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Some weeks ago a fullscale war erupted in the household of my friend Otsu. Like most wars it was triggered by a seemingly trivial event which indicated more complex issues roiling beneath the emotional landscape. At the heart of the matter was power, the possession of it, and its rightful application. To put it more succinctly: Who was the true master of the house, Otsu the owner, or Torquata the maid?

Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star. 

Catzilla, originally uploaded by 160507.

The cure for shopaholism is, obviously, underemployment. When you know exactly how much money you have–or more accurately, don’t have–you’ll learn how easy it is to resist buying stuff. Basically you have no choice. (No fair running to family for help. Be proud.) Six months on a negative budget should be enough to reprogram you. When you achieve solvency, you’ll find that you have become immune to shopping for the sake of shopping. You survived without those things, so they are not essential. Then again, some people are just naturally covetous. In which case you should probably ask what gap in your life is being filled by shopping.

The cure for overeating is to not have any food in the fridge. I discovered this when my sister, who used to do the groceries with me, moved out two years ago. I found that many times, my eating philosophy resembled the famous reason for climbing Mt Everest: Because it’s there. If the food isn’t there, you don’t eat it. Or you’ll have to get dressed and leave the house to buy food, which is an inconvenience, so you just stay in and forget about eating. You may realize that you weren’t even hungry in the first place. All we have in the house are oatmeal, bananas, coffee, and catfood. So far I have not been tempted to try the catfood.

The cure for credit card debt is to cut the damn cards, pay them off, and not use them again until you can pay your monthly balance in full. Lots of people harbor the fantasy that they can pay off their debts while using their cards. Duh, you’re just borrowing more money. The minimum-payment-due thing is particularly insidious; before you know it, your entire income goes to them. The “This card is for emergencies only” plan doesn’t work. It’s amazing how many things you end up classifying as “emergencies”: trips to Paris, handbags, books you still haven’t read. I aspire to live on what old ladies refer to as “kass basis”.

The cure for the unfortunate habit of losing one’s cellphone is, according to a taxi I rode, a fine. A sign posted on the windshield advised passengers to make sure they had their phones when they got out of the cab, because if they left it there, they would be charged P300. The warning went on to say that this was “to give lesson to the owner”. I have a friend who used to lose his phone regularly. I said, Are you sure you lost all those phones, or are you going to start ringing one of these days?

I dreamed that my friends and I were at Rustan’s, and Bert climbed into a suitcase. He was laughing.

I told him about the dream. “Suitcase implies a trip, so maybe you’re travelling soon,” I said.

He said, “Whoever is in your dream is supposed to represent yourself.”

I said, “Yay, maybe I’m travelling soon!”

Later that same day Raymond mentioned that he was invited to the Islamabad International Film Festival in Pakistan, and I knew what my dream meant. “I have to go to Pakistan!” I cried. “I want to visit all the countries that end in -stan! Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, all of them! You, of course, must go to Lahore.”  So Raymond said I could tag along.

Then I figured out Bert’s starring role in the dream: last Tuesday, at a benefit auction for In Touch, he bought a Kashmir Isfahan carpet. From Kashmir, the disputed area between India and. . .Pakistan!

Anyone got any dreams you need to decipher?

“If a tired, stressed-at-work patient is sick, depressed over a relationship, having pain and develops insomnia — as Heath Ledger apparently did — what does he do? He has no doubt been exposed to a media blitz, a tsunami of public proclamations asserting the prowess of a sleeping medication. Pop a pill and you get a perfect night’s sleep, eight hours of bliss. . .Be careful, don’t drive or drink and, oh, yes, sleeping pills can be addictive. . .However, no notation is made that with prolonged use, the pills tend to be less effective so that you will want to increase the dose. For the average person, without knowledge of pharmacology, the risk of such blandishments can be high — serious side effects and death.”
Understanding Heath Ledger’s death: how drug company advertisements, doctors, pharmacies, and patients intertwine to cause an overdose.

Meanwhile, scientists at UC Berkeley have figured out how to use MRI equipment to read people’s minds. Science-fiction scenario: In the future, you can be interrogated against your will and prosecuted for your thoughts.

Venice, originally uploaded by Koosama.

I dreamed there was a flood of near-biblical proportions: water was flowing into my second-floor apartment, and I could feel the building rocking. Then the flood subsided and I had to visit my mother in a high-rise building. The high-rise buildings were on a vast, treeless lot, and the ground was mucky. I took the elevator to my mother’s apartment, and when I got out I was in the actor Colin Farrell’s apartment. Colin and I started speaking. Then dammit, I woke up.

Notes: There were no other people in my dream, just Colin. My mother died in 2003; she did not appear in the dream. Colin was wearing clothes. The last time I saw him was on the Oscars telecast.

My analysis: Water is a universal symbol for emotion. In the dream, water is entering my flat, which could mean I’m in an emotional state. I don’t think I’m more emotional than usual, but maybe that’s the point: my unconscious is telling me to give in to emotion instead of processing everything mentally. I will admit that I find emotional stuff icky. Also, Carlo recently asked me if I’m ever sad or lonely. I said, Of course. Apparently I do not show feelings other than hilarity or fury.

My mother was highly emotional, and I found her outbursts embarrassing, which may explain why I’ve grown up Vulcan-like (Although I think I’m emotional, other people think I’m a rock). I’m guessing the high-rise buildings are phallic symbols. I have noted that in most of my relationships, I take on the alpha male role: I am more of a guy than the guy, which does not help their self-esteem. Colin’s presence: self-explanatory. Who doesn’t want a guy whose dick is bigger than hers. So this is a textbook dream and it means: Be emotional and girly. Eww.

Alternative explanation: I wish I were in Venice with Colin Farrell.

Two new books on depression note that psychiatrists, biologists, and drug companies tend to view normal sorrow as a disorder and depression as a disease. “This might be an appropriate model for the more severe “melancholic” forms of depression that psychiatrists tend to see, but not for the majority of cases of depression,” writes Paul Keedwell, author of How Sadness Survived. “Regardless of the reason for falling into depression, the journey has the potential to make us better equipped, in a general sense, for life. If we are too busy to think and feel, to be mindful, depression might represent the first opportunity to take an honest inventory of ourselves.”

The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder by Allan V. Horwitz focuses on the validity problem of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. “Just because two examiners concur that a person qualifies for a particular diagnosis does not mean that he has an authentic mental illness. In scientific terms, the diagnosis may lack validity. How do we know, for example, that a person diagnosed with major depressive disorder is not actually suffering from a bout of natural sadness brought on by a shattering loss, a grave disappointment, or a scathing betrayal?” (Sally Satel in the New Republic book review)

In short: You’re allowed to be sad. A bout of depression may be good for you. You’re not sick, you’re just human.