All this this talk of lines and circles – how could I not?

 

Full disclosure: I liked this reading so much I went and bought the damn book. The author comes across as a bit tedious — really, you really read a book back to front when you’re enjoying it? — but there was a lot to take from it.

Here are some things I don’t know or want to ponder.

• What do these numbers mean? Why start at 312?
• What is the “march of consciousness across the stage” meant to mean? Can’t I witness my own consciousness?
• Can multiple parts ever create a whole? Should they even try?
• Does nothing have a simple cause/effect relationship? Is it always “bright splinters”?
• Who / what are the “compositionally disabled”?
• Can anything have meaning on its own, or is it derived 100% from context?
• How do you give the “apparent form” of a narrative without creating one accidentally?
• Will a collage end up saying more about its creator than itself?
• And I quote: “I hate quotations”.
• What’s Goethe’s involvement?
• Can you plan a collage?
• How can something be “both real and imagined”?
• Why is non-fiction less limiting than fiction?
• How can you sustain a work made entirely of “pinnacles”?

I couldn’t resist getting the Pillow Book. I didn’t really know what to expect from it, but what struck me first and has stayed with me is the way it expresses Sei Shōnagon’s personality. The things that she includes in her lists, the anecdotes she chooses to tell, express so much about her. It’s an interesting way of telling people about yourself; by filtering her world view through her book, we understand what she cares about. (It’s paper. That woman loved paper.)

It’s fascinating too that the book’s gone down as such an important historical text. The dual purpose of the text — as an almost-diary and a collection of data — is an interesting way of thinking about recording a time and place. So personal and yet very impersonal.

What I’ve discovered accidentally is that I also love her and want to hang out. What a sass queen, my god. I want to go back to Japan circa 1000 and judgementally appraise people’s outfits and letter-writing. She even tells people off for sneaking incorrectly. She’s a dream.

Back into it!