As the result of a brain injury, most of my days are confined to home. And yet, on this little country street, the world still comes to me — people of every age and shape passing by, some stopping for a small, friendly chat. These encounters, and the quiet rituals of home, give me something of what both Vonnegut and Didion name: the meaning found in the ordinary, the life that happens in fragments, the small dances we’re still able to make.

I once told my wife I was going out to buy an envelope: ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘well, you’re not a poor man why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?’ And so I pretended not to hear her and went out to get an envelope because I have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is we’re here on Earth to fart around. Of course, the computers will do us out of that. But what the computer people don’t realise, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.
– Kurt Vonnegut

I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those soufflés, all that crème caramel… These fragments I have shored against my ruins, were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them…I could find meaning in the intensely personal nature of life…
– Joan Didion