Totoro Rescue Society
Finding love in the lost, forgotten, and discarded.
Finding Totoro
Totoro Rescue Society began as I was wandering the streets of Phnom Penh. I had long had an affinity for the strange “Troll” / Forest Spirit from Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film My Neighbor Totoro. In the film, Totoro serves as a kind of guide to two girls, Mei and Satsuki. Both are lost, figuratively and occasionally literally, in a time of upheaval as they are moving to the countryside while their mother is sick in the hospital. Eventually, Totoro guides them, less by direction and more by example. The girls find themselves in the world of a mercurial, playful, and magical Totoro. As they were enthralled, I too have found myself increasingly curious and fond of Totoro ever since I was a child.
The Rescuers TM : Fiscally Unwise Edition
I loved the Rescuers movies as a kid. They were books as well, I think. I never thought about why I was buying the small Totoro plushie. It was a bit larger than my hand, and it was dirty. It was a light gray color, and looked different than what I would expect from the movie, but the intention was clear. This Totoro had been in someone’s home in Japan at some point, at least according to ToTo Recycle Shop. It had a life before this one, sitting in a bin with dozens of various characters made unsavory by use and time. Yet each of these characters had been chosen to have another chance at a home. Totoro was there, and I was there. I bought it, and perhaps rescued it, without a second thought.
Later I would reflect on this and wonder if maybe it was my duty to help this Totoro. I had compassion for this plushie, empathy for the plight it found itself in, and I knew I could give it a place to stay. I bought the only one on the shelves that day, and no intention of finding more. My financial situation didn’t allow for such concessions. I had yet to realize that I would soon buy more and come to refer to them as the Totoro Rescue Society.
The Joy of Loss
Rarely do we think about the subconscious reality of the characters in our stories. Prior to meeting Totoro, Mei and Satsuki are moving into a new home and eagerly awaiting the day they can see their mother again. However, the visit is postponed, and Mei doesn’t handle it particularly well. For a young child, the difficulty of living with the fear that her mother is not well, combined with not being able to see her is ,understandibly, tremendously upsetting. These emotions were bristling under the surface, and as they are ignited Totoro and Satsuki have to take on the responsibility of caring for Mei. Nevertheless, Mei runs off to try to find her mother. Fearing the worst, Satsuki scrambles to find her, racing through the countryside by whatever means available. The things we have around us that mean something to us personally shield us and embrace us when these moments of fear peak. In the subsequent years I have seen my Totoro and always had at least a momentary reprieve from whatever was grasping at my attention. Not all things work this way.
Recently it seems many people are talking about order, routine, or patterns of behavior being imminently important to mood. Marie Kondo tells us about how to do things in an orderly and purposeful way. Jordan Peterson tells us about how to present ourselves to put us in the right mindset to be our best selves. Organizing and minimizing the things we own gives us a way to free ourselves from distraction and angst. Standing up straight, with our shoulders back, gives us the advantage of a strong posture that supports both our physical and mental outlook.
I had begun embracing similar philosophies at this time, considering Stoic and Minimalist theories, and drawing some of my own conclusions. I hadn’t thought about the Totoro I had bought, or what significance it might assume. One day, I happened upon a Sakura Second Hand Shop. This was not all that unusual, I had an uncanny knack for finding things in Phnom Penh. There is a lot to find, and a lot to see. In this Sakura Shop, I found the second Totoro. This one was a darker gray, but was otherwise almost identical to the first. It was less soft, but was still snuggly and adorable. It was also a bit cleaner and better preserved. I whisked it home to join its comrade.
Recalling the Forgotten
Life pulls us in many directions. Sometimes we are swept away in a rush of water, wind, mud, or snow, and the peculiarities of our life have become in an instant, unrecognizable. Other times we are poked and pinched, eventually finding ourselves a short but appreciable distance from our starting point. Mei and Satsuki are both wrapped up in the finding of a new place. Their new house is actually an old one. It has a history, a place in the community, and some puzzling denizens. As Mei plays, she encounters what appear to be dust motes (Susuwatari), little spirits that live in empty homes waiting to see if the new owners will be good people.
It is easy to get caught up in the moment, or lost in the oblivion of memories. The best of times sometimes catch up to their due date, propelling us to find new memories to make. The worst of times drive us, either closer to or further from those things that make us all kinds of melancholic. I’ve bounced between states; psychological, physical, and geographical. I have found that profound memories can be formed in an instant, or crafted over many months or years. What is important is to find these things, seek them rigorously, and with great ambition. It is because I was relentless in this pursuit that I have one of my best memories.
I’m not particularly enamored with traditions or festivities that occur on the same day every year. Birthdays, holidays, and scheduled breaks in schedule, all have seemed arbitrary and perhaps even counterproductive to me in a variety of ways. But there is always that element of joy that is found when we have a special time on a special day. I walked into my classroom, and my students had created something on the whiteboard, a collection of well wishes and drawings for me on my birthday. It was a simple gesture of kindness or gratitude, but I was overwhelmed that they would go to such lengths for me. Some of my students had arrived late, and I was in the midst of telling them off when they produced for me an excuse that was impossible to argue with. It was a Totoro. Adorable, brand new, and with one of those talk-back boxes that apparently still exist. It may sound odd, as I have had many more adventuresome days than that day, a relatively standard work day, but this memory is one I hold onto above almost all others.
Picking Up The Discarded
Although the two girls, Mei and Satsuki, are playful and exuberant about their new home, within their subconscious lurks a feeling of anguish at the unknown and unknowable outcomes that loom in the near-future. They can’t be sure what will happen with their mother, or at what point they will be able to see her again. As they each encounter Totoro, the forest spirit takes on a guiding force in their lives. Together they celebrate simple pleasures such as hearing the raindrops on an umbrella, helping nature to grow, and galavanting through the moon-bathed depths of night. Although not precisely forgotten about or neglected, the sisters latch onto these experiences because they are genuine and novel and take their minds away from other matters while their father works.
As time went on, I began to take longer and more ambitious routes through the city of Phnom Penh. I had always enjoyed walking, and had sometimes braved the heat and bustle of the city for an hour or two. Later on, I had begun walking 4, 5, or 6 hours in a day. Mostly, I was enthralled by the different districts and the winding paths I could cut through the city. I explored, and hypothesized about what I might find around each corner. Often, I was spot on, and other times completely baffled by the unexpected. I listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts, with Lexicon Valley being one of my favorites. I was embracing a life in which time was a tool for exploration, not a limitation placed on me by the arbitrary designs of institutions.
My intuition led me many times to nice cafes, and occasionally to another Recycle Shop. Osaka Recycle Shop produced my nylon-stringed acoustic guitar. Many Sakura Recycle shops yielded somewhat garish ties to wear at work when I was feeling unusually receptive to the slavish obsession some people have for soul-numbing, identity-redacting uniforms. I greeted each adventure with a kind of optimism that could not be spoiled by finding nothing or being halted by extreme heat or pounding rain. The journey really was the worthier bit for me in these fondly-remembered days. As Totoro had taken in Mei and Satsuki, I too was taken in by the sprawling uncertainty of life in Phnom Penh.
One particularly far-flung meandering brought me to a tiny Totoro and a rather large Totoro. They were just there, settled into a shelf, not so far from one another. I bought them instantly, surprised to have found two in the same place that were also so different from the first three I had collected. They joined the Totoro Rescue Society, which now had grown its ranks to five.
Wanderlust’s Weird Friend, Exploraphoria
As young children often do, Mei decides that she will not wait to see her mother. The unknowing has clutched at her heart too long, and off she goes to find the hospital. Satsuki’s subsequent panic and mad rush to find Mei is a bit of a saga of the usual attempts one might take on to find a lost loved one. Ultimately it is Catbus that — (Yes, it is a bus, and a cat. A Catbus.) — brings Satsuki to Mei. The Catbus then takes both of them to see their mother through the hospital window. Everyone has a sense of what a place means to them. Home may be where you live and feel most safe and comfortable, or it may be in the fine company of the family you chose or were born into. When we are home, we hope we can feel a sense of ease in knowing that, despite all the ups and downs and chaotic winds that descend on us from far-off and unseeable butterflies, we can let all this go because we are after all, at home. Home where things are as they should be. Or, as perhaps many readers will already know, where we wish things would be.
I know I am not the first to coin Exploraphoria, but it was inspiration that led me to that combination of Exploration and Euphoria. I grew up imagining that I was experiencing Wanderlust. In fact, I do feel that way sometimes, but as I have grown into a traveler more than a tourist, and an anthropologist more than a participant, I see things on timescales, and in details that cannot be understood through the word Wanderlust. At least, I prefer to say I am engaged in Exploraphoria. Perhaps Wanderlust is what preceded Exploraphoria, and what a lovely process it is, too. Yet, I find my desire to uproot and chaotically intersect many places is overwhelmed now by my desire to know a place the way only a person who feels at home there might do. It is a beautiful and tragic luxury granted to us, we can travel nearly anywhere if we are willing to sacrifice enough for the journey to be made possible. We hope to find a place, or a person, that makes us home at last. Some of us find it, after all.
Epilogue
One of the hardest decisions of my life was to leave Phnom Penh. I knew I had things to finish up in the USA, and I knew I would regret leaving Cambodia forever. I made a choice then, and it was probably the right one. I knew Totoro Rescue Society would not have the same place in San Francisco. It would not mean the same thing to me, and I would be diminishing it’s relevance for my own desire to keep what I love close to me. It would have been a minor indulgence. I decided that it would be better to complete the mission that I had not realized was truly the purpose of Totoro Rescue Society.
I had two students that reminded me of myself. One of them thought very much like me, presenting ideas based on the types of intellectual leaps I struggle with now but that were plentiful when I was younger. The other was more like I was emotionally when I was young. I had seen that she had a personality that sparkled and shone, but it was deep below the surface. I gave the first two Totoro plushies I had found in Cambodia to them. I never thought about it later, but maybe they reminded me not just of myself, but of Mei and Satsuki. All of us are a bit lost at some point in our young lives, but it is rare that anyone recognizes us as being the same type of lost that they were, once upon a time. The smallest Totoro went to another student who was passing by that I thought might enjoy it as a keepsake. The largest Totoro I gave to the art school I had been teaching at during the weekends. I wanted that one to have a community around it, much like the original Totoro had in the film. Hopefully it sees many people who all appreciate it as the fluffy and mindful guardian it is.
Oh?
The last Totoro?
I’m glad you remembered! The last Totoro stays with me. The last Totoro is my home. It has not left my side for more than a day in nearly all the days since I left Cambodia. You see, Totoro Rescue Society did not disband at the conclusion of its purpose in Phnom Penh. In fact, maybe someday I’ll be an honorary member of the Totoro Rescue Society, not merely a narrator. Now is the time my Totoro takes its turn rescuing me.
Thanks all for reading. This story has stayed with me in the years since I left Cambodia. It was something so specific and personal that I didn’t really know if it had a place outside of my memory. But I was reminded recently that sometimes we write a super secret message for someone, even if we don’t know who they are or when they will read it, and of course… in the end… they do read it, and are happier for it.
