Noriko’s Cave: The Way of the Dragon?

Years ago, back in California, Noriko and I were preparing to live together for the first time. While looking at potential rentals she said to me “I must have my own room, my own space. It way of dragon.” I thought she must be kidding. “‘Way of dragon’? What is this, a Bruce Lee movie?”

“Don’t be silly,” Noriko said solemnly. “Dragon brave creature, bold and outgoing, but at times she need to retreat. She have solitude and DEN she emuhge into duh wohld as her enterprising self. I little Dragon….”

So the place we got back then had a room for the little Dragon to retreat to, and thus when we moved to Santa Fe and decided to buy a house, duplicating this feature was a prime consideration. When we first visited the house which we would eventually buy as our home here, Noriko looked with great interest at one peculiar room that lay off the living room: it was long and narrow, and because it was built into the ground on several sides, it was relatively dark. “Ah, we get dis place. Dis room my cave,” Noriko pronounced with satisfaction.

“‘Your cave’? Huh?” I was stressed from house hunting and not in the mood for riddles.

“Dragon love cave. You will see,” Noriko said confidently. And indeed, we ended up buying the house. The first thing Noriko did was put blinds up in her cave, so she could regulate the minimal light that came into it. And then she single-handedly painted the whole room and redid the floor. “I can see it now”, Noriko said, paintbrush in hand, as she envisioned how her cave would be. “Ovuh here will be for storage, here for hobby, and here be my lounging station, right here, in the dark.”

“‘Lounging station?’” I inquired innocently.

“Dis spot when dragon need solitude, or when I punish you for being snotty, by sulking in cave.”

“You think you punish ME by crawling into your cave? You punish yourself, don’t you think?”

“You say what you will. When I retreat, I punish you!” I shrugged it off, since the primary matter was that Noriko was happy with the potential of the new room to fulfill her vision of “the cave of the dragon.” And within a few months, it was set up just as she had indicated, fulfilling the threefold need for storage, hobby space, and lounging/sulking station (including her own cable TV set-up, of course.) Besides her other room, her “executive suite” described in earlier Tales, Noriko found fulfillment by retreating periodically to her cave.

Then one day, less than a year later, I noticed Noriko bustling back and forth from her cave. “What’s up?” I asked, peeking my head in. “You stay out. I busy – I tell you latuh!” she said, shushing me from the cave. I shrugged and forgot about it, taking off for a few hours. When I returned, Noriko said proudly “Come look…” I followed her into the cave and to my astonishment, found the whole thing rearranged -
where storage had been, now was hobby space, and where hobby space had been, now was the lounging station.

“What the heck happened?” I asked, disoriented. You had your cave all set up. Why did you jerk it around like this?”

“Dat what dragon do. She retreat to cave, but once in awhile, in cuhtain mood, she seized to rearrange whole ting. And dat she do. Don’t cave look wonderful like dis?” Noriko was clearly very pleased with herself, having spent the bulk of a day unnecessarily rearranging what had been a perfectly functional setup. “Ah, it so fresh now!” she beamed.

“This is what you did today?” I asked, still disoriented. “You rearranged your cave for no reason?”

“Yes, ain’t it wonduhful?” Noriko spun in a circle so as to take it all in. And within six month I do it again. Dat just what Dragon do!”

Me personally – I would rather jump off a cliff than spend a day rearranging a room that I had already set up. So it made no sense at all to me, but then who am I to argue with an Eastern tradition? Who am I to argue with “the way of the dragon?” : )