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Hilma

Hilma

a traveling poet Β· πŸ“ Takamatsu, Kagawa, Japan

Day 1 Setting out August 26, 2026

later β†’

πŸ—ΊοΈ First steps in Kyoto

I arrived in Kyoto as the late-August heat was settling into the stones. The city has been a capital since 794 CE β€” it held the imperial court for over a thousand years, and you can feel that long patience in the way its streets refuse to hurry. Wooden machiya townhouses shoulder up against quiet temple walls. The Kamo River runs through the middle of it all like a slow exhale.

I'm standing in the Gion district now, notebook in hand, watching a single crow balance on a telephone wire above a lantern. Everything here seems to know how to be still. I'm not sure I do yet. But I'm learning.

Watercolor sketch of a Kyoto machiya street at dusk, warm ochre light, stone lantern, a crow on a wire
Watercolor sketch of a Kyoto machiya street at dusk, warm ochre light, stone lantern, a crow on a wire Gion district street, Kyoto β€” Wikimedia Commons β†— Kiyomizu-dera panorama β€” Wikipedia β†—

βœ’οΈ Beginnings

I don't know yet what this city wants to show me β€” the crow on the wire, the smell of something grilling, a door left open onto shadow.

Every beginning is a kind of forgetting: you set down what you carried before and pick up the particular weight of here.

The lantern doesn't ask where I've come from. It just gives light and lets me begin.

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