Kyoto Love Story

I have a new love. Her name is Kyoto.

#KYOTO #JAPAN #NEWLOVE

I will never forget those days.

Nor the nights.

Yes I remember the night time most of all.

Discovering the rituals of the onsen. The deep rectangular bathtub. The handmade cedar buckets encased with a warm cooper ribbon. Ladling steaming hot water over tired bodies. Squatting on the tiny wooden stools. Soaping and soaking and sucking in steam. The scent of cedar and sulphur and pine salts. You scrubbing my back. Gently at first. Than more vigorously. Hurting just a little. Later wrapping the indigo yukata  over my breasts and tying the belt firmly around my hips. I was slightly dizzy from the hot bath and inhaling the scent of expectation peppering your breath. Then sitting cross legged on the floor on traditional zabuton cushions and drinking green tea. Savouring delicate pink wagashi that we’d purchased impulsively earlier in the day. With a small glass of whiskey. Later the luxury of stretching out along fresh futons. The aroma of the cotton bedding and silken sheets. Your nearly naked body stretched out beside mine. Fingers lightly touching. That earthy aroma of tatami matting filling my lungs as we breathed quietly together. Tuning our bodies into the night. And each other. Watching moon light chase shy shadows across paper clad sliding doors. Noticing the honey lacquer on the aged wooden surfaces.

Your eyes. Blue butterflies fluttering across fields of flesh. My flesh. I think about pulling the sheet up to shield myself. I don’t. Instead I softly cup a palm around your chin encouraging you to bring your face close to mine. A net to catch those beauties. Then I lean in and run my tongue along your lower lip. Because I remember doing this our first time. A time long before this time . You always tasted salty. And because I have always loved your salt mouth. And kissing you. The taste of you lingering in the back of my throat and coating my tongue.

There’s much that passes though a marriage that has lasted a long time. Survived the rough. Sometimes its hard to remember all the little details. Or to explain everything that happens.

Like that time I pulled back and you were surprised. As was I.

You were hurt though you didn’t say anything. I saw it reflected inside your eyes. Even in the darkened room. I wanted to say something. Like there are residues in my body that I can’t explain. Many micro violences that have been witnessed. Abuses that were done to others and given to me to hold. Things said and written into my cells that even I know nothing of. But I had lost some words long before we met. So I simply said.

I’m sorry.

I love you.

I’m not sure you were reassured.

But this night was destined. Different. Dreamt of long ago. Now deeper connection and blissfulness would finally be realised. There is no hesitation. You slowly trace your tongue along the outside of my top lip. The whole time ours eyes are locked. There is only your sweet saliva and mutual rising desire. My breasts already awakening and warm blood stirring in my nipples. I feel you respond. Two bodies remembering what they were made for. Patterns of loving etched and layered deeply over time. My mouth finding your mouth. Again and again. And again.

We had spent the late afternoon walking though the old cobbled streets of Gion. It was  like being caught in an exotic fairytale. Each scene framed with the dark wooden panelling that covered the facades of ancient houses, and softly lit with paper lanterns in the background. Sometimes there would be a sudden sighting of a kimono clad woman. Maybe a makeo. Her long pale swan neck ringed with a sheath of vermillion silk. Briefly glimpsing her milk painted face as she disappeared though the noren. Into the forever vanishing world. Possibility was always just up ahead. Never quite able to be touched or seen nor held in the hand. Like so many precious things.

And always an aching and heartbreaking sense of something about to be lost just as it was found.

Then later walking though the laneway of Ponticho looking for a good place to eat. The scent of salt and spice wafting out from behind indigo veils.

Someone suddenly calling out ‘irrashaimase.’

Breaking the trance and deciding that this was our welcome. Then after a simple meal of grilled fish and rice with white miso soup with bamboo pickle sitting with our bared legs dangling over an open deck. Thigh flesh touching lightly as we gazed out over the Kamo river. Talking of living here. Mildly intoxicated and still drinking the hot sake. The warm balmy evening air and fading light as stars finally came out. Shivering as your hand reaches out and runs tenderly along the whole length of my back.

It was our very first night in Kyoto and already I planning a return.

The Kyoto love story began in these moments. I don’t have an exact record of the date. Or even photos that mark the time. Nor did I realise what would pass between that first encounter and the final returning.

But a relationship with that place was seeded in soft silence. One that rooted and grew over time into a deep love. Till later it blossomed quite unexpectedly.

What I can say is that I remember each and every one of those early feelings. That my senses were fully aroused. Each one of them sighing and singing. And writing a melody as the place and time swirled around us. Laying down a cellular song line that I carried home.

Even before this night I had already been filled with an unexpected and agitated anticipation of this new place. Sitting in the air conditioned comfort of the the Shinkansen as it sped though the countryside from Tokyo. Something close to desire was rising and swelling inside my chest. Looking out at the tangled overhead electrical wires and blocks of concrete houses I was surprised by the unexpected hardness. Yet my body felt a softening. Then a temple was glimpsed in the distance light. A first sighting. The idea of a philosophers path lined with sakura and plum blossoms already forming in my imagination. Vermillion tori gates suggesting the next pathway. A heart shaped pond and moss covered rocks with the hum of crickets already feeling familiar. And in my nostrils the rising scent of pine and maple and smoking incense.

I think some part of me instantly recognised you. Had waited a long time for you. For the right time. Because I loved you immediately. Irrationally. At that first sight. What I mean is this. I had already been dreaming all of it all in the long ago. That I somehow knew it would be everything I’d longed for. Yet so much more.