September 1, 2024

My Gen Z daughter spontaneously visited me. What a nice surprise.
So much so that when we walked out for dinner at Amar [background] and
she said she's like to stop for red lipstick, I volunteered to pay for it.
I mean, what could it be? 19.99 tops at CVS.
In the event, she had in mind a stop at Sephora on Newbury St.
Oops! Make that 29.95. I didn't complain.
When we got to the boutique and walked in, and were greeted by an official greeter,
I realized, 39.95.
Plus dinner of course.
The greeter called in an associate: 49.95.
Keep your mouth shut, next time, I admonished myself.
In the course of the trial, associate #1 called #2 for some input: 59.95.
She suggested we also buy an outliner. 69.95.
And a gloss: 79.95.
And tax. 89.95 total. Cha Ching.

I do like the look.

Labor Day

JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET - El Ángelus (Museo de Orsay, 1857-1859. Óleo sobre lienzo, 55.5 x 66 cm)
Jean-François Millet - Google Arts & Culture: Home - pic

If you’re not working or praying, how about a picnic with the gods?

**More details**
Giovanni Bellini and Titian - The Feast of the Gods - Google Art Project
Giovanni Bellini / Titian - ywHcWNzYJW7wUA — Google Arts & Culture

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Commentary
Starting Labor Day, I begin a four-month stint in which I will travel for several days at each of the coming holidays.
First up, Quebec City.

Chateau Frontenac
The most photographed hotel in the world

A happy Saturday in one of my more colorful outfits

James Turrell skyscape at MoMA's PS1 location.

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Tucker’s Corner

Perfect Days

The city and the trees. These are the first two things we see in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days (2023): a wide shot of Tokyo at dawn, and an angle looking up at a leafy canopy against a dark blue sky. The former feels like an establishing shot, the latter like a mental image—fitting, since we next see the protagonist, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), opening his eyes in his modest home, awakened by the sounds of a solitary street sweeper outside. Perfect Days lives, in essence, between these two tableaux. It’s a city symphony about a man who appreciates the patches of nature and light he can find in his concrete world, and it’s a film about how everyday existence drifts into our dream lives.

Perfect Days also happens to be a movie about bathrooms. Its impetus was an invitation that Wenders received in 2022 to visit Tokyo Toilet, a collaborative project to build seventeen unique, high-tech public bathrooms—each conceived by an acclaimed architect, artist, or designer—in the ward of Shibuya. Wenders, whose deep and abiding fascination with Japan is well known, immediately saw the possibilities for a fiction feature. Wenders’ last feature Anselm took years to shoot. By contrast Wenders and cinematographer Franz Lustig shot Perfect Days, handheld, in sixteen days.

Yet there’s nothing rushed or undernourished about Perfect Days. In fact, it might be the most patient film Wenders has ever made. The camera takes its time lingering on Hirayama’s face and his methodical, graceful movements, watching him as he quietly goes about his daily routine and his job as a bathroom cleaner. He wakes up every morning, spritzes his flowers, puts on his Tokyo Toilet jumpsuit, drinks his breakfast, and drives his cramped van through the streets, listening to old cassette tapes of the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, and Otis Redding. At each stop, he shows dedication to his work: he wipes down every corner of the bathrooms, diligently cleans the retractable bidets, and even uses a little mirror to ensure he has covered all the tough-to-get spots.

It would be difficult to imagine a less “cinematic” subject. Perfect Days has very little story or traditional character development. Instead, it has Koji Yakusho—a revered Japanese actor who has played everything from cops to samurais, from frustrated office workers to murderous madmen—portraying that most elusive of figures: a contented and peaceable human being. Hirayama doesn’t say much, and his face betrays no particular inner unrest. Instead, he works, he observes, he smiles, he glows. The actor conveys happiness, but he doesn’t forsake the mystery required to keep us captivated.

During his lunch breaks, Hirayama looks up at the trees, fascinated by the delicate dance of sunlight on the leaves, snapping photos of it with an old film camera. A title at the end of the movie defines the Japanese word komorebi, which refers to the way light and shadow filter through foliage—something that “only exists once, at that moment.” Hirayama’s black-and-white pictures, which he edits ruthlessly and keeps tucked away in meticulously organized boxes, all seem to be attempts to capture this impermanent phenomenon. He’s an artist, but we don’t sense that he will ever do anything with these photographs. They themselves are, in a way, impermanent. In the film’s periodic “dream installation” passages, orchestrated by Donata Wenders (the director’s wife and an artist in her own right), Hirayama’s photos are interspersed with images from his daily life—creating the only moments when the film seems to leave the material present. But unlike most dream sequences in cinema, these do not offer any clues about our hero’s psyche. If anything, they reflect a mind at ease with itself.

In cinema, anonymity is usually a form of tragedy or a temporary cover for greatness. But Hirayama seems perfectly content with his unassuming routine, and Wenders films him with a subtle sense of awe. Watching him, we might feel envy for a man who has the time to fully enjoy his music and books and the pleasures of nature. Is such simplicity not the stuff of so many of our own dreams?

Is it not also the dream of so many of Wenders’ protagonists? The director was acclaimed early in his career for Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976), a trilogy of road movies featuring alienated characters who shed their old lives and set out to find something indefinable. In that sense, Perfect Days feels like a summational of Wenders’ career, an end point for all those early wanderers. Hirayama has found the presence that Wenders’ previous characters were looking for. Many if not all of Wenders’ films are about the question of “how to live”. Perfect Days is the answer to that question.

Hirayama’s past is largely unrevealed but a sliver of it emerges quietly in the second half of the film when his teenage niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano), suddenly shows up at his house after running away from home. She hints briefly at a dispute that led Hirayama himself to leave home many years ago. Later, Niko’s mother (Yumi Aso) arrives to collect her in a nice car with a private chauffeur, suggesting that perhaps Hirayama also comes from wealth. “Are you really cleaning toilets?” his sister asks, baffled and maybe a little embarrassed. We learn that Hirayama had some sort of conflict with his father, but this is all we get of his past. Wenders doesn’t dwell on it, nor does he suggest any great traumas or tragedies.

A conventional drama about a runaway teen going to live with her withdrawn uncle would surely end with her bringing him out of his shell and opening him up to the world. Instead, Niko cleans toilets with Hirayama and finds herself drawn to his life. When she asks if they can go to the ocean, he says that she can go next time. When she asks what he means by that, he replies, “Next time is next time. Now is now.” There is a hint of severity in his statement, a refusal to dream bigger. But these words are also a brief and beautiful expression of his principles. To live in the present, one must set aside both the past and the future.

The Skytree tower, which shows up repeatedly in Perfect Days as a distant, aloof symbol of the life that Hirayama is not leading. Skytree might be impressive, but it is fixed and unchanging, and it does not sway in the wind or dance in the sunlight. It can never be a real tree, and it will never provide a moment of komorebi. Hirayama has no use for it. But maybe its constant presence here is a reminder to the director of his own journey toward simplicity. Surely, if there are angels hovering over Tokyo (as there were over Berlin in Wenders’ beloved 1987 film Wings of Desire), they would be perched somewhere near that tower, looking down longingly at the beautiful bustle below. I won’t spoil the ending, which sounds funny for a film with so little plot, but it’s a treasure. it’s an admission that happiness is elusive—and that even those who find it must work to keep it.
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Chuckles and Thoughts

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Six Word Novels
“Waves crashed. Sand clung. Footprints vanished.”

Winslow Homer - Cannon Rock
Winslow Homer - Metropolitan Museum of Art, online collection (The Met object ID 20011470)

Did I mention that I paid for the lipstick? 89.95?
But she does wear it well.

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First of month health report for August

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MONTHLY HEALTH REPORT CARD: of an 82-year-old male.
August, 2024, reported in September 1, 2024 issue

Natural Physiological Change
Nothing out of the ordinary: I’m getting older.
Grade: A

Weight-Lifting
Am doing well. I’ve missed few days and will improve my grade from a B+
Grade: A-

Exercising
The RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) exercise program has become part of my daily routine. It has had a noticeable improvement to me mobility, from walking to indoor movements.
I believe the RCAF exercises that I’ve gotten into are working for me. My hamstrings are in substantially better condition than they were before I started the routine.
For example, I can now put on my pants while standing on one foot, a talent I had lost.
I’m several months into the program now and have hit level A-, on Chart 1 of 6 Charts, the 6th Chart reserved for Olympic athletes. I will stay on Chart One for a long time to come.
Grade: A+

Walking
Walking in August was as good as it gets for me. At least 5 miles a day.
Grade: A+.

Illness
Grateful that I have nothing to report except that I went to my dermatologist for a full-body check to see if the treatment I went through some months ago left me clear. She found two places on my body that she deemed wise to biopsy. I’ll report the findings next week.
Grade: A

Injury
I’m grateful that I have nothing to report.
Grade A+

Weight
(Using only weight as a measure of health is simplistic. I know. Health care specialists consider an entire range of metrics. Two commonly used indicators are the Body Mass Index that takes into account a person's weight and height. And Body composition, considering the distribution of body fat and muscle mass rather than solely focusing on weight. But this analysis of the state of our health is meant to be doable in our regular day’s living. We’ll use simple body weight and take other steps when we feel things going really poorly.)

My weight is pretty good. A slight improvement over July so I’ll go up a level.
Grade A

Oral Health
I brush and floss regularly.
I get a cleaning twice a year.
But, what started as a bothersome tooth has worsened to uncomfortable situation with my gums. Nothing is prescribed so far.
Grade B+

Substance Abuse
I take four mind-bending drugs. I used to take three.
Caffeine: My morning coffee is now 10oz of a half-caffeinated brew.
The second mind-bending drug is the double shot of espresso (a cortado) that I enjoy in the late morning or early afternoon.
The third is the 3oz shot of alcohol (or 12oz of wine) that I enjoy at dinner time and no other.
The fourth, and newest? Gummies with CBD. The product also contains the hallucinogen, THC. (For more on this, see the entry under ‘Sleep’.)
Grade: B, the grade lowered for taking so many mind benders. But all of them do exactly what I intend them to do and no more, so still an honors grade.
Editor’s note: Hedys, the gummy I use, combines THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) with CBN (Cannabinol) which induces relaxation and drowsiness. I seem to be immune to THC because I don’t experience feeling buoyant and relaxed or waking on the brink of dreams.
Grade B,

Stress Management
Things are going well.
Next issue I will report on the first of four planned vacays centered around the upcoming holidays: Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas
Grade: A-

Sleep
Thanks to my gummies, my sleep is now a rational six hours a night.
Grade: A+

Regularity
I maintain a decently balanced diet which is not only good for my weight-control, but also for my regularity. With the advent of sweet corn season, I eat three ears of it every day. My body loves it. I think that helps.
Grade: A+

Memory
I do a lot to stay mentally active.
One of my primary activities is writing. I recently published a book (with dear friend, Victor Passacantilli) that I also edited, I work on this magazine, I am developing a website for the North End: it’s in a testing phase. I recently completed my novel and am looking for an agent.
My other major memory activity is meal preparation, from the planning of the menu, the shopping, and the preparation which sometimes involves me in writing recipes.
Even with my active lifestyle, I’m encountering brief moments of forgetfulness lasting about 20 seconds. It’ll worsen with time.
Grade: A-

Social Life
I have established a routine of sharing two dinners a week with various of my friends.
It’s great. It’s enough.

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In the mail:
From daughter Kat: love in a picture

And this from dear friend and co-publisher of “Do You Believe in Magic,” Victor P:

Dom,

Your presentation on the Feast of the Pardon was brilliantly written and eloquently delivered. I have joined in the applause from a distance.

Victor P.

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Last Comment
I thought i’d reserve this space to emphasize my appreciation of the RCAF [Royal Canadian Air Force Exercises]. Prior to my adopting this 11-minute daily regimen, I had a hard time sitting down on the floor and the getting up. It is much easier now. And I had to sit while putting on my pants. Now, I can stand on one leg while putting them on.
I highly recommend them.
For any age.

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Aug 28 September 1, 2024

Perfect Days