Not Kyoto

- Written while listening to the soundtrack Suleyman the Magnificent, which you can find here.

For years, when the deepest longing to be somewhere else has struck me, Kyoto or Nara has always been the destination.  The little place in my heart that stores up treasures would tune its shamisen and play me memories of Todaiji, of the Philosopher's Path.

Tonight, I'm longing for the other end of the Silk Road, and it's not the crowded, graceful, grey-tiled roofs and reserved buddha-gazes of those ancient places that I want.  Another imperial city calls to me instead.

Ah, God, to be in Istanbul with the light fading from the sky, to see the Bosphorus changing from blue-green to watered silver silk under the light of a waxing moon.  To be able to look up and see the minarets piercing the growing night like needles occupied with stitching the heavens to the earth.  To be able to hear the muezzins of Sultanahmet and Ayasofya calling the azan, that incredible moment when the accidental harmonies inevitably occur, stopping the breath and the heart with only sound.

To stumble over rough cobblestones in cool air to a place where a meal as simple or as complicated as the palate can stand is waiting.  To be with friends who complement, contrast, embrace without questions, even if you've only known them for days that have somehow become lifetimes.

To feel History (very much with a capital H) surround you like an embroidered garment of many silken layers that flutter in the wind, showing now this embellishment, now this flaw in the pattern.  To be surrounded constantly by faded empires, to see the still-glorious monuments of world-rulers now returned to dust.

I yearn for Byzantium, for Constantinople, for Istanbul. Tonight I will sleep and walk there again, feel the cold marble of Ayasofya trail beneath my dreaming fingers, watch the crowds surge like the steady tides.  No distance can keep all of it from me.  One tiny corner I have managed to carry away for myself for the times - like now - when I have the most need.