Writing, theater, cello, piano, rock shows, reading, conversation, observation, Latin, Russian, English, drinking/making coffee/espresso, old jazz in the morning, drinking tea at night, experiments in cooking, kicking fall leaves, long drives, cold fingertips, oceans, storms, cats, purring, the sound/feel/smell of rain, bridges, forests, radio towers, people, lamplight, intimacy, hugs, kisses, touch, boots, walking, dancing, singing, "silence", red lipstick, vintage hats, adventures, non sequiturs, blood oranges, lucid dreams, tuaca and/or brandy buzzes, laughing, shadows, and so on and so forth it runs on-- only boring people get bored.
(ahem)
Blue-skyed swing-setters, tag players, coffee drinkers, tea consumers, cigarette smokers, fortune-tellers, fate makers, breakfast appreciators, give-and-takers, Wilde quoters, book readers, banterers, saunterers, stumblers, amblers, rompers, dancers, hikers, bikers, passenger seaters, road trippers, train-of-thought derailers, sleep underraters, tree-climbers, free thinkers, absurdists, lovely complications, cozy simplifiers, inspiration, my better judgement, the party responsible for the mystery bruise on my ankle of all improbable places, dinner-partiers, the gods of four a.m., picnic attenders, convoluted writers, pen-pals, diplomats, muses, amusers, quiet folk, taxi-cab drivers, nostalgists, night hawks, owl-eyed tree huggers, sloths, compandas, shiny objects, and all other sorts of people who glow like crazy.
The short list (in something which resembles an order, though it might not be): Juno; Tom Waits; Scott Walker; Nina Simone; David Bowie; Andrew Bird; Louis Armstrong; Ella Fitzgerald; Miles Davis; Iron and Wine; Bright Red Paper; Air; Portishead; Godspeed You Black Emperor; Nick Cave; Smog; Joanna Newsome; The Clientele; Hum; Castor; Creeper Lagoon; Doves; National Skyline; The Cure; Broadcast; Karate; The Velvet Underground; The Exhale; Enon; The Faint; Hood; Sigur Ros; Mogwai; Sunny Day Real Estate; Nico
Being There, My Dinner with Andre, Harold and Maude, The Philadelphia Story, Casablanca, The Girl on the Bridge, His Girl Friday, Pandora's Box, Diary of a Lost Girl, Bringing Up Baby, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dangerous Liasons, Donnie Darko, The Shadow of the Vampire, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Third Man, The Usual Suspects, Snatch, High Fidelity, Run Lola Run, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Il Postino, Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle), other guilty pleasures I won't publicly admit to, and this order is absolute mayhem, so ignore it.
The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov); Heart of a Dog (Bulgakov); Corelli's Mandolin (De Bernieres); The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (De Bernieres); Birds Without Wings (De Bernieres); The God of Small Things (Roy); Orlando (Woolf); Pride and Prejudice (Austen); The Lover (Duras); The Age of Innocence (Wharton); A Room with a View (Forster); Howards End (Forster); The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald); Possession (Byatt); Fathers and Sons (Turgenev); ...said the shotgun to the head (Williams); Henry IV, Part I (Shakespeare); The Promise (Arbuzov); The Doubtful Guest (Gorey); Blankets (Thompson); Berlin (Lutes)
The people who not only gave birth to me, but exhibited mercy in allowing me to live. The weirdo they also gave birth to and allowed to survive. Dorothy Parker's wit; Shakespeare's genius in understanding; Wilde's turn of phrase; trees; cats; really impressive boots.