Takotsubo - 蛸壷

One of my teachers stresses the importance of keeping a lexicon of unfamiliar words. I do this desultorily, sporadically; but gradually, my lexicon is filling up. Here’s a word from today—it’s Japanese, but as so often, there’s no more perfect word than one from another language to express something so specific. I learned it this evening at a concert in Santa Cruz by Paris Combo, an eclectic jazzy French quartet-plus-chanteuse: the word was the refrain of a love song. TAKOTSUBO. It means “octopus trap” and is, in fact, applied to a medical condition, takotsubo or broken-heart syndrome—more clinically, stress cardiomyopathy: when traumatic events cause the heart to balloon and distort. The most common form of the syndrome involves the ballooning of the lower part of the heart’s left ventricle; during contraction (systole), this bulging ventricle resembles an urn-shaped traditional Japanese octopus trap. I love it when stuff like this collides: medicine, French jazz, a traditional fishery, unrequited love. The best essays do that—smash various seemingly unrelated things together, to expand our understanding of the world.