palermo soho

i don’t look back. i always look ahead. that has to be my saving grace. still, i way too often cast my mind back these days. i admit it, but being “un etranger” is a different story. i love to recollect all the magical moments of my photographic memories: colours; light and shade. and i simply love to recall the wind, the smell and the sound of the places where i embraced each scene with my five senses. my five senses.
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meantime back in buenos aires, i kept on wandering. i just couldn’t cope with life without deadlines to meet. i was at loose ends. besides, i lost faith in mr dreamer who lost himself in his own drama. we had a row everyday. to avoid any feel-bad factors, i needed to wander the buenos aires polluted streets with heavy traffic of eco-unfriendly old cars and buses. on the other hand, every little thing came across as a lovely surprise. tord boontije’s midsummer light, for instance. i found it in an office window in palermo soho, the most stimulating barrio of buenos aires. the romantic light brought to mind the very first day i visited his studio in peckham, london. that was 2003. that interview with tord was fun to do among usual arduous ones. the photo-shoot by annabel went great, my casa brutus magazine article on tord made his debut, then he became the most sought-after product designer in japan. that was the world where i had lived before moving to belle époque-ish buenos aires.
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shops, cafés and people in palermo soho revived me. i could feel congenial about palermo that showed me its vibrancy. i never missed london. i was only missing my deadlines.

porteña

four years ago today, i arrived at ezeiza airport in buenos aires. why? because i had to. i had to leave london with a man who wanted me to start a new life together in buenos aires. we had lived together for three months in north london before i eventually said “ok” to his righteous plan: he sounded, at least to me, confident enough to realise it. i quit all of my writing jobs and we moved out of our flat. but, why buenos aires? i don’t know. he was just a dreamer and i was such a fool. argentina was entirely romanticised by his penchant for runaway dramas. he was actually on the run. soon after our porteño life began, i saw an imminent catastrophe coming our way. but yet, i was determined to love the city before my inevitable leaving, surely, alone.
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in buenos aires, located in the south hemisphere, leaves started turning yellow and brown everywhere in may. everything looked awash with nostalgia, sentiment or sometimes melancholy. i was sad because i had absolutely nothing to do. i had no deadlines to hit, we had people do dishes, laundry and clean the room. so, around noon, before the time when mr dreamer would come back from a local café, i would leave our apartment hotel in barrio norte for a walk to be on my own. i would stroll up to recoleta or down to puerto madero…i was like belinda of “follow me (aka the public eye)”, an old film starring mia farrow. but the one without being following by cristoforou, the praivate ditective. i wandered aimlessly day after day. was it aimless? no, it was not. i wandered lonely as a cloud to love the city. and in truth, i was growing to love buenos aires.

red carnations

i had been vaguely thinking what i would, could, or should, do for mother’s day until the doorbell chimed. i wondered who would drop on me on a rainy saturday. i answered. there was a delivery man standing with a box at my door. i thought he had the wrong door. but to my surprise, it was for me. i took a lovely potted red spray carnation out of the box and realised that it was a present for mother’s day, which was delivered one day earlier. i have a son and a daughter. as, you know, boys usually could care less about any special days, it was naturally from shion, my girl. although i’ve no idea who started this: good children would send red carnations to their good mums on mother’s day, which is a long-lived custom here in japan. still, it didn’t seem typical of shion to follow suit. this is her first time she’s sent me red carnations.

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in retrospect, the only red carnation i have ever got on mother’s day in my life was actually from louie, my son. back then he was fourteen. our relationship at the time was going through sort of a rough period. having quarrels, noisy one or harsh one, was the norm for my son and me. however, that was louie who gave us a chance to make a truce, saying it with the symbol of love for mother: one stem of burning-red carnation. i felt i'd never deserve of that because i was a terrible mum who failed to show her sweet boy her love... so i cried.

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when i placed the potted red spray carnation on the cabinet in my kitchen, i was looking back to my young and bad motherhood. i found a small note under the pot. as soon as i made out shion's hand writing: “thank you, mother”, tears welled up. i don’t deserve red carnations even now because i’ve never been a good mother. i still feel guilty that i left shion when she was ten, asking my ex-husband to take good care of her to pursue my selfish ambition. now she is twenty-four. our mother-and-daughter relationship is going so great, though.

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i phoned her right away and heard her mobile automatically switching to answering phone service, well, like always. i got stuck on the word “thank you”, becoming close to tears again and again, while i was leaving her a message. this may sound strange to non-japanese, but “thank you” possibly mean “i love you”. because we japanese almost never say “i love you” between parents and children. i love my children, you know. i do and will always do. so, the older i gets, the more easily i am reduced to tears particularly when i think of my children. and of my old mother.

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yes, mother. forgive me. i’ve never been a good daughter, either. i did not bring her anything, after all. i bought her a potted blue hydrangea on mother’s day last year…was it really last year? or, the year before that? oh, no, i can’t remember... anyway, i just gave her a happy-mother’s-day call, promising that i would visit her coming tuesday.

vincent & edgar

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i’ve been thinking about my blog. and, i have to amend two things (my bad english too? i know, i know, i know that i still keep making errors in english after having lived in london for almost a decade in my life). as a matter of fact, the peculiar but intriguing shoe shop, vincent & edgar, is not on madison avenue. it’s on livingston avenue. and also, i had forgotten one thing: there was a difference between the sartorialist's photos and mine. actually, all the men’s shoes disappeared from the shop window some time between 2006 and 2008, which means the shop is still open and run by vincent or edgar or the both. indeed, manhattan is full of misteries!
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shoe fetish

gosh, it's been more than a month since i flew back from my new york holiday. time also flies, indeed. still, i am still glowing with the fabulous memory of things in manhattan. so i browsed the sartolialist yesterday. and, some of his images caught my eye.
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"wait a minute, i know these..."
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they are the photos of the shoe shop show window on madison avenue that completely hooked me when i was strolling down. the sartolialist's photos were taken in 2006, which means the shop window did hook him two years ago, but nothing has changed since then. nothing changed at all in there. the high heels could've been around there for more than half a century, quite spookily. where are vincent and edgar now? it sounds like a manhattan shoe mystery.
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