(no subject)
This journal entry is a paean to a thousand things I remember, and why I love Christmas.
I went to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens to see their Christmas lights. It was beautiful there. Everything was covered in lights and there were glowing glass balls all over the place that looked like little moons. You could see the reflection of the light spectacle in the water of the pond and hear distant music. They have a "tea house" in the gardens and as I walked by there, I remembered how much I miss Kyoto. The lights reflecting on the water reminded me so clearly of the night I was in Maruyama Koen to see cherry blossoms. Sitting next to the water unter an iron lantern with fire burning inside, listening to drums beyond the enormous illuminated cherry tree.
I also remember the Kobe Luminaria, the horde of people and the darkness of the streets below huge, gaudy lights. Cell phone screens lit everywhere like stars. This is Richmond's Luminaria, I think, though it is much quieter, wider and exquisitely haunting.
I went to Lewis Ginter in the summer once, with my mother and my grandparents, before my Grandpa died. All I could think of, back then, as I walked past the tea house, was what Japan must be like. I also wondered what I would be like.
I went to Japan and came back, and now I'm here again. A section of the continuity of my life has somehow been extracted and alchemized into the mist of nothing more than a thousand glitteringly nostalgic memories. Occasionally I feel as though that year doesn't exist, and that I've always been here, wondering. I never imagined who I'd be when I came back to America, but here I am. Walking in a sea of Christmas lights with the cold air on my cheeks and a memory of the bittersweet pleasure of international travel singing in my mind, like a glowing, faraway melody. Life is strange, boring, and beautiful, I guess. Suffer me my nostalgia and unexpected sentimentality...