Derik Badman's Journal

The unseasonable weather yesterday was such that we could have another outdoor happy hour and dinner at ██████. Not sure we'll have any more of those as the temperature lowers, but we thought that before. I'll miss that social contact, distanced as it is. Not sure we have an easy alternate option for cool weather. Especially now that virus cases seem to be rising pretty drastically again in the county, yesterday was the second highest positive counts since this whole thing started.

I was outside walking up our driveway, and, from the big yard across the street I saw a large fast moving animal headed my way, as it neared the street I could see it was a deer, a male with young antlers, only two single horns jutting up from its head. It must have noticed me, as it crossed the street and turned left, into my neighbors front yard then ran down the street through all the front yards. Had I not been there it probably could have run into my backyard and to the park (we have a back fence, but I leave the gate open for fox and deer egress).

Watched Asako I & II a 2018 film from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi that I must have heard something positive about back when it was in some film festival. It was a not entirely satisfying film, I think I ended feeling pretty neutral about, not disappointed at the time spent, but not eager to see it again or even think about it further. A young woman dates this guy who then disappears. Years later she meets another man who looks exactly like the first guy (same actor, different haircut), and reluctantly ends up dating him. Later, after she has become engaged to the second guy, the first guy shows up and impetuously she runs away with him, but then almost immediately realizes that was the wrong choice. She goes back to the fiance. That Asako is the protagonist, not the doubled guy, makes the title a bit mysterious. I think we have to take as the two selves of Asako, the present self and the past self. She has held onto this vision of this past relationship that was young, simple, and happy and ended without any closure. And then she is enmeshed in this new relationship, but is unable to let the old one disappear into memory (which is literalized by the way the two guys look the same). She has to come to realize that she must live in the present, not the past, that she has to let go of this idealized relationship that belongs to her past self. That's an interesting premise (assuming I am reading it accurately), but I don't think the movie completely succeeds at conveying it with enough weight.

I am thinking I will lower the bar for myself and call this month's writing project Novella Writing instead of Novel Writing. With a word count of 30k instead of 50k that lowers my daily count to 1000 words which feels much doable to me and probably more accurately envisions the scope of the fiction I would produce.