Collage as Memoir: impressions of Circle K

Did you know?  The Japanese first popularized collage in the 10th century, using glue to affix text to surfaces? 

"Just prior to this book, I could think of (oh 7 or so)  images that described my perceived relationship to Japan."

 The first is the aisle of Kamei Restaurant Supply on Clement street lined with miso bowls and sushi plates. When you elope no one says, "One day you are going to be paralyzed for choice in the aisles of Kamei." 

The second is a used Toyota Tercel that I bought when I was pregnant with my first son, a Japanese import my grandfather refused to buy, because of World War II. 

{insert: photo submitted to insurance company,  of TT,  describing damage after totaling it in a four way no stop sign intersection in Northeast Portland.  1/4th my fault. ) 

The third is a bonsai tree that was a popular Christmas gift for people you didn't know how to buy for one year in the nineties, associated in my mind forever with a line from Arthur Golden's "Memoir of a Geisha", that a Japanese garden "leaves the impression that there is nothing left to be done", and how far that refined aesthetic generally lies beyond my reach. (Ikea suggests a bamboo shoot in a glass vase instead.Thank you, Sweden. Insert polite bow) 

(insert: meditative image of bamboo, for breathing/white space) 

Fourth:  a framed pink silk fabric swatch, embroidered with fat flowers, hanging on the wall of Grandma Sue's apartment in New Rochelle, a gift from a Japanese woman in her building, a thank you for English lessons. 

Fifth is an image burned in my memory, from World magazine, of Japanese business men sleeping in  those sleeping bag sized pod bed in hotels you hear they have in Tokyo. 

(Circle K made me feel like I always imagined I would feel inside one of these pods:  Claustrophobic. Gasping for white space. The stamp sized photos like little worlds I could get even further stuck inside.)

Sixth is the story of a Lucky Kitty. A man I know had a wealthy Japanese client who gave him a gift of a life-sized maneki-neko, which he flew from Japan to California in its own first class seat. The big kitty made it all the way to SFO, but  then was smashed into nearly a thousand pieces in fed ex transit from the airport.  When it was finally unpacked and disentangled from the bubble wrap, all that remained was pile of white painted ceramic rubble.  My friend put his interns to work glueing the kitty back together. Putting the kitty together again became its own zen practice, reconstructing the nursery rhyme. 

Seventh is more of a scene than a story of an image. On Saturdays in my house, I host a Japanese school run by my friend Mariko, who is raising money to start a fermented food company. Downstairs they rumble around, a dozen Japanese American families, making sushi, arranging flowers, baking bread, meditating, etc.  Mariko reciprocates for the use of the space with food,  carefully and artfully wrapped,  and usually of a kind that I have no longing or desire to eat, no appetite for, no history of, no saudade. 

"Circle K Cycles " made me feel three or four generations and parts removed. Like a great aunt of an in-law.  Yamashita buries her memoir within the experiences and stories of the 200K Japanese Brazilians who repatriate (in a way) to work in Japanese factories under racially biased immigration laws.   To be a "Nikkei on the move", as Yamashita identifies herself in the end makes perfect sense AND fills me with a baseline anxiety.  What a complicated, disorienting, deconstructionist reality identity making is in our ever-fracturing  mobile, global world. 

Collage is this memoir's answer.  If you are going to take a stab at it, first, gather all the ephemera, and pie charts and line graphs and found photos. Write a poem, tell a story, insert a recipe, interview some couples,  post some rules and mod podge it to the page. It's the only way. 

The resulting overall effect is understanding of the very postmodern complication it attempts to describe. 

The structure seems a puzzle, or at least to require a different experience of linearity. The chapters are divided into months which references the circular annual calendar.  The importance of Circle K, as a convenience, as a nickname, as a recurring location, is a question. Maybe the ubiquitous and culturally impoverished mini market is the only constant in our time. 

(insert word for half-defeated shrug and emoticon of strange fermented Japanese cake here)

Throughout this text Yamashita hints metaphorically at many central questions of the immigrant/ twice removed. In March: Backache: The internet phone at the Circle K asks, "Are you sure you wish to disconnect?" 

And here lies the dilemma: as much as you do or don't  wish to disconnect, you have and are part of some greater spine that is moving through the air, or on a track, and you must look at the "digital dots" on a map to find out where you are and who you are. 

But my back aches just thinking about it!!