A Pleasure List

Megan Weisenberger - 

 

“I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.”

― Oscar Wilde

One of my favorite substacks is called The Pleasure Lists – something that began as a simple prompt, a call to catalog one's pleasures and then led to an outpouring of submissions. They're all idiosyncratic and individual … but they're also incredibly universal and one landing in my inbox always makes me feel a bit softer and better about the state of the world. 

As I sit at my laptop, endlessly scrolling through news that makes me feel deeply aghast at the state of humanity and freedom, here are the things bringing me true deep pleasure this early autumn: 

Fresh linen sheets 

Indian summer at Fort Tilden

Every single thing about the state of Maine 

Smooshing strangers together into weird-yet-beautiful social situations 

Teaching myself how to cook at the age of 37

Handwritten letters

Morning rituals 

The color red 

Crisp white Oxford shirts

All things Australia 

Soup dumplings

Tomato season

Zohran Mamdani 

The start of Minnesota Timberwolves season  

Facetimes with my family 

Hiding my phone in a drawer for the day 

(Semi-related: very thick used paperback books)

Feeling infinite going over the Brooklyn Bridge at night with the right music on 

Getting close enough to people to develop your own secret language 

Brooklyn's Botanic Garden 

Trying to pretend my shitty Brooklyn bathtub is spa-like 

Spending way too much time painstakingly making playlists again 

… but mainly just remembering that the world is still beautiful if you pay attention