of you, I've already been like this for 1,223 nights.

There were certain curious elements in the way they spoke to each other. As if they were writing horoscopes (and perhaps it was the case of some), they

("December 3, 65 was a bad date for me because it was the night I wrote the first false check, for the amount of 343 dollars, but it was an important day for Frank L, because a year later on that same date he served eight months in a row at the same job, even though he lost it later, which shows that some of us continue to struggle with the same dates while others are relapsing, and that is the miracle of Gamblers Anonymous ”); they generally spoke as if emerging from a subverbal swamp and trying to catch phrases on the fly.

"Now that I'm on this program, I have the solidarity of my family," someone said, and "

."

"As you all know, I hit rock bottom that night of November 28 at the Normandie Club," said another;

after that night I reached serenity ».

"That's my ideal," someone added.

Achieve serenity.

What I want to say

(Random House Literature) hits bookstores today with a foreword by Elvira Navarro and a translation by Javier Calvo.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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