Born and raised in the city, I realized that, come to think of it, I had never walked on an 'azemichi' (a path between rice fields) in my entire life.
Just walking on an azemichi.
The wind touches my skin, and I feel the wind with my eyes from the swaying of large trees. What kind of wind will blow next?
At just the right moment, a bird sings.
Sometimes, a chorus of frogs that makes my ears tingle.
The spider's illumination I found in the darkness was far more precious than the illuminations in the city lights.
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The richness of nature is, needless to say, beautiful in itself, but
I realized, while listening to the ambient music Yuka created for the Azemichi fashion show in the middle of rice fields surrounded by mountains at midnight, that things created by humans can resonate with nature, enhancing each other and making us more sensitive to natural phenomena.
Could 'attire' be like that too?
The original human activity in the pastoral landscape, a heart that shares joy with nature.
The heart of Yumi-san's poem titled 'statement' becoming closer to my own heart than before, might have been the biggest reward during my busy stay in Kyoto.
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Reading the wind
The wind is a path.
It is a path of water.
It is a path of time.
Shall we call it reading time?
We are those who drift through time as wind.
The wind that slips past "me" is like a light from the future, like a voice from the future,
Its trajectory rustles, becoming a white path, drifting.
The gravity of the past that pulled "me" thickens with each gust of wind, becoming heavier as I advance,
Yet, like a sail on a ship, it strengthens me.
Flowing water never stops, even as it meanders,
If there's an obstacle, it waits patiently there.
Quietly enduring.
Knowing that someday, it will accumulate strength and volume to overcome it.
Water, too,
waits for time,
reads time.
I take one step, then another,
believing that only this step is "now."
The wind caressing my cheek, life reflected in my eyes, gleaming blue-green trees,
I flow and walk with the world.
Suddenly.
Suddenly, I wonder.
How long will I remember this path flowing behind me, this memory?
This memory I've considered strength,
How long will I weave and walk with pain, joy, misery, compassion, authority, precepts, beauty, and mildness?
Until when should I keep it as my trajectory?
I stop,
and wish to be an existence that is "just me."
To be "just life."
Simply perceive the wind that passes through me.
Ah, I thought, perhaps the time of feeling is precisely now.
What I had perceived as the past, what I had held onto dearly,
gently slipped from my hand, released,
and compassion and intuition lay there.
It will flow like a white dragon and fly with me.
I drift within that wind.
In the spacetime of now,
I drift.
Yuumi Yoshii / Ph:Keitaro Oguro