When I found out a few days ago that Lawrence had published a book, a war began within me that pitched resentment against whatever the opposite of shadenfreude is; resentment that he’d had a book published and I hadn’t, versus delight at his hard-won and well-deserved success.
The book was the culmination of a decade of his blogging on the subject of perfume and scent from his adoptive home in Japan. An avowed perfumista, his blog contains phrases like ‘balsamic attars’ and ‘aldehydic ultra-feminine floral musk.’ But because his passion for scent is so self-evident, and his writing all cosseted in his arched humour and self-conscious, but candid neuroticism, it never comes across as pretentious. In such a way, it reminds me of Lawrence himself; a person whose considerable gifts and noteworthy flaws constantly revolve, pursuing one another like painted horses on a carousel.
“We had a wonderful family party last night,” Lawrence writes in a 2019 blog post entitled Disaster at the Airport. He’d returned to the UK for 2 weeks to give interviews to promote the launch of his book, his partner stranded at a Tokyo departure gate glumly clutching an expired visa.
“With my aunt, uncle, cousins and second cousins, animated and hilarious, like the parties of my childhood, and a moving champagne toast by my dad, and I feel quite exhilarated about the coming two weeks here – I just have to seize the moment…I feel very much here, and present, and in the moment. Quite happy.”
In the face of such sincere gladness, my resentment withered there on the vine.
Scrolling forward in time almost to the present day, I came across a post describing another disaster, this time in the kitchen of their Kamakura flat. In an ill-fated attempt to change a tap, Dermot had unleashed a torrent of icy water that knocked his glasses off his face and threatened to flood the place.
Neither men being privvy to the location of the stop cock, Lawrence, dressed only in thermal underwear (again), burst into his landlord’s house just as this august Japanese was sitting down to dinner.
Frantic and in a dizzying panic, nevertheless Lawrence watches his landlord, Mr Mitomi…
“…take a delicious looking pork chop and place it on a plate of salad.”
And there is it again.
The writer takes his leap.
The mind just stopped.
Haiku via osmosis.
A succulent peace has descended on me as I write this afternoon. It might be the anti-depressants. Or it could be the way a south-easterly is tossing the boughs of the Leylandii at the end of my garden. Or it could be that pork chop.
It has taken many years for me to outgrow the flush-faced awkwardness I felt in the back of my mum’s Fiat Uno that day. The awkwardness of wanting to be a writer whilst feeling I had no right – whether through native skill, education or heredity – to that aspiration.
You may well argue that nothing you’ve read here supports that claim either – and, to be honest, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a compelling argument to the contrary.
I have no great roll call of published works (1), blog subscribers (0), writing awards (0) or academic triumphs (0)
but I have
this peace
Tell me…in these times,
What could count
For more?
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