Pillow Book 5: Breakfast Kraut

What cereals would be called if they had sauerkraut in them:

1.  Krautios
2.  Kraut Loops
3.  Kraut Jacks
4.  Kraut Pops
5.  Kraut Krispies
6.  Kraut Crunch
7.  Cap'n Kraut
8.  Frosted Mini Kraut
9.  Frosted Kraut
10.  Shreaded Kraut
11.  Kraut Nuts
12.  Honey Bunches of Kraut
13.  Special K

Pillow Book 4: Lexicon of Rattle

Words from poems in the most recent edition of Rattle, a poetry magazine:

1.  dog
2.  bird
3.  bone
4.  smoke
5.  heart
6.  shit (more than once); (also: cat poop); (also:  pee)
7.  living
8.  gophers
9.  fish (way more than once)
10.  bear
11.  roots
12.  veins
13.  world (more than once); (also:  earth)
14.  breast feeding
15.  sleep
16.  dead man
17.  beauties of ruin
18.  love
19.  goats
20.  Theseus walking threadless into a maze
21.  fork
22.  rabbit carcasses (also:  cadaver dog)
23.  artichokes
24.  father
25.  mouth
26.  hands
27.  shoes (more than once)
28.  brick
29.  sun
30.  children
31.  woman
32.  surrender
33.  house (more than once) (also:  home)
34.  time
35.  egg
36.  sex
37.  cigars
38.  hell
39.  honey
40.  heat
41.  teacher
42.  poem (more than once)
43.  bodies (also:  body)  (more than once)
44.  sky
45.  hair (more than once)
46.  girls (also:  boy or boys)
47.  deranged
48.  hatmakers
49.  limbs
50.  door
51.  darkness
52.  beating
53.  return
54.  eyes
55.  song (also:  music)
56.  deaf
57.  tomorrow
58.  bathroom
59.  table
60.  squirrels (more than once)
61.  stroke
62.  morning
63.  umbrella
64.  gloves
65.  sand
66.  ice
67.  snow
68.  me  (way more than once); (also:  I)
69.  give
70.  dream
71.  future
72.  eyelid
73.  veil
74.  terrified
75.  dust
76.  deer
77.  afterlife
78.  tea
79.  blackberries
80.  cats
81.  hammer
82.  rocks
83.  cabinent
84.  envelope
85.  phone (more than once

Pillow Book 3: Warm Things

1.  summer stones and shells
2.  compliments (real ones)
3.  puppies and babies
4.  an unexpected kindness (as when the young woman offers the emaciated Buddha the rice porridge or when the theater troupe offers wild strawberries and milk to the beleaguered Knight in Bergman's The Seventh Seal)
5.  shoulder blades, when touched with my cold hand
6.  cooing of mourning doves
7.  color of a hoodoo or mesa
8.  a William Stafford poem
9.  berries just off the bush
10.  coffee, too long ago poured

Pillow Book 2: Gross Things

1.  hair in food
2.  when somebody spits mucus inside buildings (once I found it on the steps in University Hall)
3.  when the dog throws up
4.  when somebody spills a whole dairy drink inside the elevator or smears boogers on the doors of the elevator (yes, I saw this in East Hall.  Recently.)
5.  when somebody talks on the phone when they're using the bathroom (sometimes I hear them doing this in public bathrooms).  when somebody doesn't wash their hands after using the bathroom.
6.  when somebody doesn't flush the toilet
7.  food fights
8.  anything with Crisco shortening in it
9.  the sound our dog (Buddha) makes when he licks himself
10.  storebought bread with all the preservatives in it (like Wonder Bread, etc.).  Also those storebought English muffins which never go bad because they are full of preservatives.
11.  When leftovers go bad in the refrigerator. 
12.  Using spit to clean things

Pillow Book 1: Things to Look Forward to

Here's a good one for everybody who loves lists.  I've wanted to do a Pillow Book for some time.  Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book is described as "a collection of lists, gossip, poetry, observations, complaints and anyting else she found of interest during her years in court."  I have a copy of Shonagon's book floating around my house somewhere.  I need to find it.  I remember what I liked most were her lists.  Another name for this kind of book is a Zuihitsu.  I've ordered a Zuihitsu called Hōjōki. 


I like lists (particularly poetic lists) but find them a little difficult to do, so I think it will be a good excercize for me.  I want to generate at least five things each time.  I can also go back and add things as I think of them.  My first topic:

THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO

1.  Allen in the truck, waiting to take me home from work
2.  The first snow
3.  Settling into a hot bath
4.  Toads' songs, spring
5.  Return of buzzards to Ohio, spring
6.  Pączki

Here's a partial list from Shonagon's book that I found online.  I especially like the last one.

[From a list of "things that give you pleasure":]

• You've read the first volume of a tale you hadn't come across before, and are longing to go on with it --- then you find the other volume. The rest of it can sometimes turn out to be disappointing, however....
• It's also wonderfully pleasing when you're in a large company of people in the presence of someone great, and she's talking, either about something in the past or on a matter she's only just heard about, some topic of the moment, and as she speaks, it's you she singles out to look at.....
• When a poem that you've composed for some event, or in a exchange of poems, is talked of by everyone and noted down when they hear it. This hasn't happened to me personally, but I can imagine how it would feel....
• When someone you don't like meets with some misfortune, you're pleased even though you know this is wicked of you.