inspired, of course, by ross gay's delightful book, the book of delights! <33

• oct. 1: more and more crunchy leaves for me to step on during my after-dinner walks; iced pumpkin pie lattes
• oct. 2: the sound of jim morrison's sweet croon soaring through my car speakers (the delight that is catching "touch me" by the doors at the very beginning of the song!); leaving another apple for the deer; the baroque pop rendition of "hey jude" that plays during the opening sequence of the royal tenenbaums
• oct. 3: a beautiful vermeer copy from the national gallery of art, simply waiting to be picked up by me at the flea market (just looking at it reminds me of all those gorgeous afternoon hours spent in the lecture hall, sipping on a hastily bought iced vanilla latte, gazing on his work and the work of so many other dutch masters, and oh, my trip to the met in the fall semester, wandering the northern renn. with my brilliant professor at my side, her and her wonderful scarves and her endlessly learned remarks)
• oct. 4: toasted cinnamon bagel for breakfast; an entire day spent reading, for the first time in months!
• oct. 5: the delight that is how atrociously written catch-22 (the television series) is! the fact that i can pick apart exactly why it doesn't work and offer up new ideas is a sign, i think, of a television writer who is learning and growing and working on, if not the same playing field as the big boys, then somewhere close by in the outfield. i'm really looking forward to reading the book once i'm finished (i know it's standard protocol to read the book first but like. i got too excited to see lewis [major major! <3] and also. now i have something to look forward to since the show is so poorly done) and writing my own treatment for it! like. justice for kid sampson! that's my boy! [daniel plainview voice] I'VE ABANDONED MY BOY !!! (an auxiliary delight while we're here: paul dano's performance in there will be blood. i haven't stopped thinking about it and it's been an entire year! wow!)
• oct. 6: the delight of being wrong, my friends !!! i spoke too soon. episodes one through five? bad! so bad! abhorrently written! no good! but then like.... episode six? excuse me?? i just started the novel so i knew I KNEW what was going to happen to snowden but oh heavens. the delight of bawling your eyes out over good cinema. the delight of characters who reach into your ribcage and steal away your heart and the incredible actors who bring them to life! these are the delights i live for! and that shot at the end? snowden and kid sampson, happy and whole and turning their faces toward the sun like the sunflowers that they are? pandering!!! pandering to me and me specifically !!!
• oct. 7: reading some catch-22 to start the morning, having a little dance party while the kettle warms on the stove; a breezy day, and a break in the cool weather, walking after supper beneath messy, paint palette skies; "...milo, his face fluttery with smiles..."
• oct. 8: they changed the voices on polish duolingo!!! hallelujah! i can finally understand what they're saying thank u so much; "his is a demonstration of virtuosity so extreme as to be explicable only by means of love: this is a testament of falling in love with light, its endless variation, its subtlety and complexity."
• oct. 9: picked up a glorious, well-loved, teal colored copy of catch-22 from the used bookstore! only $2.98! that's a delight if i ever knew one; tried a new cafe today!! and it was so warm out! such a joy to sit at a table in the sunshine and scribble in my notebook. i'd taken down four pages of notes before i even touched my iced coffee... the things that screenwriting awakens in me !!
• oct. 10: driving through the rolling mountains of upstate new york, all of them blanketed in autumn's finery!! every turn was more breathtaking than the last!
• oct. 11: those gorgeous mountains against those overcast skies !!! chef's kiss !!! also... toasted bagel and iced white chocolate mocha, reminding me of my trip to the national gallery of art last october <3
• oct. 12: the perfect gloomy, rainy day! not too cold, which meant i could put on a sweater and take a bunch of walks with my umbrella, which is, of course, the best kind of walk one can take <3
• oct. 13: finished reading the great war and modern memory, also known as the greatest book ever written... thank you dear paul for my obsession with edmund blunden! i adore you! also! the evergreen delight of weeping while reading masterfully-written plays... how i would love to write such a brilliant play someday! r.c. sherriff you are doing something fantastic here, my good sir!!
• oct. 14: chinatown screening @ the cinema!! the last time i saw a film in theaters was seven months and two days ago, when i saw 1917 on its last day... which was also coincidentally one of the theater's last open days. it felt so! good! to be back in a cinema! my goodness! and to finally see chinatown, which syd field says is one of the greatest screenplays of all time.... ahhh i love learning about my craft so much bc it means i get to watch great movies all the time. love that!
• oct. 15: went back to the theater to see tenet !! i had honestly resigned myself to the fact that i would never get to see it so that was a delight of massive proportions alone
• oct. 16: