culture tipping

I've entered into one of those periodic depressions that occasionally smudge the sunny panorama of my life, the result of a combination of factors: some obvious, some not so. As a rule, our family isn't big on depression. We individually have our blue periods, but our policy is "stiff upper lip," which sounds a little better than "Get over it," while basically meaning the same thing. Sako suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, also known as SAD; still entrenched in Yosemite, she remains in the clear, at least until the Yosemite season ends and she's chased out with the rest of the park workers to spend winter someplace else. Arizona, she says. Maybe Las Vegas.

I know for a fact she's still functional, anyway. Just yesterday she emailed me to demand that I record every episode of Battlestar Galactica's new season. She announces that she is obsessed. ("It's Boomer," the Guy says. I presume this cryptic little utterance is one of those things that make sense if you watch the show.) This is disconcerting to me. I've long been accustomed to being the family geek, and the fact that my pop culture/nerd culture-hating sister has announced a fandom that borders on the religious -- with a show that I've determinedly avoided, in fact -- feels like one of those warning signs of the apocalypse that people are always talking about.

According to my mother, the next sign will be a little rain of something. "People like George Bush," she says disapprovingly.

"Frogs and fire are more traditional, Mom."

"That is just bad weather," she says. Mom has a charmingly wayward understanding of the impacts of global warming.

At any rate, I am a tad depressed, and it's been going for about a month now. I'm about ready for it to be over. My normal reaction to depression is to just grit my teeth, inflict myself on my husband, and deal with it until it passes, but this is not working this time, for reasons that we will not go into here. As a result, I've begun methodically going through the sorts of things that other people have suggested as a cure for depression.

It's the shopping that's kicking my ass.

Cultural rediscovery is a periodic hobby for me, like the hundreds of other hobbies that flit through my radar like demented winged sheep. In the time the Guy has known me, I have reeled through a fascination with astronomy, quilting, aquariums, writing, housekeeping -- they come and go, almost before he's had a chance to really register them. He's learned not to pay attention to them; his wife suffers from a manic curiosity accompanied by an equally manic attention span. To dignify them with recognition is to rack up expenses.

Most of my hobbies come around again. I make small gains each time. Aikido is one that has endured, albeit with the occasional lapse. In more than five years of study, I'm still only on the first belt, though this is due more to my dislike of testing than as a reflection on my level. Japanese culture is another. I am periodically reminded that my mother is old -- that my grandmother is older -- and that if I'm going to learn the family and cultural traditions that they have to teach, I'd better get a move on.

My mother turned 67 on Tuesday. She's starting to slow down. She tells me that my grandmother in Japan is complaining of feeling tired all the time. She's in her 80s.

I assuaged my feelings by buying a kimono.

Ignore the cheap, flimsy pieces of crap you can buy in Chinatown; this one is real. It is silk, it is secondhand, and it is in beautiful condition. The kimono is a graceful, gracious piece of clothing; it has an elegance almost utterly absent in modern day attire. It is demure. It is civilized. It is cultured.

It is so not me.

The Internet is a marvelous and treacherous beast: the people at CHUU are efficient, kindly, truthful, and helpful, but they are businessmen. They did not ask what idiotic sentiment would drive a person to buy a kimono without any of the attendant accessories: I do not, for instance, have an obi, or any of the things you layer under it, or -- well, any of the things I would actually need in order to wear this. Perhaps they assumed I already had those things. I thought, vaguely, about purchasing the necessary accoutrements; thought about, then forgot about, until the kimono actually showed up at my door in all its silky glory.

The Internet, as I say, is a marvelous and treacherous beast. Having sold me the kimono, it then taught me how to fold it. It currently sits on my living room chair, mocking me.

Feeling a little stupid, I did what any woman would do after buying something completely useless. I called my mother.

She did not seem to find it at all strange that I would own a kimono.

Every girl should have one.

"It's orange," I said.

"I don't understand kimono sense," admitted the woman who, for thirty years, continued to wear the same pair of brown bell-bottoms and the white shirt with big pink polka-dots that were fashionable in 1966. "When I try to match an obi to a kimono, I don't understand why the kimono experts pick this one to go with that one."

"I don't wear orange."

"I have everything in Seattle," Mom said. "I will bring them to you when I come to visit. You should have a complete set. I also have kimonos that are too young for me. Maybe I will give them to you and Masako."

There was a small silence while we contemplated the image of Sako in a kimono. My version had her climbing a mountain. "Sako?" Or maybe chasing a bear.

"That girl. I think if she had it, she would wear it."

"Yes, but wear it where?"

Mom didn't have an answer to that one. "Well," she said placatingly. "She is also a young woman."

There was another small silence while we both avoided saying what we were thinking. "Maybe I'm entering an orange phase," I said at last. "Did you have an orange phase? I know you're having some sort of pink phase now--"

Anyway, I own a kimono now. Every girl should have one.

No pain, no gain

We did an extremely painful technique last Tuesday in Aikido, yonkyo, which is a technique that I have a hard time with. Not so much in the causing of pain, because -- let's face it -- I have absolutely no qualms about that. None. Mostly it's that I didn't know how to do it, which is far more irritating; in any case, it's one of those techniques that involve pressure points and can cause nerve damage and require you to know what you're doing in order to be effective at all, and I ... don't.

The problem with learning these techniques is that you eventually end up wanting to use them. Peter Parker may know that with great power comes great responsibility but, you know, he makes millions per movie. When I'm worth $1 mil for three months of work, maybe I'll also learn great responsibility. In the meantime, there's my husband being all rambunctious and obnoxious in bed, and then there's me, with the potential for great pain in my hands.

You can probably see where this is heading.

In my own defense, I didn't really expect it to work. I grabbed his forearm; I applied the yonkyo technique. He screamed like a girl. I was surprised at my success -- and here's where I made a strategic error. Instead of reacting with shock and apology that I had hurt my husband, I blurted out an excited "Yay!"

It's hard to recover ground after a faux pas like that. Somehow my protestations that I hadn't meant to hurt him lacked the ring of sincerity.

I really like Aikido.

I really like my husband.

I don't think he likes me all that much.

Pity.

The Structure of a story

Every so often I have an urge to write something to submit to This American Life -- not out of any real passion for the show, mind, because I don't really care for it that much. That is to say, it's a fantastic show and when I listen to it, I love it, but I go through phases with it where it's like the spinach that Mom served with the steak. You'd eat it because it was good for you and she'd make dark comments about bowel movements and fiber if you didn't, and these aren't things you really want to hear when you're trying to eat your dinner or breakfast or, you know, trying to hang out with your friends in your own house. The thing with Mom: she was persistent with the leftovers that she thought were good for you. The dinner rolls and the rare pieces of dessert would disappear like a heartbeat if you got distracted and started looking around the kitchen instead of focusing on your plate, but if you didn't eat those brussel sprouts, whoa nelly. They'd be your recurring friends for breakfast, lunch, and dinner again and again, day after day, until you managed to find some kind of smothering agent like mayonnaise or wasabi that would utterly emasculate the odor and taste of the damn things so you could choke them down.

...wait. What was I talking about again?

Oh. Right. This American Life. Every so often I go visit the show's page and read the links off of it, and listen to the shows. When I'm not in my spinach phase, I have a lot of fun and I think about submitting something to the show. Then I finish reading the links and realize that I do none of the things that make the shows stories interesting. I resolve to change that. Next time, I decide, I will write a story with a point! A moral! A universal theme! It will flow, progress, and carry the reader to a satisfying conclusion!

And then something shiny passes my line of sight and I've forgotten all about it until the next time I develop an odd craving for spinach.

There is no point to this, really, beyond the fact that I'm feeling vaguely creative at the moment, and don't have the energy to expend on anything that would satisfy that craving. I'm like a dog with itchy balls in a lampshade collar.

There's an image that'll haunt you.