ICYMI (reading the post this video is about) you can read it riiiiiight here 👉 The Objects of my Affliction.”
If you’d rather I read it to you, I am happy to do so.👇 Reading commences as soon as you hit play. Enjoy!
Notes from the Captain
It’s no secret that I name a lot of the inanimate objects in my life. Bikes especially. I name them all and I use them a lot. Pumpkin Butter, Bruiser, Blurple, the Black Mamba. Quite the ensemble. Confession: I kinda treat ‘em badly. I ride them so much that they require and deserve regular maintenance. I only give them semi-regular maintenance and it shows. You’ll notice I started a lot of sentences there with I. That’s because it’s all about me and not them.
It’s a problem.
Mud and earthworms (IYKYK) caked on downtubes. Chains thick with road grime and loaded with excess lube. Headsets in obvious need of adjusting. I do take care of these things—eventually—but I could do better. Neglect is part of the cycle. I need to break the cycle of breaking the bicycles.
It’s obvious that these bikes are gonna go hard for that tsukumogami life and haunt the crap out of me when the time comes. Fortunately, as you will learn should you consume anything on this page today, it takes about 100 years for an everyday object to become tsukumogami, and I will not be around in 100 years to hear those disc brake rotors squeal in the night or the sound of a bike chain rattling in the garage.
We must count small blessings as they come.
The point I made in last week’s post—if there was a point—is that if we neglect them, our more challenging emotions like fear, anger, and anxiety, can become a sort of mental tsukimogami and cause us a whole lotta trouble. These are emotional hauntings, so to speak. I get into that in the above video, but I’ve included some reference materials below on tsukumogami for your perusal, plus a link to the post that inspired this whole thing.
Until next we meet, I salute you, crew, and urge you to always maintain your tools! Emotional and actual. Tools last longer if you look after them.
🫡 Your Captain
Thangs from this episode…
👩✈️ Tsukumogami Unite!
As I mentioned in today’s video, the first time I ever saw the word Tsukumogami was in this post in a newsletter called The Visual Thinker by the illustrator Michelle Reijngoud. Here is a screencap of the panel, but go check out and subscribe to that newsletter. I find the simplicity of her Sketchpad posts delightful.
To read
“Tsukumogami - Because everything is scarier in Japan”
“Tsukumogami” - The Japan Box
Look at these little spooky things going about their day and walking among us. So cheeky!
Things to watch
The lantern creeps me out. Here’s the one I find most disturbing. A samurai spirit appears to have taken it over in The Ghost of Oiwa.
👇Here’s something I found on YouTube - a clip from "Haunted" a cell animated short by Hiroshi Mori. Creepy.
Here’s a sandal ghost 👇
Something to listen to
The above podcast is a reading of this post on Uncanny Japan if you’d rather read a transcript.
I kinda love the Kasa obake (ghost umbrella). What a kook. Here it is in the 1968 film “100 Monsters.”
People get tattoos of it, of course. 👇
Along with kasa-obake, another favorite tattoo seems to be that creepy lantern. A couple of examples here: GET TO KNOW YOUR YOKAI! TSUKUMOGAMI: FORGOTTEN OBJECTS WHICH SPRING TO LIFE ON THEIR 100TH BIRTHDAY!
As alluded to, Tsukumogami fall into the monsters category.
👩✈️ It’s a major award!
Just because, here’s the leg lamp scene from A Christmas Story.
Ok. That’s it for this week. Thanks for listening/watching and sharing. If you want to comment on any of the concepts in last week’s post—or just in general—feel free to leave a comment for the Captain (it me.)
Your adoring Captain, Janeen 🫡
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple
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