Good perfume acts as a cushion. As Pol Pot sacks Harvard and most other institutions of higher learning (great plan! great for future innovation and progess !) the rest of us gaze with a mournful sense of deep superiority in other, more sensorily soothing directions, longing for bathtime.
When the world goes bananas, go bananas. Smother it on. Spray til you choke. Dive into mountainous lagoons of talc. Perfume entire neighbourhoods. Wear a literal banana.
Banana is not a note I would choose on a daily basis. Let’s face it: banana is never going to become the new bergamot. Or tuberose or sandalwood. It is too……..specific (editor’s note: you might be wrong! According to the nose-sleuthing of Sandra Raicovic Petrovic at Fragrantica, banana was the leitmotif at this year’s Exscence in Milano). Okay, well anyway we had oats with bananas, walnuts and chilled milk this morning (very nice, and one must think of one’s heart), but the only true banana in my collection – Gorilla Perfume Ladyboy – ripe banana, violet and seaweed, has, bizarrely never been worn. Or maybe it was once used in an ironic performance context but this is not the kind of eau de parfum you would reach for on the morning bus. Passengers would be slipping on invisible banana peels trying to get off; some people are simply not going to react well to an in your face banana. In fact I have a very good friend, Michael, who is an actual bananaphobe. The amount of times he has voiced this hatred on social media is sometimes surprising (though I do understand his dismay at Japan’s ubiquitous fruit sandwiches; white bread, fresh cream, mandarins, bananas and strawberries all packed in like sardines, then sliced with vicious precision and wrapped in plastic (any man will tell you that a sliced banana is uncomfortable to look at and the taste is unsurprisingly quite sickly ) but in his case, anything banana has him retching. I am personally banana friendly, but sometimes go off them for months at a time because of their stringy powderiness, and then they they go black and dark yellow in the bowl like jaundiced dalmations.
Fortunately for Michael, bananas in perfume are relatively rare. I am sure there are several other bananas bananas out there that I am unconscious of, but the ones that come first to my own immediate perfumed mind, aside Ladyboy, are Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Banane – exactly as it sounds- it smells like you are doing banana splits by the roadside; the sly green banana peel gracing the top notes of the foetidly lovely Patou Sira Des Indes – probably the most lazy and idolent smelling perfume of all time; Quasar by Jesus Del Pozo, which brought us fresh banana scent to the trad sport blue masculine, as well as Demeter’s very literal Banana Flambée, and, of course, the hilariously rotting bananas of Sarah Baker’s wonderfully sleazy Jungle Jezebel .
L’ Artisan Parfumeur, is naturally far too tasteful and rarified to introduce any sense of trashiness or vulgarity to its collection (if I may quote myself on Jungle Jezebel; ‘With big, flesh eating manplant accords of trumpeting banana, pink bubblegum, and pooey civet, this smells like a huge-chested Glamazonian taking a dump in the equatorial bushgrowth’. No, perfumer Celine Ellena is not laughing at the clusters of bananes hanging in the plantations here; rather she takes an exquisite and unusual top note of banana flower, lacing this quite delectable opening note with mace and violet leaf, and letting it tactfully breathe over powdery balsams and musks. In the process she does something unthinkable; she renders the scent of the banana truly graceful. I have been trying out some long ignored sample bottles today, and D took to this one immediately : once the initially delicate banana mirage starts to dissipate, you are left with a calming and savoury texturality that evokes cereals and hessian.
But onto further Jours Heureux – or ‘Happy Days’.
Firstly, I am slightly obsessed with this bottle. To me it is a perfect amalgam of niche and vintage; retro-esque but still contemporary. I want it. If the packaging were quite as pompommy and froufrou as the scent, though – all powdered almonds, violets, roses, vanilla – with subtle hints of geraniums and carnation in the heart (but buttressed by firm tonka), this could possibly read as too Miss Flopsy has nervous breakdown in boudoir mirror. But sometimes we do have our tragic Blanche Dubois moments (we certainly do), and yearn for the sheer solace of a thick, florale vanillé poudré to whittle down the sorrows a little; the sensation of powdery scents is what makes them such great armour in challenging times; they can surround you like a protectant forcefield, the talcum particles mingling the air like featherdown beneficently about your person (and hence my abiding love for Obsession, Shalimar, Vol De Nuit and Bal A Versailles and such like, all of which, in the right moment, I must confess , smell spectacular on me). Those who like their perfumes sweet and Loveheartsy – as I sometimes do; think Chanel Misia and Comète – which, Olivia, you smelled so glorious in when I saw you in North London, perfection, as though Serge Lutens Louve had gone to finishing school – or more powdery than powdery, as in Oriza Legrand’s astonishing Powder To End All Powder perfume, Jardins D’Armide ,which with more than a couple of squirts will have the busgoers clutching their throats as their pulverized air passages close from the mounds of jasmined cocaine entering the breathing apparatus; or, more accurately in terms of olfactory comparison, in this particular case, Lorenzo Villoresi’s classic Teint De Neige – still going strong, I smelled it again in Les Senteurs, Elizabeth Street, Victoria last month and it hadn’t changed – those who like the conservative boudoir of this perfume family will undoubtably take to Jours Heureux. It is nothing new, you have smelled this prototype countless times before, but still, this is very charming, sheerer in the base than you might have expected (where this genre usually just fades to animalic muffles, Jours Heureux progresses to a welcome floral clarity that is non-asphyxiating in its conclusion and thus suitable than most for public viewing. And imagine the heaven of using that soap and body wash before you apply it…….Sometimes a solipsistic dousing, and padding, is just what you need when bombs are exploding just outside your window.
Or. If you have the dough, you could just pack your bags and flee to some tropical island. The eternal deathlessness of summer, and White Lotus oblivion. To forget all the world’s troubles and focus on your suntan.
This is precisely what I love about summer. The glorious insensibility of it all. The sun burns away so much strife; now is the time in Japan when all the ex-pats, myself included, start the debate over the heat (for me it is still quite cold and I still need a heater on at night for proper incubation when everyone else is already in t-shirts and shorts ) but as I far as I am concerned we are just getting started. So many foreigners here go crazy the second the thermometer rises a notch but I am in utterly in my element.May is heavenly here; June, the rainy season, so profoundly green, so densely humid (everyone except me also seems to hate it, but I love the dewy face moisture of it all). The beginning of July is glorious. August, is, admittedly, like being roasted alive, and goes too far. I sometimes want to give it a dressing down for overstepping its mark. But you can still go to the beach around 4pm and bask in the late afternoon heat. At Ishiki Beach in Hayama, you just forget everything and concentrate on the sunlight dappling on the inside of your eyes. What bliss. And this is precisely the time for perfumes like Kenzo Summer – the solar mimosa with one of the happiest – if artificial – drydowns of all time; the time for all the beach florals and anything tropical (see here for The Black Narcissus Guide To Coconut); for jasmine, tiare.
I do love mimosa, but find it is a little tricky in perfume. Perris Monte Carlo Mimosa Tanneron comes closest to capturing the faithful fluffiness of the flower, but there is still something a tad sickly and too sweat- bosomed and claustrophobic in the base ( I sometimes enjoy the piercing desolation of L’ Artisan’s regretted Mimosa Pour Moi – it was never the same in reformulation – but that is a very acquired, wintry moment and it can plunge you into the doldrums. Conversely, I can appreciate compressed, carnal mimosas like Frederic Malle’s Une Fleur De Cassie but in their hidden, erotic pantings, if they come too close I find they also give me the jeebs). Parfums Thomas De Monaco – a new perfume brand by an artist and photographer based in Zurich- enters similar estival thematics with Sol Salgado, a salty, solar, woody floral that I find I am the most drawn to in the range. Aiming to capture the scent of sun on skin – as many a perfumer has tried to do before- there is something very snuggly and sundown pashmina about it as the Sloanes gather round the evening Seychelles fire listening to conches: it has’skin musks’, ‘cotton flower’, a full sandalwood, ambergris, and a smoked vanilla base (I don’t do even a hint of charred in perfume, myself, so that final accord is something of a dealbreaker for me), but I was suitably intrigued by the linden blossom/heliotrope/mimosa accord in the opener that I would quite gladly recommend this to the about to be vacationing Adult Woman.
There is a fine line between carefree and brainless. Sometimes I am content to choose the latter. Just as the the endoneurium, perineurium, and epineurium – the paddings that protects our nerve endings – offer a buffer between the fanciful dream and the hard raw-dogging of reality, I say a cheery hello to perfumes that offer a comparable olfactive service. And Melbourne’s Mihan Aromatics have created a very pleasing, and wearable, new addition to the genre of perfumes you can just spray on unthinkably and smell like a holiday. Fresh top notes of cucumber and palm leaf segue to a light coconut and a girding, subtly boisé base of copaiba in a simple but relaxing scent I would very happily wear to the Japanese beach once the heat rises a bit more; it feels embodied; right. Just the ticket to lay back, the rays flickering…… …… switch off.
I would actually have really liked to go to New York. Chicago strikes me as too cold – I don’t feel a pull. Boston might have been nice – I have friends there, one now working at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and I could have met up again with the lovely Ida Meister from Cafleurebon along with the fabulous John Biebel from Fragrantica – and chewed various cuds. Baltimore has an inexplicable appeal – perhaps because of Nina Simone, John Waters, The Wire. I think I would be weirdly fascinated by Las Vegas. Would like to see the light in Alberqueque.I have never felt the slightest inclination for Washington and its Grecian sterility; its ugly suits and red and blue ties. Seattle- I am sure it is perfectly nice and the rain trope may or may not be true but for some reason I can’t entirely be bothered. The same goes for anything or anywhere Ralph Laurenesque – apologies to Massachusetts – I am sure the conifers are lovely – but I can find no appeal. I am not massively drawn to gargantuan open spaces, nor arid terracottas and ochres or any similarly dun colours and have no interest whatsoever in the Grand Canyon – or anywhere similar. I would like to go to the South to hear the accents, feel the charm. Memphis; Graceland. Georgia peaches. To live inside a road movie, like Wild At Heart or Thelma And Louise. But then there are all the guns. Oh dear. Not a fan. We saw a documentary the other day on Timothy Mcveigh and his bombing of Oklahoma – and all the pointless, pointless, carnage it wreaked; I hadn’t realized until this week that the main motivation for the attack was to start a war with the government over the ‘right to bear arms’.
The Wilderness and the National Parks are all very well – but I like my nature on a more intimate scale. I can’t see myself in Alaska. White water rapids don’t thrill me. I like a dangling stream, a brook with weeping willows, bluebells. I can imagine Atlanta having a buzz but don’t like the architecture. That would probably also go for many a city. I didn’t really take to San Diego. It’s all probably immaterial now in any case.
I have been to American three times (if Hawaii counts – hated Waikiki but loved the deeper parts of Honolulu), and I found all those trips eye-opening, exhilarating. I despised the theme parks – , the sickeningly sized junk food, the bucket sized sodas, the grinning plastic mascots sucking up money; the traipsing flip flops, sagging white t-shirts and shorts, but did love the general friendliness and courtesy – that warm coziness you don’t always get in England or Nippon – and I pray all that won’t go to hell with all the strife of the current Dictatorship because that was always the US’s ‘superpower’ – that optimism; that unbridled sense of possibility- though I realize, of course, that all this is fast becoming a sorrowfully, curdling cliché.
I adored New Orleans. Hove Perfumery. The mysteries of Louisiana; the swampish wet heat; the crocodiles and tree moss. The Lana Del Reyness of it all. I dream of an entire summer there. Miami felt dangerous, threatening — but thrilling. We had some very beautiful Joni Mitchell moments in San Francisco, another city that entered my bloodstream and memories for all of time. Los Angeles felt like a shimmering drug: dark; spellbinding.
New York. Sigh. We have some very close friends in Manhattan and they have an extra apartment in which we could stay. I would have loved to. For a few weeks – to just stroll around all the familiar unfamiliarity; the bridges, the brownstones; breathe it all in. ‘Hang out’. To have absorbed the legendary energy: all those films I have been watching for half a century with the city as their main protagonist- I feel as if I have been there already. But that scripted, selectivized unreality might now have to suffice. For me, actually going there right now would be impossible. Another friend from the big city who was back in Tokyo recently for cherry blossom season also sent me an obliviously cheery invite on Messenger the other telling me to ‘come stay in Brooklyn sometime soon.’
Yeah right.
This isn’t about ideological objections. Or anti-American sentiment. I honestly think the world would be boring without US culture: I feast on so much of music, the films, the TV shows and always have. I socialize with a lot of Americans. Most of my readers on The Black Narcissus are American. We have been friends and mutual, meaningful confidants for years.
No, this is primarily about personal safety. Put simply, I am not the kind of person who would survive a detention center. Travel in the US was bad enough as it was. Rude, callous airport staff prodding you along like cattle; intentionally hellish, smirkingly inducing agonizing waits at immigration in Dallas waiting for a transfer flight into Orlando; snappishly overtired and impolite airline staff ; helter skelter boarding procedures that left you running and breathless; the indignation and suppressed fury at all the unnecessary, blunt and uncouth maltreatment of a traveller that could easily ruin any good times you had just had in the country – and want to practically kiss the tarmac at Haneda or Narita – or even my detested Heathrow – Airport on your eventual return.
With the new restrictions on ‘aliens’ – (why does the ever constipated Orange Torpedo hate foreigners so much ?…how can this ultimately benefit American society? ), entry into the US has become a very fearful minefield. Yesterday I read that Japanese applicants for even the most simple of visas – the fabled ESTA – have to submit five years worth of social media to the ‘authorities’ for inspection prior to entry just to make sure there isn’t anything ‘contentious’ in their daily posts (I believe this is a neo Mao-esque Cultural Revolution of potentially disastrous proportions) —- or else risk being detained or imprisoned, put in shackles like countless other well meaning, dollar spending tourists from all around the world just wanting to have a good time in the good ol’ US but who then disappear for days, weeks, at a time in cold cells in total despair for no reason other than xenophobia and state-sanctioned sadism, insulted and humiliated for simply wanting to have a ‘holiday’ in the country………No. there is no way in HELL I would even consider, for a moment, trying to go to the so-called ‘Land Of The Free’ in the near future — —- and possibly ever again. You can stick it.
I have been writing about The Creature for eight years. Though ostensibly – and actually – a perfume forum, this was unavoidable. To have said nothing would have been like a slow death of asphyxiation with inner cyanide. I had to. But if I were to foolishly attempt to tiptoe into the States, I would, now, like so many other people with brains, be an immediately apprehendable target for the screen-surveilling, arrogant and ego-sapped Men And Women With Earpieces that pervade all points of overly zealous US entry. Like so many others, I felt the menace the very first second I laid eyes on The Basilisk – and heard it speak. I knew everything. I felt it viscerally, profoundly. People said I was overreacting. I was not. The only impulses – all monstrous – are destructive; this is nothing but a raging vortex of negativity. An ogre, overbrimming with the dark contaminations of personal childhood insecurity; daddy’s little victim. And I could sense this. I could feel it in my nervous system. I still can; but try, my best, on a daily basis, to selectively view. A friend of mine said on the phone last Saturday that he has decided to put up his own tariffs – purely for psychological self-protection. To try and keep all the infernal tides at bay.
It is all a living nightmare. Even if, in some crazy hypothetical scenario, I were paid to travel to America, as I was two years ago in Hawaii, I would now unhesitatingly reject the offer within a split second. I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of travelling in that physical direction. His plans for a Third Term are not a joke. They are real. He could straddle the country for many years. Take it down with him. Democracy is going down the tubes. That is precisely the goal. The dismantling of everything, just for the sake of dismantling it. To vaunt power. To smash things like jealous toys. Fists raining down with puce-faced apoplexy. With virtual impunity. And yet I am still hoping, in the more optimistic vaults that still lie within my internal reaches, that all the shellshocked Americans who are surely not this stupid as to accept what is going on right in front of their faces and are just quivering in their condos will in fact, start to wake up at some point in the very near future and actually do something. To fight back in some meaningful way. But is this really possible at the current moment? the stranglehold that this enraged, boot-polish-faced, stomping geriatric toddler has on everybody around him is so all consuming and irresistible, it is like a enravened python gnawing rabidly on its own tail; eyes bulging; poison spreading; the hatred and vindictiveness and sheer evil and cruelty of the regime so addictive for all those with their own furious lacks and lonely inadequacies that they lap it up like famished coyotes. Musk with his chainsaw, his Nazi salutes; Eyeliner Man with his malicious twisting of Catholic doctrine whispering in the ear of the pope just this Easter Sunday – the kiss of death? — as d messages me immediately after, an angry, callous anti-Christian with no actual, real love for humanity as Jesus is said to have preached; just bleak, empathy-less, fascistic, deportational yearnings. Policies based on a complete lack of generosity -and love for your fellow man, the very basis of Christianity itself. So bless you, Francis, while dutifully giving JD his little Vatican tie pin souvenir as a sanctimonious keepsake, and – though on the very verge of death, for having had the conviction and the moral courage to justly, and calmly, put that hypocritical upstart inhis place. RIP.
Argentina. I would still like to go. I would love a weekend in Buenos Aires drinking cocktails with d and new friends in some velveted bar. A spot of tango. And Santiago. The snow-capped vistas in the urban distance. Chile has long had a strange kind of appeal for me. All the space. I have also always wanted to travel to Brazil, one of my childhood dreams. But it is so far away from here. And if we did, would we have to stopover in ‘the US‘ ? The number of governments putting America on its travel advisory lists now treats America as though it were a Sudanese war zone in Khartoum – and it is growing by the minute. The country is no longer safe for foreign visitors. Who could have imagined this just a year ago? The British website warns its citizens – particularly non-straight individuals such as myself- that we are, to a large extent, taking our life in their own hands if we just naively think we can go to America and get back home when we plan to; that we could in fact be secreted away into interrogation rooms in inhumane conditions (W H Y ? !! ) and deported with chuckling malice and scorn by the gut-belted, power-tripping security guards (the sound of Latinos in chains being sent to El Salvador supposedly a ‘deliciously soothing AMSR?’ One of the most repugnant things I have ever heard).
No. With everything I have written on here and on social media, it is no secret that I am no admirer of the Malignant Tangerine. They would have me in no time. Indicted on arrival. The second I got near customs. Like the French professor whose laptop was taken and his entry immediately denied. There is no free speech any more – it is being eradicated by the second. But that is OK. I will just have to travel elsewhere. I have been to Mexico. That will have to do for now for further excursions into The Americas. I can live without scaling the Macchu Picchu. I will stay closer to hom. Japan is not perfection – nowhere is – but good god does it seem like paradise right now. Today in Kamakura, with its new green leafage, just flowering peonies, wisteria; its calm civility, its aestheticized peacefulness and alluring history, the holistic whole of the place, the breath of centuries, the total unconfrontationalness and general positivity of the atmosphere – to float about in this city this dreamy afternoon made me feel very happy indeed. True, a part of me is quite sad that I may not, in this lifetime, get to travel again in that Other Place – that vast, open country- with its alarming, but often endearing in- your-faceness and honesty; a country that in many ways I found so complex, bizarre, stimulating – and often exciting. But last night, as I binge watched Season Two of The Diplomat on Netflix on the sofa alone (an engrossing US geopolitical thriller starring the excellent Keri Russell and a searing Allison Janney in continously brilliant Anglo-American verbal repartee with the sardonic Rory Kinnear as the British Prime Minister), absorbed yet again in a decidedly imbibable and relatable piece of American culture, I realized that from now on, streaming the culture from afar, without venturing near it ever again in person, might be, realistically, the only American Travel option for the rest of my life. I am happy to keep all that vengeant baloney at full arm’s length. I don’t want it. What’s to like? Last night, when I was thinking about Trump’s ‘America’; how it is shunning the world; and trying to break it in the process, about what it signifies not only for me, but for hundreds of millions of others being shut out of the burgeoning , psycho, ‘Christo’ fascist Nation it is quickly becoming (poor us! ), I then finally realized that at the end of the day, more deeply in my heart – in reality – to crudely paraphrase Clark Gable – I really just don’t give a shit.
I consider L’Heure Bleue to be one of, if not the most gorgeous perfume of all time. Created by Jacques Guerlain in 1912, there is nothing else remotely like it. The soft plushness. The anisic heliotrope. The powdered, glorious cushioning of it all, a rich, plumed, shimmering insolence which leaves the most fantastical sillage that asks questions rather than answering them. It is mysterious, rich, yet delicately insouciant – but also quite becomingly flirtatious and very sexy. It was the queen’s perfume for seventy five years. It is the scent of certain friends of mine at certain periods in their lives. And whenever I smelled it on them I would swoon.
While intense – the crushed powder of iris and violets, orange blossom, tuberose, orchid, carnation layered under great bursts of neroli and citruses spiked with star anise and coriander all produce a fireworks in talc that is very particular (a wilful, sensual diffidence), there is also something about the greatly tactile, almost edible iridiscence of the scent that has great appeal and can cross generational and gender lines: at the perfume workshop I gave at the Honolulu Museum Of Art in 2023, as we sat on the humid lawns of the courtyard while white and yellow plumeria gently fell onto the grass and sampled a great variety of perfumes of every type and ilk from many decades of fragrance making, the vintage sample of eau de parfum that Tora had kindly sent to me a few years back was the perfume that got the unanimous vote for Best Scent Of The Day. People were gagging for it. And so the entire vial was used up on various participants who wanted to try it on skin or on card to take home with them. A lot of coohing and conspiratorial nodding. Ah. I see. This is perfume.
Ten years ago or thereabouts I put up a piece on here that was a very in depth conversation with an old university friend staying with us who also loves L’Heure Bleue – we waxed lyrical on its essential nature and went off on a variety of tangents: you can read that conversation here. Kafkaesque gives a phenomenally detailed appraisal of all the various iterations, edt, edp, parfum etc, here. People do go head over heels for L’Heure Bleue.
My bottle
Since the first knowing L’Heure Bleue I have always craved possessing a bottle of the extrait of my own (which, to my knowledge, is no longer produced by Guerlain. A bottle of the 30ml pure perfume – the same as the one D bought me for my birthday the year before last (like I said in a post earlier this week, I just haven’t managed to get all these essential posts out of me in recent times; there is a backlog) – now goes for over a thousand dollars on eBay, which is why when I espied mine in an antique shop- 40,000 yen, the most expensive perfume I have ever had (I gave him a contribution; we don’t do Christmas presents; just one nice thing plus surprises on our birthdays), I knew that, relatively speaking, it was a bargain- or at least that was what I told myself – but in reality, just a fraction of the current online marketing extortions. From the same shop, I also got a boxed vintage soap – because who wouldn’t want a L’Heure Bleue soap? And I have used both of them together, waiting for the bliss to take off….. …and yet I am sorry to report – this is probably why I didn’t write about it at the time, because I was slightly disappointed by it and felt guilty being even vaguely critical of a masterpiece I was so elated to finally have in my possession – despite its generally L’Heure Bleueish loveliness, it didn’t quite lift me to the rafters. I know Helen had a similar experience with her beloved Apres L’Ondée, whose extrait equivalent is even harder to find now and even more expensive: that perfume is her absolute holy grail, and it smells eye-wateringly exquisite on her – so poetic, joyful and tearful simultaneously – but I also have to say that its parfum version – cold and poisonous as an almond stone – though sublime in its cool bitterness and thus in some ways even more affecting – wasn’t actually as gorgeous as the ‘simple’ (but perfect) daily vintage eau de toilette.
Don’t get me wrong. There is an inherent joy in extraits, as I once wrote here. In the case of certain perfumes, the parfum strength version is the only one I am really interested in. Say Patou 1000, whose edt doesn’t hold a candle to the so much denser, deeply layered and brimming extrait. Shalimar is debatably best in this strength (though I actually love the vintage eaux de cologne just as much); other Guerlains, such as L’Heure Bleue and even Samsara, though, are strangely more attenuated in their supposedly stronger versions – you get far more oomph and immediate splendour in the night time showdown of an edp, or an eighties parfum de toilette (my favourite of all the Guerlains; just a slightly more steroidal lift to the scents that made them mouth salivatingly delicious). It was always the almost doughtnutty friandise of the best L’Heures Bleues that made it what it was; an oozingly patisserie edge under the florals blended in with the benzoins and balsams and vanillas and musks in the base that gave the perfume its unique phosphorescence; it ate the air. I remember a woman cycling past me once, I don’t know where, but my goodness the sillage she was giving off was like a mind-altering drug, hitting me in the head the heart and the gut, floating on the breeze like heliotropinic heaven.
My own parfum, which I am wearing now, is lovely. It is bright, needy; it eventually wants others’ attention. The florals and citruses are vivid and pure. When I first opened it the perfume was all top notes and no base though (could this be an issue of maceration? Will it mellow and deepen from now on?). When used with the soap, which becomes more potent with each lathering – for a while I liked to just leave it in the bathroom and see how it scented the room you get a more intimate totality – I wish I could have that scent there permanently – I remember coming out in the garden afterwards where d was digging some plants and his reaction was blimey you smell powdery – which I am not entirely sure was a compliment – but to get to the more swoonsome levels I require of The Blue Hour for private use – because sometimes you just need to sink into its feathery blue down – I just add some vintage Shalimar eau de toilette in the general environs of the wrist; not layering, directly over the extrait, because that would feel mildly sacrilegious. Just for added vanillic savour. Only then do I get real hints of the ultimate L’Heure Bleue moments of my life that I still yearn for and remember.
I have made it a rule now to get into a routine. To cycle off down familiar routes – (and unfamiliar ones or those I haven’t been on for a long time : today I decided to go a bit further along the coast to Inamuragaseki park and gasped when Mt Fuji came resplendently into view )
Neighbouring town Zushi’s dilapidated recycle shop Kurukuru has become my go to on Tuesdays – though it was unaccountably closed yesterday. You can find all kinds of things in there, from really nice porcelain and bric a brac, furniture, jewellery, old random Indonesian masks, records, bizarre knock knacks – and even sometimes perfume (the divine Rochas Audace I wrote about recently was from the same place).
This time there had been some new offloads. A third-of-it left bottle of Annick Goutal L’Isle Au Thé- a very fresh, subtly spiced green tea I liked on D though was unsure about the Tommy Hilfigeresque lemony base; a full, boxed bottle of the original Bulgari Pour Femme – a Sophia Grosjman modern classic, all rosed up with violets and heliotrope and powder – and balsamic/green tea base (astounding to see that bottles of this now go for $400 on eBay but it is such a well crafted, sensual but still enigmatic nineties womanly all rounder that you can imagine there are those who find they can’t live without it) as well as a half full bottle of Chanel 22 extrait that I was delighted to find — such a lovely, fluffed up chinchilla cherryade of a perfume that is ideal for a post bath night wrist number when you need buoying ( my mum wears it, very convincingly , and I find it rather comforting).
There was also, if you look at the picture, what I thought was going to be a Find Of The Century on the spot perfume aneurysm – a 1930’s Chanel box which when I, holding my breath, reached out to open, I could see had the very flacon from that era – a used up No 22……….but not the Bois Des Isles, Cuir De Russie and Gardénia that would have been THRILLING to possess in my hands and hurry back home with. I bought it anyway.
Along with, about twenty pounds for the whole stash, a very nice art deco glass flower vase
Oh. And a piranha.
Which D has christened Clotilda.
I must confess that I am not especially into taxidermy, even if my most prized possession is our golden pangolin in the genkan
— which I do have to say I find extraordinarily beautiful.
In London a couple of weeks ago, walking through Holborn and after a pint in the exquisite Princess Louise pub, a gilded gem of Victoriana that was like a Klimtian mirrored palace, we strolled down to Lincoln Inn Fields, a square I had never been to before but which in springtime I found to be breathtakingly beautiful, with the aim of going to the architectural Soanes museum to spend a couple of hours before the next social engagement.
Unfortunately, it was not open.
Instead, we walked a bit further and chanced upon the Hunterian Museum – a place I had never heard of before – but which sounded intriguing (and it was free).
Wow.
It was far more macabre than I could have expected.
(warning : potentially disturbing images to follow):
(side profile of an orangutan’s head )
( the main draw of the museum is the meticulous specimen collection of the eighteenth century anatomist John Hunter)
— containing all forms of creatures from the animal kingdom (human included ) — preserved in formaldehyde and stored in glass jars.
It was disturbing — shocking actually ( I never liked the smell of the science labs in biology as a thirteen year old and refused to take part in the classroom dissections of sheep hearts and frogs as I just couldn’t hack it – there was always a deep creepiness to all the slow, cloaked emanations in that part of school, a dread-inducing, cold, medicinal quality —although this museum was odourless).
— an ostrich’s rectum
— prosthetic glasses for a woman who had lost her nose to syphilis – wow
A baby sloth ! (top)
Like all the other wide-eyed,whispering onlookers, we were both vaguely horrified by the ghoulishness of the place – these beings, entities, suspended in preservative liquids for centuries – but also scientifically, anatomically — and aesthetically – the displays were beautifully done with an economy missing from so many museums now— I do have to say, completely mesmerized.
We left, blinking in the sunshine of the white building glare of Lincoln Inn Fields; affected.
On March 19th we went to the Takasago Collection Gallery in Kamata.
Housed on the upper floors of a corporate building in outer Kawasaki (Takasago is one of the ‘Big Six’ global perfumery conglomerates along with IFF, Firmenich et al), on the cold, misty day we went there was nobody there, except for the receptionist at the desk – above, seated not far from the most exquisite Baccarat Eucalypte bottle – and groups of executives having meetings behind frosted glass.
For a few wistful moments – the grey white of the treeless metropolis beyond the window lent an eerie hum to the carpeted silence – I wondered to myself whether I, too, should have been a J-fluent, bespoke-suited exec having hush hush launch planning meetings behind closed doors. But as d said, that would, in fact, necessitate having been born a totally different person.
“You haven’t got a business bone in your body”.
While I yearned, badly, to possess the vast majority of the bottles on display, I also coveted the beautiful incense paraphernalia from a variety of historical periods that were part of the collection ( it is only a modest sized museum and is free entry):
A pulse-calming space, once outside, we found ourselves in the freezing urban slush – it had been snowing that morning ; but the air was so crystalline, the new blossoms opening in rain droplets on pine needles, I found it brain-sluicing, cathartic.
I was told this last night by an older Japanese gentleman in a Chinese noodle bar.
And it is probably true.
The problem with The Black Narcissus in recent times is that I have been too guarded and not my usual open self – the reason most people liked the site in the first place. This is because I have been stressed out of my mind. Riddled with anxiety. Which in itself is a Black Narcissus cliché: the Person On The Edge.
I don’t want to be that person. But life in recent years has just taken over me, and I haven’t quite had the strength to claw my way back to physical or mental robustness (though I am trying).
Right now I am at the beginning of an official year of absence from work – which might sound nice, like a dreamy sabbatical where I can just write and float about smelling perfumes and pontificating on Japanese cultural observations while somehow also getting through knee surgery, but thus far, it is not (in brief; eight years ago – almost to the day – due to osteoarthritis and loss of cartilage and a great deal of pain I underwent double osteotomies – procedures that were chronicled in great deal here on the blog when despite it all I was in a real moment of creative flow prior to writing and publishing my perfume book – typically Neilish hysteria and florid hyperbole (though all those words really did get me through it and I now look back on that time almost with nostalgia); interim surgical measures to utilize what cartilage remained in my knee bones in some kind of reverse flamingo limb modification that worked for a few years; but now that I am listing to the side like The Elephant Man it is time for the full knee replacements. I can walk. Some days are fine. But others really are not. Bone on bone. The Little Mermaid, no, The Big Mermaid taking plodding aching steps, a pain that takes its toll. And what a graceless gait – I have to say that being a great hulking monster on sloping bananas doesn’t do wonders for one’s self esteem.
First, at the end of May, I am due to have what I call the filet-o-fish, in which they pull out the metal bolts that have been there all this time. When fully xylophoned and filetized, I will then have a month or so to recover from that horror before the surgeon – the same one as last time, a kind of Knee God in Japan I am lucky to be having again even if the hospital itself is a dingy nightmare in an unappealing suburb of Yokohama; last time he didn’t leave any scars, even if that seems less possible with knee replacements, when you are apparently scarred like a dog’s dinner — gives me the first artificial joint. Healed, the right one will come later.
Finishing work and trying to get used to the idea of (hopefully)being on the dole and acclimatizing myself to my new lay about status has not been a piece of cake. Setting up the social security for the year has been extraordinarily stressful, – my god – the procuring of doctors’ notes in this pre-surgery period has badly taken it out of me (I was never great with administration and bureaucracy; the understatement of the century), but now that the wheels of governmental justice are turning and it all does seem to be working, it means that I won’t necessarily be as penniless as I was fearing and can try and calm down and get ready for it all. I do tend to overeact. Just a tad. And I have D, so it is alright, but then you do have to think about burdening your partner and not just becoming a lazy old slag lying on the tatami mat feeling sorry for itself.
Which is why, now I am not working, I am (perhaps too assiduously) trying to make sure that I give him enough space. Making a bit of a big deal about it. But a lot of people who know us say that we are their ‘goal relationship’ – after all, it will be 32 years in June, so something must be going right — but if there is one reason for the success of us as a couple, it is possibly that we don’t even necessarily think of ourselves that way; giving each other room to breathe is VITAL for us both. Which has been easy for many years now because he works mornings and I work evenings, meaning that weekends and Mondays were our time to get excited to hang out again and catch up on everything. Which is much more difficult indeed when you are just at home all the time basically in a depressed state of misery.
For mental health experts out there, or those who have had similar experiences, I would appreciate a discussion here and any advice you might have. I went to the local doctor yesterday and asked if he thought I might need antidepressants/ anti-anxiety medication, which I have never taken before and am open to, but also very wary of, already being dependent on painkillers and sleeping medication; I am not sure I want to add another blood plunge of chemicals into the mix. He said he didn’t think I was suffering from depression. I am too genki. Too pleasant and cheerful seeming. I could ‘talk normally’.
But he might be right. I have looked up the symptoms of clinical depression, and they don’t fit. I have lots of energy, am not lethargic, nor despondent nor suicidal (more a blue and melancholy afternoon thing);, I haven’t lost my appetite nor especially gorged more than usual, and I haven’t lost my enjoyment of anything – except perhaps hideously chemical commercial and niche perfumery. And I admit I was a bit blasé about the cherry blossom in Kamakura yesterday, exquisite though it was – but then again I was having a Difficult Day. Sometimes, if you are feeling dark or sad inside, no sunshine nor sweet smelling flowers can rectify the situation.
Still, if you are properly depressed you are supposed not to really enjoy anything, nor even be able to get out of bed in the morning. But I am enjoying – despite my palpitations and vague sense of dread that starts to rear its ugly head mid morning and peaks in the afternoon when I do usually feel really low – almost everything. Cinema is as absorbing and mesmerizing as ever. We went back to England the last two weeks of March; nobody is getting any younger and you never know what is going to happen on the operating table – and flying with economical Air China (tip for the easily stressed; make sure you distinguish between Air China and China Airlines in advance: trust me, it isn’t worth the cortisol when you find yourself in the wrong terminal at check-in) was a fascinating experience in itself; I immersed myself in Chinese cinema all the way back to the UK – an amazing insight into the culture, despite the films needing official approval first; one, a social realist working class drama called Another Day Of Hope – struck me as a bona fide masterpiece and I was totally enthralled – also by being able to eat real Chinese dumplings for the first time, albeit only in Beijing and Shanghai airports. My cultural antennae were on fire – I was totally stimulated; sometimes perhaps too much, my problem overall; hives are never that far away and I have been forced to pretty much give up coffee as it can just turn me beyond jittery into a hyped out megafreak – but still, I went to the cinema the other night to give d a break and was ensconced (somewhat) happily in the dark – for the first time in my life literally the only person in the cinema, to see Babygirl, feeling a bit like some creepy incel only visible to the projectionist; like everybody else, I was also stunned and devastated by the brilliant Adolescence on Netflix. No. No apathy here, mate. Pleasure and appreciation are still intact.
Though the visiting schedule in the UK was way, way too packed on this trip back, with very little time alone – very hard for both of us – at the same time it was so emotionally rich and wonderful to see people that it was worth it. To properly reconnect with family and our best friends. I don’t think I was ‘closed’ – or that my ‘light has gone out’ – as a friend of mine told me recently, even if it is true that is wattage is a little dimmer at times – but more on that later. D and I went on a wonderful spring day out with my parents to the Warwickshire to see the daffodils at Baddesley Clinton as lambs frolicked in the farm fields; it’s a family joke that I always say how hideous I think daffodils are; not intrinsically – though that deep yellow is problematic – more in how they look against, say, brutalist concrete or even worse, suburban brick gardens next to pansies marigolds and other grotesquely hued fleurs that make my brain feel ill whenever I see them. But in the lush, English countryside, in the medieval church graveyard of a stately home, with hyacinths, primroses, fields of cowslips, in the gorgeously yellow sunlight that dappled your eyes into semi-delirium – they were an unforgettable sight.
London struck me also as being terrifically beautiful for the first time ever. I have written about this before – in fact I have probably written everything in this piece before and am just becoming a totally repetitive bore: I have never liked London and did not enjoy living there remotely when we were there in our mid twenties. But we happened to be there during perfect daffodil weather on this occasion; sunny and bright with wisps of cloud and fresh, blue air; coming by coach into central London from Norwich (also extremely beautiful – am I more homesick for my country of birth than I dare to confess, even to myself?) I was properly awed by the architecture and grandeur of Westminster and Pimlico, Marble Arch, Belgravia.
On the second and last day of our brief incursion into the capital I also had a productive meet up with my literary agent in Holborn, where, on another beautiful sunny day, we discussed how to proceed with my Japan book, which has stalled somewhat in recent times with overwhelm and writer’s block and my not quite knowing exactly what direction to take it in (the pressure I put on myself in this regard – you have a year off, you have to write a book – hasn’t helped my overall state of nerves, but once I get the right angle and the right balance between the personal and my perspectives on Japan I am hoping that I will get on track again. )
This is not a revelation for me, that I need to be creative to be happy. Everybody needs to have something they enjoy doing. When I don’t – like not writing on here for months – quite simply, I feel shit. A big yawning chasm of dolorous melancholy opens up in me when I only remain passive and watch binge shows on the computer, much as I enjoy them. It’s better than just being indifferent to the world and only staring into space but at the same time there is a limit as to how much you can sit in front of the screen, goggle eyed then just retire to bed. Going to the gym and cycling definitely helps – oxygenating yourself is a definite partial route out of malaise and I am going to try and keep to that as much as possible if the legs hold up – D is going to teach me some of the more manageable yoga moves and breathing exercises he has been learning at his classes too.
But all of that is no substitute for spontaneity and the real connection and catharsis of writing – either my book, or on here. It depresses me to think of how many potential posts I have had for The Black Narcissus; written them in my head; but then somehow not quite had the juice to bring them to the keyboard – and out into the ether. So many. Posts on perfume of course, and all things smell oriented (I am really not enjoying our cat’s weak bladder in the house right now; for the smell sensitive quite traumatizing); but I wrote about so many other things as well; things in the news; obituaries. But they just died a watery death in the fluid of my braincells. And I couldn’t retrieve them if I tried.
So, back, briefly, to the potential diagnosis of what is going on with me, if you don’t mind — and all of this is not too self indulgent. Is what I am describing depression? Or – what I think – actual, full on burnout, in the textbook sense?
Some readers have been reading Le Narcisse for years now on and off so are probably all too familiar with my self-obsessed personal travails – it truly embarrasses me how much guff I have exhaled from my system on here: some readers seem to think that the emotionally honesty has its own rewards for them, and I hope that is still the case, but it can also leave you feeling quite vulnerable and overexposed. If one were to forensically psychoanalzye all my writing on WordPress over the years it would be obvious that I was on fire for the first six or seven years (I started BN in 2012) – and then crashed sometime around the time that the Monster came into power -particularly in cahoots with the coronavirus pandemic, where, as I have written several times before, I lost my mind. I wrote so much about all that at that time it pains me to recall it, in truth, but I know that that oppressive and claustrophobic time, coupled with the politics, finished me off. I then had a few years of true torment regarding the past in England that left me in a heart-pounding panic attack for two or three years, and I think I was eventually overcome just by all the emotional tumult.Last May or so I definitely felt something incinerate inside my brain; like a filament burning out. It was horrible, actually, as teaching, which I have been doing for 32 years and was totally used to, started to suddenly feel untenable. I became very avoidant, and the sheer extroversion to stand up in front of classes of Japanese teenagers, overcaffeinated with aching knees and be delightful and charming made me feel as though I was simply fizzing over. This is the only way to describe it. It was as if by talking too much and rousing and arousing the students when I felt broken and damaged that someone was opening up my veins and pouring in bicarbonate of soda or battery acid. I would feel dizzy and unsteady on my feet; do my best to try and do the lessons properly – and we did have pretty good results this year – but I would always feel extremely put upon afterwards, insane, even, necessitating even more carbonation in the form of convenience store beers afterwards – and thus, ultimately compounding the problem.
Yes, the beer. Oh dear. Should I even get into all that now, I wonder. But there is no doubt that there has been far too much of it, and wine, over the years, and that it has all had a negative impact on my health overall. We have no choice but to cut down significantly this year (way too much fun to give it up altogether; I think alcohol is basically a gift from nature and wonderful when you get it just right) – and to not have that option at all, to just continue on the conveyor belt of life until the inevitable death without a chance to sometimes just retreat into a lovely bubble, is not an option. At the same time, enough is enough. I have my pre-ops on April 28th. I have to get real.
This did not stop us yesterday, however, even though it was supposed to either be a non-drinking day or just a beer on the balcony Wednesday at sunset. As is often the case, we ended up drinking – not loads – but given how blue I have often been recently, it was rather amazing how the evening ended up being so life-affirming.
Sensing that D very much needed some time alone after the exhaustion of the trip (does travelling just become too much in middle age? I am not the intrepid traveller I was at 25, elated the entire time on my way back to the UK from Malaysia, when I actually wanted the flight to be longer so I could watch even more films; I used to gaze at Siberia for hours feeling scintillated while drinking G + Ts when we would fly from Tokyo to Birmingham or Norwich with KLM via Amsterdam; it was a glinting, exhilarating icy miracle in the Russian sun). Now I feel hemmed in and trapped, entertainment aside. So much more arduous. Sigh. Ageing.
But having been in each others’ pockets for weeks on end on this occasion in the UK and beforehand I decided to spend two days and evenings by myself this week to give him some space. Gym, cinema etc, but damn did I start to feel lonely and hollow and heartbeaty by the afternoon (so what is this? ‘Depressed mood’? ‘Anxiety disorder?’ – or just a natural reaction to spending too much time by yourself? )Or just thinking about mortality and the shocking state of the world? (I can’t go into all that right now but my god how awful, awful, awful, he is: how can an ostensibly sane person stay that way in these dire conditions?…….)
Anyway (goodness I am rambling on: sorry. Once this catch up post is out of the way I am hoping it will free me to get back into more regular posting on perfume, whatever catches my fancy or has been happening; right now I feel the need to purge a bit though writing all this is tiring me out ….Is burn out an all round thing? Has anyone experienced a proper case of it, like this?).
Anyway, anyway. I was cycling in the late afternoon light yesterday carrying a plant I bought in Kamakura and I bumped into D by chance at Kitakamakura station. It was one of those lovely moments where it was as though we were seeing each other for the first time (and therefore definitely worth the two days of dark isolation I would say – he needed those evenings to himself); I loved the romantic comedy coincidence of it (neither of us was supposed to be there as such). and although he had bought all the necessary groceries for the evening meal, I couldn’t help noticing that the Chinese noodle place was open and that we could have a beer to catch up on the day and unwind (come on, we are Brits: cut me some slack).
Tairiku is a run down old Chinese joint that was run by a lovely, always smiling and beaming Japanese lady in her eighties and her doting son until her unexpected death last year (again, the old me would have written about that day on the spot but it dissipated into the night; we had gone down there on D’s birthday in kimono old man pyjamas thinking fuck it only to discover candles and incense burning and a picture of her and a totally bereft man. We stayed there for a while with him to toast her, even with tears streaming down my face. It was tragic, and he is still crushed. But we still go in there, and so does the rest of the community. There is something about the fading, peeling red decor, sumo calendars and grime-covered Godzilla figures as well as the just cooked freshness of the food that draws us back. We have been off and on regulars for years.
Yesterday evening, besides ourselves in one corner there were two other customers on the other side of the restaurant. Genteel, older men – probably teachers I thought- drinking beer and having a good time; with friendly twinkles in their eyes. I had to use the loo. And that meant squeezing past aforementioned handsome old dude, who wanted to start up a conversation. And what is wrong with that?
Nothing. It’s fine if you feel like talking to strangers, but I often (think) I just don’t want to, especially when it gets to the how long have you been in Japan conversation and I feel so mortified at the level of my Japanese – which is fine for someone here for a few years but truly not for someone here for what is now approaching three decades. His friend said something to the effect of just leave him alone he doesn’t feel like talking – so I just nodded politely and went back to where we were sitting.
Then. It was bizarre. That place has enough space for about 12 people, but suddenly – I thought it was some kind of stunt or internet prank or that I was Jennifer Lawrence in the home invasion horror film Mother! – or part of a wacko Kate Bush video from the early eighties when suddenly hordes of people started pouring into the tiny space; many those in their forties to eighties I would say but so many of them, at least in my mind – it seemed unbelievable. What was happening? Ordinarily, I would have said right let’s go, trapped in my plastic red corner, but there was something so cinematic and theatrical and absurdist about the whole surreal and colourful scene that there was no way we were leaving- when the drabness of reality is suddenly pricked up a notch and you are in more liminal terrain, that’s when we both feel most alive.
Handsome old gent (74, I told him later he looked like Alain Delon and he almost wept; someone had apparently said the same thing to him forty years ago and he couldn’t believe it) cornered me with a friend though as soon as the hikers – members of a local community group that protect the essentialities of the beautiful area we live in and who had just been up in the mountains having a hanami cherry blossom viewing party and ready to continue drinking) and he said to me outright You are closed! Why?
I realized then and there that I probably was. Am. Or I just have a particular personality type (opposite to d, who is always happy to meet new people and chat with anybody, even though I am presumed to be far more of an extrovert overall, but we all have our own unique extro/intro melanges in this regard). Also, I don’t necessarily want someone in my face when I have come in for a chat with my boyfriend. Asking all the where are you from what do you do questions.
But everyone was so friendly, and drinks were being passed around, beers poured out, the atmosphere so jovial, Mr Delon and I eventually found a common topic in our love of the cinema and conversed in a mix of English and Japanese as I started to unclench inside and become less uptight and talk with some of the other people as well at the table (which I never left – if I stood up my legs might not make it, plus I have never been able to ‘work the room’ the way D was, laughing happily in all the joviality). Though pinned in the corner, part of me, I can’t deny, thrilled to the humanity of it all.
Which was captured most wonderfully in the moment that one of the people there, a man who does performances of traditional Japanese singing with his partner on shamisen at various venues in the prefecture, suddenly broke into song. Basically saying, how wonderful it is that we are all here at this noodle shop during cherry blossom season – let’s eat and drink and be merry; let’s all live in the moment; we all clapped, then I suddenly heard myself singing – in the same key – in Japanese, in made up lyrics something along the lines of, arigato gozaimasu, but now we have to get back to make dinn–er, we can’t drink any more be-eeer, and we have to look after our eighteen year old ca- at
– at which point, more applause broke out; we exchanged Facebook details with a couple of people, one who sent me a message while I was writing this this afternoon; ‘I believe you have the ability to recognise the essence of people you meet for the first time’, which, all in all, is a big improvement from being told that I am ‘closed’.
