pillow raze years ago, i found the perfect one. i could tell what it was through the plastic, the moment it hugged my head. it was with me through high school and for some time after that, through good sleep and bad, through intoxication, and clarity, and every pre-sleep emotional and mental state there is in the book of pre-sleep emotional and mental states — helpfully documented in the six-volume guide "what we think before our blinking elongates and our breathing alters itself" — until a wound eased its way open on one worn corner and the pillow started bleeding feathers with alarming, obstinate speed. my best stabs at stitching up the damage did no good, and there came a day when i had to accept i could do no more than the little i'd tried and failed to do. i used to stuff that pillow inside a suitcase and bring it with me whenever i slept away from home. that's something you only do when you're either a little bit insane, or you've got some special kind of head cushion. no pillow since has inspired that kind of commitment in me. there's a new pillow now. a just-bought-today pillow, meant to replace the one i've been tolerating for the last seven or eight years. i think it's an improvement. how much of an improvement, i don't know yet. i'll have to sleep on it to know. 131127 ... raze having had some time to break it in, i'm glad to report the new pillow rates a 7.8 on the improvement scale — a scale that's totally arbitrary, but meaningful to those who find meaning in arbitrary things. it's not as comfortable as the perfect one was, but i doubt i'll ever find a pillow that is. the main thing is it's closer than i thought i'd get, and that's close enough. 140203 what's it to you? who go blather from