The Black Narcissus

In my continuing supine meanderings today I came across a miniature bottle of the original Valentino de Valentino, a scent I thought I already knew (colorblinded by the legendary ‘Valentino Red’ my brain had splotched tomato ketchup all over this perfume, assuming it smelled red as well – some kind of Red Door or Venezia Biagiotti meets Beverly Hills Red by Giorgio type of affair – lethal as lipstick – deeply rosed and probably spiced – but in my advancing fragrance senility I think I was just mixing it up with the later and fruitier (and definitely more mischievous and genuinely red-smelling) Valentino Vendetta.

Smelling Valentino, the meticulous couturier’s first ever perfume ( and the first Valentino scent I have ever written about ),this evening I am struck how fragile it is, striking an intricate balance between a very concerted vivacity and an Achilles’ heel of vulnerability . An effervescently delicate green floral, preluded by calming green notes, citruses, and basil over sprays of freshly cut flowers that cede into peach, and civet, plus an ever so queasy note of quivering pink cyclamen, this is a loquacious, champagne bubblebath of a perfume in the manner of Paco Rabanne Metal and the aqueous floral cleanliness of Byblos de Byblos – but registered in a different (and less oblivious) key (A# major ?) She is always the belle of the party, this diffidently charming creature – bubbles in hand, inevitably a delight to all of her guests, strenuously outgoing — but simultaneously nervous;self-doubting; easily wounded.

The vintage ad for this perfume proclaims that Valentino De Valentino is a ‘perfume of passion and magnificence’ – and I would say that it is: an ardently romantic and ‘classy’ perfume that might sweep you off your feet. I am glad to have (re)discovered it. Though there is perhaps something a little sickly in all the frothed up , ladylike performativity towards Pygmalion perfection in the earlier stages of all the quiet fireworks, the generous flourishes of candour in this perfume do also make Valentino De Valentino perfect for the beautiful, wide-eyed flirt, secretly dying to wear her true heart on her sleeve.

I go into hospital for what I call the ‘filet-o-fish’ bolt removal – the metal nails and plates that were put in during my osteotomies eight years ago to be xylophoned out like a mackerel in order to make way for my total knee replacements in August and November —- this coming Thursday.

A week ago, I started to feel rundown and throaty and was wondering if I might be given a stay of execution I mean reprieve, I mean a postponement of the procedure – but the gung-ho, ultra-positive, trust-inducing surgeon who will be taking out what he himself inserted in 2017 – says I heartily that I am fit enough to go – so Frankenstinian robo removal butchery here I come !

Off par and apprehensive, have been very idle the last few days , just reading the paper, watching Netflix, and smothering myself with perfumes not even getting up from the futon – my darkness and palpitations morphing recently into a calmer, contented, excited state of mind; in particular for perfume. I have been smelling things – just all the amazing perfumes I have in my collection – with added relish and deep aesthetic pleasure and have been truly enjoying, , post shower ( essential for proper perfume testing ) test six or seven perfumes in different places – wrist, back of hand, upper arm- simultaneously, to compare them with each other as they develop and gradate through the day – to see eventually who comes out the winner

Today’s loser was definitely Cardin De Cardin. In the interest of fairness, I found my second 3.5 ml of this recently for about a dollar, thinking I should give it another chance as it couldn’t possibly be as boring as the other times I had tried it.

In fact, as it turns out, I think it was even more boring.

It is possible that the top notes have frayed ; the opening is not so bad in a dull glinty half-hearted fashion in the first boxed extrait I got of this – the second is even more compromised – here are the notes – quite complex – from Fragrantica in case you are interested –

but it very soon progresses (regresses?) to the most generic acrylic tights and hairspray beigey must base – that staid old perfumey smell that could come out of any hairnet strewn chamber where the cobwebs have been gathering, and it reminds me quite a lot me of the final basenotes of vintage Shiseido Zen. What starts off wistfully, green, momentarily elegant and vaguely Kyoto-esque, eventually, on me at least, becomes a dul lukewarm mush of meals on wheels — despair, and grey-follicled cardigans.

I think, in truth, that the competition didn’t help. On the back of my right hand I had a cheap rose oil roll on I bought at the Mustafa Center in Singapore for about two dollars and that I rediscovered last night and found delightful. The hospital has a total edict on perfume – on me in particular – I had an email sent to me showing my reputation has preceded me – the two hospitals are about fifty miles away from each other but the next one is already aware I am a scent terrorist (I don’t think the Bergamot Incident from my last hospitalization did me any favors with all the frowning Head Ratchets. When a 30ml bottle of bergamot essential oil I had kept on my person for lavatorial dignity but which unfortunately emptied itself into my pyjama pockets and down my legs, burning my thighs/, it caused throat-clutching, cheek puffing and and hive-sensitizing biohazard panic among some of the freshly operated and I was admonished for it by the no nonsense Head Nurse the next morning :: but I am fairly confident that a sly dot of this gentle pot pourri with its fresh graceful green notes and gentle calming qualities after a soapy hand wash will surely reinvigorate the olfaction buds nicely – and quietly – when I am in sagging pajama mode, and I am definitely taking it with me furtively in my new black toiletry bag.

Right wrist : an imperfect Armani Pour Femme edt (fine) ; arm was Carven Ma Griffe vintage parfum – always a pleasure, thanks very much mademoiselle; left wrist, vintage Ungaro Diva edp (wow what a beauty with its spiced, chocolatey rose and animal depth; it will never suit me unless I start to dress like Maria Callas, but I did really enjoy re-experiencing it today in all of its effortless, operatic warmth.

Courreges In Blue extrait was the undoubted winner. This is one baroque rose I can pull off – for some reason- it must be all the herbs and marigold freshness – and it has been fuzzing through into my black cashmere sweater unawares this afternoon… oops, the nurses might have to put up with a few subtle whiffs of Andre Courreges rather than the farting sulphur of untreated gum decay and the greasy haired zomb-crew of so many others who will be happier to slide into olfactory neglect instead of this optimistic 1983 Nice Riviera beauty drifting out into the ward like Isabelle Huppert onto the Croisette – oh, how dreadful for them! ! What a pity ! But at least, they won’t be yawning, yawning ! themselves to death , eyes watering from the sheer dullardry ot their weird patient’s eponymous first perfume by Pierre Cardin that would have them dull-eyed and distracted from their jobs, syringeing in the wrong places and unable to tend to their leg sutured nose twitching neurot. No, I will spare them. This is surely one of the blandest, most featureless vintage seventies extrait that I have ever encountered.

The above photo shows my friend K hugging a random pooch in a park having just liberally sprayed her gorgeous green Hong Kong tailored coat with current edition Fahrenheit.

She smelled great when we met and hugged at Kannai station on the way to the cinema in Isezakicho : aromatic; dry; androgynously beguiling. I didn’t pick up any of the burning leatherette or gasoline or violets in her scent aura, although all these notes were more apparent with liberal fresh applications.

It was strange that I didn’t immediately recognize Fahrenheit on K as I wore gallons of it in my early twenties, particularly when I lived in Rome. ‘Neil, sei profumatissimo’ my friends would tell me when I had really overdrive it for a night out clubbing in Testaccio; I practically drank the stuff.

Why didn’t I know what it was straight away?

Possibly because it is a new formulation – a good one, I would say; fresher, lighter- I might even prefer it – but it was definitely lacking some quintessential elements that pinged the automemory: the ‘nutmeg flower’; the underwray of gaseous florals ?

It wasn’t until the next day, when I took her to my secret Aladdin’s Trove down a nothingish street in a certain city in Kanagawa prefecture and she screamed with pleasure at discovering a 50ml bottle of the vintage ( which goes for hundreds of dollars now on eBay and the like because it is different : in essence, what the perfumers intended, in its original form, not a remixed attenuation); it was only then, as we sprayed it on in the precincts of a local shrine garden – along with an unbelievable haul – I ask you to brace yourselves – that all the real, visceral memories came rushing back; not a willed and somewhat forced attempt to bring back the past; but in true Proustian style, to physically relive it.

LOOT, THE BOOTY; THE BOUNTY

For less than a bottle of Tom Ford, but slightly more than the amount paid for the sledgehammer oud floral that K picked up in some airport somewhere ; Orchid Leather by Van Cleef and Arpels – erotic, I suppose, but with no breathing space – just so heavy and in your face – for the price of just one such niche meh bleh sprayable artefact we had all of the following artful blissfulness for less than two hundred pounds sterling ( with my current situation I just made a token contribution to the kitty… )

Vintage Fahrenheit Dior, 50 ml edt

Mitsouko 7ml extrait x2 + 100ml eau de cologne (in divine packaging)

Jean Desprez Bal A Versailles mounted/boxed extraits x 2

15ml YSL Paris extrait de parfum spray (rare!)

100ml vintage Calvin Klein Obsession edp (swoon!) – I have been dying

7ml Givenchy III extrait – great on her; I am finally starting to get it

Madame Rochas eau de cologne 100ml

Miniature Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum edp

Armani Pour Femme black spray extrait (ultra rare!) and pristine edt miniature

( these two were meant for me; as you will know from former reviews I really love this perfume but her reaction when she smelled it – throwing her head back with an almighty oh my god – made me realize that these beauties would inevitably have to be hers)

Nina Ricci L’Air Du Temps baccarat parfum

Nina Ricci Fleurs de Fleurs Parfum de toilette (heavenly) ; and Nina edt 30ml – two of my ultimate bedtime comfort scents

Roger and Gallet Santal miniature

Patou Joy boxed unopened vintage extraits – black bottles with red caps x 2

Torrente L’Or miniature

plus – at the least minute – an incredible 80’s Mugleresque leather jacket so perfect for the donning of the all the above leather chypres and vintage classics we were brimming and frothing at the gills with the very ecstatic acquisitional bargainhood.

In the morning, before we left the house, I had already bestowed upon K a Balmain Jolie Madame extrait and a parfum de Cabochard, both of which had her cat-eyed with pleasure ( she wears these perfumes so well; so much better than I do… ). She essentially left Japan with an entirely new vintage perfume collection.

You want leather ? Oh, we got leather

There are still plenty of old temples I haven’t yet been to in Kamakura, and today I randomly stopped off for the first time at the only Buddhist nunnery in the city, Eishoji.

I was the only one there. A welcome solitude, given that Kamakura – a former ancient capital but nowhere near as well known or mass-trampled over as Kyoto, is still on the fast track to overtourism like a miniature Japanese Barcelona or Venice.

It had its own bamboo grove.

And the faint, but replete, lingering years of incense palpable in the wooden rafters.

I was just at Kamakura City Hall attending to bureaucratic matters – something that always puts me on edge. Gaijin cards, visas, the new social security system that everyone in the country is expected to apply for – as a foreigner, especially, these are never occasions to especially look forward to. How nice, then, that the staff there today were so gentle, friendly, and calm.

Initially I was just about managing it all in Japanese with a very accommodating lady who threw in the odd English word for good measure; when things started to get more complicated and my vocabulary brain began to crumble, she called over her fluent English speaking colleague – without embarrassing me in any way -and I continued the proceedings with an exceedingly pleasant, humorous and very well put together lady in her sixties or so who not only talked me through the correct procedures while also giving me encouraging words about the success of her knee replacements – but also smelled lovely.

I told her I wrote about perfume and asked her what she was wearing (to me the aura – sillage she was emanating from behind the semi-separated perspex screen was chypric, classical, rose/ floral but not outdated): ‘Dior L’Absolu – : is it too strong ? ‘Not at all’, I told her, though I can’t vouch for her colleagues who are all working in rather a cramped and crowded work space. ‘I usually wear this one in winter and spring and move on to the mist when summer comes along’.

All the exchanges today, in what took less than twenty minutes in total, were polite, sincere, dare I say it even life affirming. The employees in question didn’t hesitate to draw my attention to the importance of certain issues – you really don’t want to be stuck in a Japanese immigration detention centre – or experience the infamous hose pipes of Nagoya prison: such places are to be avoided at all costs, and everyone involved, my self included, is thus taking the facts and documentation suitably seriously.

But at the same time, some simple humanity, gentility, empathy, kindness, humour – as well as a lovely perfume as an aesthetically pleasing added bonus – made what could have been a protracted, nerve-wracking experience actually pleasurable and engaging. Knees or no knees, my eyes slightly moistening, I practically skipped out the building.

Like the over-baked but enjoyable crap I watched on Netflix yesterday ( ‘Nonnas’: what, Susan Sarandon seventy eight ?!! – look at hah !) this everything in the sink beach perfume – coconut, sunscreen, tiare, The Waves, a small tub of salt, is perfectly agreeable and yet not. I actually laughed out loud this afternoon , on the first Proper Hot Day, in the Ginza, at the zebra crossing, at the thought of Helen somehow wrongly spraying on two squirts of it

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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 in his 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.