Monday, February 1, 2016

Kon-Mari

A peculiar thing, Japanese thinking. Watch 'Organizing Consultant' and international media success Marie Kondo expound her questionably neurotic yet undeniably whimsical philosophy, KonMari, on the microcosm that is human interaction with household items. Though, "expound" is perhaps not as sufficient a word; more like, some strange interpretive theater piece. Shit gets near quixotic at about the 6:30 min mark on forward, where a pile of clothes assumes some imaginary archipelago-like geography and selection processes begin with concentrated physical contact in attempt to achieve what is coined as "spark joy", a bioelectrical aura reading, or lack thereof, from a given clothing article which then determines its place in one's domestic existence. 

Whatever is lost in translation remains apparent in the sheer personage of Kondo—poised like an android concierge from some 1980s Japanese Toshiba commercial while dolled-up like Alice on her way to Wonderland, mixing together little girl flights-of-fancy with familiar tropes of Zen garden geomancy into a wholly 'new age' guruism that only the 21st century could every hope to recognize, let alone make sense of. 

But who can deny the commitment, and especially the charm?