Monthly Archives: August 2018

Last night, as the typhoon was still lashing Okinawa, when I got to the station at Ofuna and the train doors opened I just thought sea. The entire air had been convulsed and moiled, like a salty, kelp-loden interlude. I found it refreshing, inviting. A geographical shift; unexpected. As I walked up the hill to the house the air was mist-covered; shrouded, but clear. Touching, vaguely, on spooky, but more on the magical tip; with things and plants thrown into silhouetted, gloomy relief against the electric light of the moon, despite what a Japanese friend called, intriguingly, ‘this disquieting air’.

Today, as it rages across the country, offloading water by the godfull , causing all kinds of havoc in the southern prefecture of Kagoshima, Kyushu: where we are, near the capital, it was sunny this morning, only tinting into bruised and blowy by the afternoon, when the winds began to…

I must admit that despite all the suave aromatics – the Hermès Poivre Samarcande, the Quince, Mint and Moss, by Union; Eau du Gloire by Parfum D’Empire, the sensual, elegant, gentlemanly lavenders – Sartorial, Jicky, Ungaro, Lavande Velours de Guerlain; the occasional spicier, and dirtier scent such as Czech & Speake Cuba or 4160 Tuesday’s spicebomb Shazam, among others, that, despite the olfactive prowess and style these scents show, and the trails of intrigue that they leave in his presence, I would trade them all in, in an instant, for the scent, on Duncan’s skin, of Coppertone SPF 30 UV Protect.

The boy will steadfastly not consent to a floral, and yet here he is, inadvertently wearing one; all fresh air, frangipani leis, salt-kissed skin, and manly, oceanic florality doused in sweet, delicate memories of waves, of the beach, of the sky, and freedom; a delicately arousing sillage, sun-fused with…