K-Beauty, Summer Nostalgia, and Portal | On The Go

The smell, humidity, thickness of the air.

A screen capture from NYT

Lie down on the bed, put a corner of a pillow on top of your face enough to cover your eyes, close your eyes, imagine the bedroom, and open your eyes. This was my ritual to attempt to open a portal back to my relative’s home in Korea. As a teenager I had still identified as a Korean and longed to be back there more than my then reality allowed. So, one humid summer day in Korea, I lied down on my aunt’s bed, breathed in the summer air, stared at the ceiling and a corner of the bedroom willing myself to imprint it to my mind, feeling that closing my eyes wasn’t enough to conceal reality from what I wanted I used a corner of a pillow to block out any lights, and wished that when I do this in London that I would be teleported right here. And I did try, shortly after returning to London where jet lag lingered and I missed the fun and my friends.

There was a perfume my aunt used to wear to which I still don’t know the name of. I may not know the name of it, but whenever I smelt it I would turn around in attempt to follow the scent hoping that if I followed the path, a portal would open up back to Seoul. Not just to the place, but that moment in time, that feeling of safety and being looked after. A space where someone has your back, many people have your back, a place where I didn’t have to be a protector or the one responsible for everything and everyone. Yes, that’s what I was after — to be a child again.

My friends abroad are still in disbelief that English summer has taken on a new definition. It’s only when they happen to visit in the height of summer that they realise that the tropical has moved itself to the island seeing how popular it has been by the Brits. The high temperatures and humidity has also brought with it the smell and thickness of air that felt unique to Korea. I can feel on my skin and smell that oily and sweetened summer scents that was once familiar to the country of my birth. The profuse of air-con in department stores, though nowhere near rivalling the freezing conditions of A/Cs in Korea, the making of sweet somethings like waffles and other temporarily trendy sugary snacks, oily savouries mixed along with the return of Y2K fashion has me seeing and feeling double. There comes two layers to a scene. Then and now, here and there, merging into one, telling me that all this time it has been one.