Delightful things about winter

I sliced my orange in half, releasing a fresh citrus scent, and was delighted by the gorgeous purply red colour inside. I took a closer look at the segments hidden inside the thick-skinned citrus. They were bursting with juice. Before eating the orange, I paraded it around my house to show the beautiful colour to my family (they weren’t quite as delighted as I).

A small pleasure in a small thing.

Perhaps this is the type of observation that Sei Shōnagon might have recorded in The Pillow Book. I recently learned about this Japanese author/poet/philosopher in Eric Weiner’s book, The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers. I was intrigued by his premise. We look to philosophy for the same reason we travel: to see the world from a different perspective.

As a newbie to philosophy I really enjoyed the book. Each of the 14 chapters introduce a different philosopher in an approachable way, but also as a travelogue. As the name of the book suggests the author travels and writes by train. He travels to see the places that inspired these thinkers to ponder their great questions.

In this way, he strolls the Swiss countryside like Henri Rousseau, gazes at Henri Thoreau’s Walden Pond in Concord Massachusetts, travels to Frankfurt to get acquainted with Arthur Schopenhauer, visits the home of Mahatma Ghandi in India, and frequents Simone de Beauvoir’s haunts in Paris.

Places matter. They are repositories of ideas. That’s why I travel, and why I am here now, in Athens, searching for traces of Epicurius and his garden.

Eric Weiner, The Socrates Express – Chapter 6: How to Enjoy like Epicurius

For Sei Shōnagon, Eric travels to Japan and writes on the Shinkansen (bullet train). He visits the Imperial Palace in Kyoto where Shōnagon lived when she wrote The Pillow Book. This was around the year 1000 during the Heian period where beauty and aesthetics were revered: poetry, music, exquisite gardens. The aesthetically pleasing bento box wrapped in beautiful paper that Eric buys at a train station hints at the reverence for beauty that remains today in Japan.

Sei Shōnagon finds beauty in small and unexpected places.

It’s not only things of beauty she records, but dislikes as well. Her personal observations are often in the form of lists, covering the gamut from “splendid things” to “annoying things”. At times her recordings give us a glimpse into palace life a thousand years ago, such as these “elegant things”: plum blossoms covered in snow, shaved ice with a sweet syrup in a shiny new silver bowl, a tiny lotus leaf that’s been picked from a pond. On the other end of the spectrum, “deeply irritating things” seem to translate over the centuries: rain all day on New Year’s Eve, one is just about to be told some interesting piece of news when a baby starts crying, a mosquito that announces itself with that thin little wail just as you’ve settled sleepily into bed. So irritating!

Her observations are incredibly perceptive and nuanced. She is a keen observer, engages all her senses, and reveres the sense of smell. The tiniest of details can make the difference between like or dislike. To make it “just so”.

Beauty is not about being perfect, but rather appropriate to the mood or season.

Beautiful items don’t need to be pristine, but may be worn or imperfect, like the Japanese concept of wabi.

Pleasures are not merely static, but can be enhanced if they are fleeting, like the ephemeral Japanese cherry blossom (sakura) celebrated in the moment. Or the springtime blossoms in my neighbourhood…

She as a taxonomy for pleasure called okashii. Okashii is more than merely pleasurable but truly delightful with an element of surprise. I didn’t realize I was slicing into a blood orange so it was quite unexpected to discover a deep purple flesh inside.

The range of lists Shōnagon created may seem random, but there is a purpose to this cataloguing: pay attention to what you enjoy in your daily life. It’s the process of observing and documenting pleasures in your surroundings that helps you deepen your appreciation of okashii or the delightful.

She knows our lives are nothing more, or less, than the sum of a million tiny joys.

Eric Weiner, The Socrates Express – Chapter 10: How to Appreciate the Small Things like Shōnagon

Back in my kitchen I am inspired to start my own list: “Delightful things about about winter”. On a cold February day in the peak of citrus season, the first item I add is brightly coloured juicy citrus. I continue listing more items. The list gets surprisedly long fairly fast. Other items include: knit sweaters made with the softest wool, pristine white snow reflecting sunlight to glisten like diamonds, catching a smoky waft of wood fire as I walk by a neighbour’s house, hot chocolate with a splash of creamy Baileys.

Just a splash. Okashii.

THINGS THAT CANNOT BE COMPARED
Summer and winter. Night and day. Rain and sunshine. Youth and age. A person’s laughter and his anger. Black and white. Love and hatred.

Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book.