What the Nose Knows

It all started with a visit to Aroma Sanctum to see my friend Akuura who creates a special blend of perfume just for me that gloriously envelopes me everywhere I go.  We talk about the power of scent, how powerful our noses are, and our favorite memories of our grandmothers' kitchens.  All this talk about how things smell, including me, reminded me of several stories.

I'm at a preschool on one of my visits.  It's "Play With Auntie Amya Day" and today I'm teaching them duck-duck-goose.  Japan is not known for geese--I've seen none in my 20 plus years here--so before the instructions can be explained, we spend time establishing what a goose is.  We all settle on a "big duck."  I'm the first goose, and "duck, duck, duck" several kids before pegging one "goose!" and proceed to run in a wild circle.  I'm caught, so I start over.  This time I slide in, just barely, to the spot vacated by the goose and am cheered by the kids.  A great miracle, indeed.  The goose just stands there, and I pick up on the fact he's too shy to go out on his own.  I get up, lean towards him and ask if we should "duck duck" together.  He nods shyly.  I asked quietly so it's our secret.  We touch heads together but I let him whisper "duck, duck"and we make our way from kid to kid.  I soon become the adopted goose, a defacto Mother Goose of sorts, and I make the way around the same circle with each gosling, "duck-duck"ing everyone.

I lean down towards one girl as the gosling and I "duck" her head, and she leans up, craning her neck towards mine and says, "You smell like my mother."  I melt.  Pure words of acceptance, those are.  I'm touched.  Since that day, whenever I'm in her class she comes up to me leaning in for a hug and smells my neck.  "You smell good."  I love this.

At another preschool, the focus is on my nose and not my scent.  Since childhood, the size of my nose has been a commonly discussed topic.  The most used phrase is, "Your nose is high."  High, as in a tall building, or as in someone who's tall.  This is not the same as "You have a big nose."  High does not mean big.  I've not grown up being told I have a big nose.  This is important.

We're playing tag in a (different) preschool playground one day, and a boy runs past me and says the words I've never heard to date, "You have a big nose." I practically fall over.  I almost call back "HIGH!  Not BIG!" but don't.  He doesn't mean it the way it sounded.  He means well.  He's five.  Let it go.

To noses like mine, whether they're considered big or high, scent matters.  Sean Connery's words about the American Express card, spoken in a television commercial twenty (?) years ago, "Don't leave home without it" applies to perfume for me.  I do not leave home without it.  Ever.  Which is why, evidently, this one taxi driver needed to point this out to me.

Whether or not I end up talking with any given taxi driver is like rolling the dice.  There's no pattern.  Some days I'm hit right away with a "You're foreign, right?" comment, while others won't say a word.  On this day, the driver saved his questions until the last thirty seconds.  About to pull up to the corner where I asked to be dropped off, he looks at me in his rear view mirror and says, "You're not from here, are you?"
"No," I smile.  "I'm not."
"You know how I knew?"
Do I want to know the answer?  How bad can it be, right?"
"No.  How?"
"You said 'hello' when you got in the car."
What??  This is news to me.
"People don't say 'hello' when they get into your taxi?"
"No way."
I ponder this.  While I'm mulling this over, I hear, "And, you smell."
"Really!?"  I must have sounded really shocked.
"Not bad.  You smell good.  But, you smell.  Like perfume."

This conversation took me back to another taxi driver's comments about how he almost didn't pick me up (following that statement with a quick bow and an apology).  "I picked up a foreign woman once before, and..." bowing again, "...she smelled so bad.  I had to air out the taxi for hours to get the smell out."  I'm flattered he picked me up, after hearing that.

Whoever it belongs to, the nose knows.   For better or for worse, the nose knows. 

Energy: Individual vs. Collective, Positive vs. Negative

There's a store I got to in Salem, Massachusetts whenever I'm in the mood for a new scent.  There's nothing quite like walking into Aroma Sanctum (http://www.aromasanctum.com/), and saying to the owner Akuura, "I want...." and then describe how I want to smell.  I simply love having my own custom blend.  That she's delightful only adds to the experience.

Someone once said Salem, Massachusetts has a vortex of energy.  That witches have lived there for years, en masse, is part of what creates this source of energy.  (And, can we please not spend time here discussing the virtues or evils of witches.  That's not my point today.)  It evidently has the highest concentration of witches living in one city--at least in the United States.

This vortex of energy, then.  Surely there is something to the power of collective energy.  We talk of "the power in numbers."  Christians say about God "when two or more gather, I am there."  Simply put, the more people who gather together and utilize their energy for good, the more power there is in that energy.  Right?

I have been keenly aware of late, just how finite my own individual energy levels are.  My mother used to say, "Don't waste energy on that" whenever I would rail against the latest injustice I experienced.  Thinking I have extra reserves of energy I could always tap into, her comments annoyed me.  Of course I had energy to expend on my woes.  I have all the energy in the world!

She was right, of course.  I don't.  The amount of energy I have at any given moment is most definitely limited.  There is no secret stash of "extra energy" I can access whenever I want or need.  Living in Japan away from family, I feel this even stronger.  I am not Wonder Woman.

The Japanese would call Salem, Massachusetts a "Power Spot."  I am exposed to these magical, energy-rich places on Japanese television and in print.  There's a fascination the Japanese have with these sacred spots where something is different, and something is special. 

What then is the opposite of a "Power Spot"?  If these places are blessed with some source of positive energy, what do we call places where there seems to be an energy vacuum?  How do we refer to those locations where the energy is not blessed with beauty?

Fukushima is one such location for me.  In Fukushima, I experience the exact opposite of a "positive source of energy."  There's nothing scientific or fact-based about what I'm saying.  That I go to Fukushima and find it "off" and get "bad vibes" is purely my personal experience.  Then again, I have heard others say something similar.  What's going on?  I can't put my finger on what it is about Fukushima that leaves me drained, exhausted, and sucked dry.  I don't want to feel this way, but I do.  Is there something about Fukushima that oozes negativity, or am I hitting Fukushima when I happen to be exhausted? 

This concept of energy--how much I have at any given moment, whether I should find others who can add to it (and if so where), and what to do about a geographic location I sense is lacking in the positive--this is what I've spent the past 24 hours thinking about.  Never one for keeping life simple, I am using energy on questions with no easy answers, except this time I have people around me whom I can tap.  Collective energy at its best.