The Pillow Book

About a thousand years ago someone presented the Japanese Empress Teishi with a stack of paper, and she asked her attendants what should be done with the paper. Her attendant Sei Shōnagon volunteered to make a pillow from it. So the story goes. What she ended up writing is now called The Pillow Book, but it might have been a generic term for writing done after retiring for the day. And of course, the “pillow” for that time and place was more of a wooden headrest that might have had a drawer where the papers could be stored.

I’ve been reading random passages from the book today and it is fascinating. Often delightful. I get a truly transcendent sort of feeling reading these words from so long ago in such a different situation, and yet I feel connected to the experience. I find myself wanting to quote so much of the book. I’ll just quote one item from a list of “Hateful Things”.

A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.

That could definitely describe me.