I am extraordinarily crap at tennis. I have played it only once. But I remember the terror of the ball flying towards me at the speed of light having no idea where from, nor any idea of how to swing the racquet – far heavier than I had been expecting – missing it completely and flailing my arms around like a blind orangutan. So that one occasion (I must have been lured onto a court with someone against my better sense) was my last, even if compared to the majority of sports, I still think that tennis is relatively exciting. Rather than the utter misery of Match Of The Day, which seemed to take over the entire rainy weekends of childhood stuck at home with the dreary hooligans baying in the stands, the football relentless, so boring it blew my mind (D has exactly the same memories: maybe it is a standard gay boy thing – it would hang over you, like a dense, miserable fog of utter tedium). The one time I was taken to a match in an actual stadium, I sat huffily reading a novel, desperate to get home. In PE I ran away from the ball, ‘punished’ by being made to go jogging around the park (yey!), where I could take in the trees and the air and escape from the hell that was the dreaded Wednesday afternoon, when you might also – in shorts and a vest – stand shivering next to freezing, muddy ice puddles; ordered – but refusing – to join a ‘scrum’ in the even more loathed ‘game’ that was rugby. Oh the memories.
But I was talking about tennis. Though thoroughly useless at it myself, I do have fond memories of summers spent sat round the tv at my grandparents’ house watching Wimbledon; something exhilarating about the clash of the titans of the time; somehow I also like to keep up with what is happening with the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic ‘who is the best player of time’ continuing melodrama. There is a real stamina involved; the mind games; the resoluteness of technique.
When it came to racquets in my school days, I myself was much better at playing badminton. I liked the airy tautness as the shuttlecock bounced on the strings of the racquet; there was a balletic athleticism to it I could manage in terms of my imperfect spatial awareness (tennis is just too fast); I was able to gauge the speed of the falling and ascending; tell where to hit. Of all the sports – I played it once or twice a week in Sixth Form College – this was the least loathsome.
Penhaligon’s latest refreshing perfume – ‘would you fancy a game of lemon?‘ is an ode to the rigorous pleasures of Wimbledon and the sunny pleasures of a weather-behaving English summer, though in fragrance terms it would work equally well as a year rounder. Smelling this for the first time the other day, my first, spontaneous thought was :’ooh, a potential birthday perfume’ as I love really revitalizing citrus perfumes that just lift you with their immedicay,and this one took me back to other easy to wear scents I am fond of such as Agua Fresca by Adolfo Rodriguez and Armani : I thrilled to the opening accord, which was zestful but not aggressive with an aerated underthrow that is rather dignifed, restrained, yet simultaneously ‘sporty’ in an appealing and open-hearted way. As time went on, the ‘leatherwood’ ambroxan/ guaiac took over too much for my personal tastes ( I will be scanning my brain for other birthday options), but I still rather like this in any case for its casual, but knowing, simplicity; a spray or two on any wrist and one on the chest bone – and you are definitely talking a real office crowdpleaser.
I don’t know if I ever reviewed a Boucheron perfume before. The original, eponymous gangbusters epic from 1988 I remember as being very glamorous, rich, exciting, and over the top to the point of drag queen pageant, and I never touched it with a bargepole. But seeing a bottle of Jaïpur yesterday for cheap at a recyling furniture store, somehow I couldn’t quite resist buying a bottle to add to my collection. Maybe I will give it to a friend. Maybe I will use it myself in a performance, I don’t know, but this is certainly a very rosy, peachy, hyperfeminine perfume for the very ‘put together’ (but not foolish) person living, or wanting to live, inside the respectable mainstream of sexiness by Sophia Grosjman (forming a part of her discontinued ‘Trésor-era trilogy’ : wondering to myself what this reminded me of yesterday, I finally heard the word ‘Kashâya!’ float into my head – a very dense and sensual perfume by Kenzo that was similarly soft and layered, albeit more balsamic, that I used to suggest as options for glamourpuss friends back in the day, alongside with other long gone sensualities such as Ungaro’s Desnuda (2001) – and which was also made by the inimitable rose queen herself.)
Trésor is a (too) welcoming, warm-bosomed mammoth of roses, fruits, cedar and vanilla that continues to sell very strongly at perfume counters throughout the universe :inn some ways, its simplicity and innovation make it a work of extreme genius. I have a vintage parfum, and sometimes marvel (and laugh) at the nuclear strength of its wood and musk base notes that pump forth the familiar curves of this unfussy curveball that I used to actually get rather irritated by eventually when living in Rome where it had just been released and I was overloaded, on a perpetual daily basis, by thousands of Roman women all dressed up to the nines who had embraced it with a typically Italian passion and who were clogging up the air vents with it on the escalators of the city subway. It was memorable and great, but I had also had quite enough of it fairly quickly. Such perfumes are dense and immediate, romantic flower bombs; but there also isn’t very much manouevre for the imagination.
Jaïpur has a very similar atmosphere to Trésor, but fresher, lighter (freesia, peony, lily of the valley – even if none of these are discernible especially to my nose); more high pitched – a plethora of fruit (peach, apricot, pineapple, plum); heliotrope, violet and iris providing a slightly powdery backdrop with the resins and sandalwood, but also a texture that is somehow slightly ‘harder’ (and thus befitting a jeweller). It is very well done, if not especially distinctive, and I was thus quite surprised to find that there are in fact reams of wailing appassionadas for this obviously very beloved perfume on Fragrantica, clamouring vociferously for its return. Spraying some in the air just now (just because), it does, I must say, most definitely have that precious ‘at the dresser before leaving the house in one’s very finest finery’ aspect to it; a proper, seamlessly ‘event’ perfume – yet simultaneously comforting and calming – that I can fully understand being someone’s sweetheart.
Sunday afternoon in the park with George: yesterday’s mission was to get myself some vintage Nº19 extrait ( mission accomplished). Following days of just resting and calming down and reaching out lackadaisically for stray samples lying in my vicinity (MDCI’s Cio Cio San, based on the main character in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, an initially very gorgeous rose that thins out, goes greener, and then eventually turns into the much hated modern Chloé), I fancied an entire day out on the town, with the purchase of the Chanel being the final act before dinner ( a delicious Thai place we had never been to before; restaurants everywhere were packed; the mood everywhere very buoyant and happy (you can feel that something very heavy has been lifted) – but we are still, for the time being, sensibly I think, only opting for sparsely occupied anything). It being a delightful temperature, balmy and yet still autumnal; most of the day was spent in the much needed fresh air as we walked across this part of the city, beginning with the Motomachi /Yamate Bluff area on the hill, with its gaijinbochi Foreigner’s Cemetery and European houses (once a specific enclave); French restaurants, cake shops; sleeping cats.
(photos by D)
Back down at Barney’s –
— but first down the hill past this very bizarre looking building that looks like something ancient and Abyssinian from a Pier Paolo Pasolini set but which is in fact a jazz bar in continuous operation since 1946 (and where I once saw an ex-student of mine play drums with a local big band orchestra), the perfume section was sparse, and I felt, somewhat relegated. Here, fashion and indoor furnishings reign supreme; high end laundry detergents had pride of place over fragrance which, aside the standard Nihon niche stalwarts (Goutal and L’Artisan Parfumeur), stocks perfumes that seem as if they are permanently on the way out, making me feel that I might have to get any that I like quite soon while they are still on the shelves.
Rose Nue, which I wore lavishly on the back of my hand for the rest of the evening – is an excellent perfume; an aldehydic sandalwood rose that at some stages in its development smells almost exactly like the original Madame Rochas – as though a tribute – but then gains in warmth and flounciness to end not dissimilarly to the first Rosine (and still my favourite in the entire range), La Rose De Rosine. The fluffy end texures – all suede, musk and ambroxan, end the perfume on a more modern note, but never brash or artificial — the whole thing in fact extremely sexy; like one of those people that just doesn’t need to make that much of an effort in drawing your attention because they just exude ease, and charisma, to begin with. It is not ‘heartrending’ – and all the more suitable for it.
Rose Absolument – a very animalic without being animalic, taut yet yielding rose (of the Turkish variety, melded with honey and osmanthus and a stark contrast with a sharper geranium/ elemi / papyrus edge over warm labdanum and patchouli) is the very rare rose that my other half has ever taken to (in fact, I can’t actually think of another). I loved it too: quite delightfully sensual and disconcerting; odd; gorgeous. I might have to go back. Though more traditionally feminine aspects revealed themselves later on in night, as we wandered through the rose gardens of Yamashita Park and into our usual shopping and dining grounds, he still liked it, and so did I. Something urgent and tense about it, and yet relaxing. This morning my reading was 142/84.
Can we call it ‘collective trauma’? Or is each individual’s case completely different? Is it wrong to complain about lingering stress symptoms connected to the coronanvirus during the last eighteen months of pandemic when so many people have died: their grieving relatives and immeasurable loss paling your own problems into significance?
I don’t know. But despite (or because of) the glorious autumnal weather we are having in Japan at the moment and the bustling return to normality (the crowds! oh my god people streaming in droves into stations and department stores and restaurants and bars up from escalators in numbers that are frightening to the senses; the trains packed to bursting, people talking animatedly and energetically to each other – always masked, though; always masked; a definite excitement in the air; in some ways wonderful; case numbers almost suspiciously low; vaccination rates super high), but simultaneously: I feel overwhelmed. And I find it difficult to suppress it.
Things have been good. My work situation is the best it has ever been: my main school now, where my desk is, is a calm environment with gentle, intelligent genteel colleagues I like and get on well with; the students vaccinated, the lessons going well. Weekends with D are what I look forward to – always fun, going out somewhere, exploring, being spontaneous, laughing a lot – or else just relaxing at home. My creative side may not be at its peak, but I feel inspired and connected. Part of me is well and quite happy.
The other is a fractured disaster. The last week has been terrible.
At the company health check last Wednesday – I had (stupidly) managed to ‘get out’ of the one from last year citing Covid concerns – I was diagnosed with very high blood pressure – the higher (systolic) number – (I am always too blinded by panic to notice the lower one) at 167, my heart, arhythmical. Despite feeling all of this going on subliminally for a while, it has still come as something of a shock. I wasn’t really expecting it. In truth, these mandatory mass medical examinations, while good in a sense – paid for the company, and given the ridiculous hours that many Japanese people work, very necessary – are a great source of clammy unpleasantness for a neurot like me and a cause of stress in themselves, leading to an automatically higher blood pressure-reading simply from the circumstances I find myelf in. While usually in business attire, ties and jackets, in this season, maintaining a dignified distance and saying your konnichwas and sayonara, on this day you are suddenly reduced to a common herd: all the men with their shirts hanging out and white undershirts visible, lining up like bleary-eyed livestock to shunt from station to station like cattle; the individual – but all perfectly visible to all – areas where have your height and weight measured – (mortifying); your eyesight and hearing checked; blood tests; a ‘waist’ check – like a tailor’s from hell – ah yes, it has increased this year, hasn’t it? – a perfunctory ECG-lite that lasts about a minute; a chest-x ray: everyone queued up waiting to get into the portable x-ray machine outside the front of the school; it is stressful, and by the end of it all I was sweaty, internalized, and glandular; still with a full evening of classes ahead of me, palpitating.
With a sore throat rapidly taking hold and a feeling of pressure in my chest, I did manage those those evening’s lessons, but suddenly knew that I would not be able to go in for the rest of the week. It felt like an immediate impossibility. Going to the local doctor’s the next day – less than a minute from my house, extraordinarily convenient – the heart number, to his alarm, was 176, rather high indeed; he immediately put me on blood pressure medication (my parents and sister are hypertensive, so this is in the family – I am not sure why I have ignored the signs in the past). Again, though, and sorry to be so critical (and for ‘oversharing’), the procedure, and way of doing things themselves add greatly to the stress content. It is strange that in a country that is the zenith of discretion in so many ways – so polite, so unobtrusive; never an uncomfortable question about your private life, so wary of offending – when it comes to the medical system, there is no privacy whatsoever. My doctor is a charming and ultra-optimistic man – almost too much so; sometimes forcedly gregarious; he bought three or four copies of my book he was so excited about it and the Vogues; I once took a bottle of vintage Joy round for his wife, who was apparently delighted; he never has a day off and is responsible for an entire community (sometimes when cycling I see his car parked by the roadside; he will be within, trying to snatch a few moments for himself on the way back from one of his house calls;; a very different expression on his face as he stares in a daydream). Though he speaks in rapidfire Japanese, I usually manage to understand the essentials and respond in kind – I just wish there weren’t someone sitting directly outside the door, hearing every word. It is needlessly humiliating.
To expand: in Japan, at doctors’ clinics, there is a system where, as in most countries, you sit in the waiting room for you turn to go to the doctor’s office. Here, however, when your own examination is approaching, you are ‘moved up’ to the seat directly outside his or her room (why?) The voice of my doctor – booming, enthusiastic – carries itself out already to the people sitting quietly, driven slowly crazy by the over-loud virtuosic Chopin and Liszt piano works on the in-house stereo (wild etudes and sonatas which I’m sure get people’s hearts beating much faster through sheer absorption); should you have an embarrassing or delicate issue – be it gynaecological, psychological, bowel, no matter how cringeful, you can be 100% sure that all of the diagnoses, directives and conversations between you and your GP will be overheard by every single person in that particular clinic. I hate it, and – correct me if I am wrong – surely it is different in most countries? My colleague from Hong Kong says he also finds it humiliating the way everything is done without a modicum of privacy when things are being discussed on the teIephone at work: I am sure I remember in the UK going into a confidential doctor’s office where no one outside could hear a word. But then where I am from originally, is not an intricate, often impenetrable, culture of collectivism.
I was ordered by my doctor to go to the closest electronics store and buy a blood pressure reading machine. It had never occurred to me that I might ever need one (even if we know that I fly off the handle, and my alter ego is the incendiary Burning Bush – I am also a fire sign, a raging Sagittarius – so perhaps all of this could have been expected). By this point, though, I could feel my heart pounding rapidly continually, a flutter of palpitations that I was becoming more and more hyperaware of, feeding into itself in a cardiac/neurological loop de loop. At Yamada Denki, the sweet female assistant demonstrated the various appliances available on her own arm, and D measured his own blood pressure to see if it seemed to be about right. His is sometimes on the low side, and 112 seemed correct.. When I tried it, mine was 220; when we got home, around 195.
All of this is new to me (naively, I have hardly ever thought about blood pressure before), but as I am sure you will know, over 129 is considered the beginning of a problem; 150 officially hypertensive, and 180 a hypertensive crisis which can lead to a heart attack and stroke. 195 is off the charts crazy, and I had this continually, in the morning and evening, for about three days. I could hardly think straight. Going in to work on Wednesday I spoke to one of the heads and was told I should go home; thankfully a colleague came with me to the hospital yesterday for a proper check out; electrocardiogram; blood tests, a lengthy and very thorough ultra sound scan; and I was told that essentially my heart is in the right placeI but that I should definitely continue with the medication; make the obvious lifestyle changes; avoid stress. When I got home, my reading was 157; still high, but not a heart-thundering disaster (presumably); clearly, a lot of this is anxiety-related.
I can so easily trace the source. Fourteen months of working in often windowless classrooms unvaccinated; being on crowded trains for hours at a time in the same situation, when already claustrophobic, and in situations where infections were spreading in schools (the ‘cases’ reported in Japan were never the actual numbers – only tiny proportions of the population were ever tested at one time; the situation always more dangerous than the government was making out); knowing that the students I was teaching had classmates who had the virus, was psychologically untenable for me, which is why I came crashing down with vertigo in March – it was as if my mind just simply couldn’t take it anymore. It shut down, and then went into a relentlessly spinning orbit – an absolutely horrible experience that was the worst of my life. My deep hatred of being closed in; of being trapped in enclosed spaces, has been exponentially aggravated by the corona crisis: I can get in lifts/ elevators, albeit uncomfortably, and can get on trains – so am obviously not a total basket case who can’t function. It is manageable. But for example, when I try to imagine sitting on a plane back to the UK – (by the time we get to go back – probably next year in spring or summer now that quarantine regulations here are easing – it will have been three and half years since we have been able to see our families); if I try to visualize actually sitting in a plane seat, and being strapped in for twelve hours, my whole being – physiological and mental – rejects it as total impossibility. Similarly, when the new Bond film came out recently on theatrical release – I have a thing for the Daniel Craig series and am desperate to see the latest and last one, No Time To Die, on a big IMAX screen; just sink into it; see a proper FILM again: although I had talked myself into going to the cinema one Monday afternoon, and had a definite plan to (it will be alright! everyone will be masked! they will be social distanced! there is air filtration!), when I woke up on the day in question I knew immediately that there was no way in hell that I was going there; absolutely no way. I just couldn’t do it. The though of sitting immobile, masked, for almost three hours in a room full of strangers made me scream inside.
I don’t know if I am putting myself in an overly vulnerable position by writing this piece. Maybe I shouldn’t be plastering my own personal troubles all over the internet for public viewing, particularly when I know that people have suffered so much more because of all of this – Bolsonaro accused of genocide in Brazil now that enough evidence has been gathered that the president of that country seemingly deliberately let the virus spread, in the process killing over 600,000 people ; I needn’t mention the US equivalent, the mere mention of whom can send my cortisol rocketing; – the UK has its own official enquiries into what went wrong with our response and the catastrophic consequences. I can put all of this into a global perspective. There are people I know with long Covid; people are still dying even if we are possibly through the worst; this is a huge topic that will not be going away anytime soon. Almost everyone has been affected in some way. Suicides have increased dramatically here among young working women; anorexia for young children has increased 60%. I am not ‘feeling sorry for myself’. But I also know exactly how I feel. And I think both my parents coming down with the virus recently – they are now basically recovered; I sent my mother some essential oils for her birthday this week to help ‘retrain’ her nose the way perfumers do who have lost their sense of smell – and the blood pressure fiasco this week, have suddenly brought everything back to me personally in intense, heart-racing focus.
So I would like to know: what are you own thought on all of this? Is the term PTSD in this context a gross exaggeration? Do you think that huge swathes of the human population are literally traumatized? If so, what will be the treatment? Just natural healing, over time? Is it healthy to talk about it? ( I personally think that it is: the suppression of trauma can lead to psychosis). What is your own personal experience? How has all of this affected you personally in terms of your lifestyle, fears, emotions? (I get flashbacks, and can feel the spikes of cortisol stabbing in my blood when I think about certain things);or have you already started to put it behind you? I am not going to dwell on all of this excessively on here, and will gladly get back to rhapsodizing over scent; we have already drastically cut down on fat and salt (I think we do basically eat pretty healthily to begin, with as we both love vegetables and fruit more than anything else; it is the ‘extras’ that are the problem); bought some new exciting blood pressure lowering health foods, and will be cutting back on alcohol; there are plenty of things to look forward to (presuming I don’t topple to the ground clutching my chest with a face like an organic beetroot) ; I am fine. And now that the panic seems to be over, for the time being (Japan does seem to be doing extremely well compared to a lot of places) I will just resume my life from next week, pop the pills; and try not to think about it.
I am always quite glad when Halloween is over. Unlike a lot of people I know, aside moments from childhood – it took quite a while for the full American scary, costumed festival to seep into British culture, as it has done so also in Japan very virulently in the last few years – when I was a kid, it was very different. I remember ‘apple bobbing’ – trying to retrieve an apple from a bucket of water with your mouth; the odd ghost costume; candles, perhaps some sweets and chocolates – neither D nor I can remember any pumpkins.
This might seem strange coming from a person whose last post on here featured me dressed as a doll-ghoul in a Zushi antique shop , but in actual fact neither of us has ever really been that much into celebrating Halloween itself. I certainly don’t need permission to dress up as somebody else on one particular day of the year (sometimes I feel people are so excited about being able to wear some kind of costume that enables them to momentarily slip into another identity for a few hours, when in actual fact they could do it whenever they felt like it): of course it is fun – and a bit naughty and scary, dipping into the dark side; young children feel the frisson of the night air; there is a mania about; something wicked this way comes; but at the same time something tiresomely predictable and often extraordinarily ugly: the plastic orange and purple Jack O Lanterns and candy dispensers – there is something about all that crass and cheap colour combination that offends mine eye and brain quite severely for some reason: all the witches on broomsticks and leering critters; all the stuff that will just get thrown in the trash. There is something quite horrifying about it, and in recent years we have been getting all of that more and more here : the second the summer is over, come the beginning of September and out it all comes and is draining on the spirit.
This morning I read about the horrific knife attack on a Tokyo subway on Halloween (this Sunday), with a 24 year old man dressed as The Joker randomly stabbing seventeen people – fortunately there are no deaths, as of yet, but the video footage was quite petrifying to behold, with commuters bound for Shinjuku – where we had been invited to a party in the park – running for their lives as a fire started to sweep through the carriage and the perpetrator sat smiling, smoking a cigarette in his green and purple digs – waiting to be arrested by the police.
So I am happy that all the cheap dispensable detritus will disappear – I don’t know, into a landfill, or in the back of someone’s closet. I am glad that it is the first of November; not the 31st of October. Bizarrely, the Japanese ginger lily I mentioned (when? I wonder how many weeks it was) sprouted another full head of flowers a few days ago, perfuming the air with a definite smell of freshly cut ginger (up close, like the other flowerhead, the white petals are quite gardenia-like, though I feel that this second bloom is less pungent and all-encompassing than the last one); still, arriving home after work the other night my first reaction, as I tore off my mask approaching our house, was ‘ginger’: what is that ginger? (only momentarily of course – my smell synapses soon put two and two together and I was amazed by the contrasts of the air, the incense from our house; and the invigorating yet dreamy fumes emanating consistently from the flower.
I am looking forward to the end of this year; to finishing the term, and having some headspace to just breathe a bit after this tumultuous year – no wonder many of my friends were going nuts in their anime costumes at the crossroads in Shibuya; people need release; they need to celebrate. I kind of do want to myself, also, and am looking forward to Christmas and the silent space of the New Year period here in Kamakura – the most peaceful time of the entire year, when everyone takes stock of what has happened, and micro-hibernates. I just want to relax, and do some writing; get some more secondhand perfumes (this delicious bottle of Rochas Mystere is currently in favour, and waiting for me as a night perfume; I adore the design of the bottle, and the dark, mulched, floral liqueur amber, and never fail to buy a bottle if I find one as it is one of my absolute all time favourites; it just lets me float).
