Arrival in Ravenna, Ohio

We left the urban jungle of New York and traveled across Penn's forests to arrive in my brother's home in northeastern Ohio.  Leaving the city highlights the singularity of life there.  The space is crowded and vertical, time is heavy, fast and direct, people are so concerned with themselves that there is a peaceful solitude in the masses.  To drive among the forests, to see the setting sun from the rolling hills, to roll through the open Main Street of Ravenna, Ohio, is to remember a that life in one place is not life in another.

I recently lay awake at night remembering late fall day trips to Kyoto where I would look for Christmas gifts.  The streets and allies belonged to me.  It was my home.  I walked them in silence, in a sea of people, breathing the fresh cold, exploring news ways of finding Kiyomizudera and the Gion district, the art museum, the Silver Pavilion.  I remember the many times I took the bus to the Golden Pavilion, where nearby I had my cello repaired and sat drinking tea.  I remember one day, the early winter snow began to fall outside the warm woods of the shop and soft sounds of classical music from a CD player, and a cat came to trust me over the course of my hours sitting there, an unlikely friend in a far-off magical place.

It's so far away now.  As I lay thinking about it, I began realize its impossibility.  There are so many stages of moving forward, and even though I've known that Kyoto is no longer an hour and ¥560 away any longer, I think there is still a part of me that has yet to fully understand this.  It was the place that housed my late autumn wanderings, that welcomed my early winter need to stretch as atrophy made its inevitable mark.  I remember the fields on the train ride, the hills, the houses.  

Something in me aches for this, now realizing that it is gone, and realizing how impossible it is to have it again.  A day trip to Kyoto.  I could live there.  

But in its place is growing something new.  Every time I travel I can see the beauty of where I am.  Something in me wishes to see only one, that I wouldn't have to remember and miss so many.  What is the value of experience?