We are here in Kyoto for six months. A long time. A short time. Depends on your perspective. It’s an interesting amount of time, because it is long enough to get familiar and settle into routines, but short enough to want to make the most of every moment.
We have a big monthly calendar posted on our kitchen wall and I just noticed that as of this week we are half way through our trip. This set me off on a flurry of planning how to squeeze in all the things we want to do, places we want to go and people we want to see before we have to go home (right at the bottom of the last page of that wall chart). The white spaces are quickly filling, but I am trying hard to preserve some of them with nothing written on them, for it is often these moments of nothing in the diary that lead to unexpected discoveries, relaxed happy days in the sun, improptu trips and all sorts of fun.
Kyoto is good for me. It has made me slow down, reflect, soak up the beauty around, head out somewhere new almost every single day. Look up, look down, look around. Look inside. Take time to stand still.
The ideas I pushed away before we headed out here (because I was so crazily busy) have been invited in, and are currently washing around in my head. Now is not the time for filtering, that will come later. Now is the time for letting them all flow forward, and seeing what emerges. And there is no better place to do it than here, on an adventure, with the luxury of time…