idleness and chocolate

If you're looking for a good Sunday afternoon activity I recommend sitting down with a huge bag of M&Ms and reading Essays in Idleness, by Yoshida Kenko.

"The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known."

I think half of why I love Yoshida Kenko so much is because I can't even get my brain around the fact that he lived 700 years ago. That's when Chrétien de Troyes was writing (and he's awesome too).

"A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky."

And I think the other half is that even though he lived 700 years ago on the other side of the world everything he says is pretty dead-on, and he just tells it how it is. I feel like he could write for a magazine. Maybe not the technology section, but still.

One should never make a show of having a deep knowledge of any subject. Well-bred people do not talk in a superior way even about things they have a good knowledge of.

And I think he would have liked M&Ms. He'd be crazy not to.