IMAGES OF THE LANDSCAPES AND CULTURES OF

THE PACIFIC RIM AND BEYOND BY SIDNEY ATKINS

 

PHOTO AND TEXT ESSAY No. 8: 'SIX RECORDS OF A FLOATING LIFE'

“He wrote for an audience of his own time and place, and neither of those will ever live again...”

There is a saying in Japanese: 'ichi-go, ichi-e'...which literally means ‘one meeting in a lifetime’. It came from instruction for the tea ceremony, and it meant that one must savor and embrace an occasion because it will never come again. It is an excellent but hard-to-live-up-to motto for a photographer, a poet, a lover, or a teacher. Or anyone.

There are many forms of privilege an individual may enjoy or squander, but among them I would put being in the right place at the right time high on the list. I feel very privileged indeed to have lived or sojourned in some very special places at what was for me the right time, and to have known some very special people. What follows in this essay is more about the places than the people, but of course the two are not really separable, and someday soon I may overcome my shyness enough to talk about the people as individuals more explicitly. But it was the places themselves that drew me and held me.

ENTER 'SIX RECORDS OF A FLOATING LIFE' SLIDE SHOW

CONTACT ME

(all images are copyright Sidney Atkins and may not be reproduced or stored in any form without written permission)

LINKS

Please Visit These Other Websites Designed and Maintained by Sidney Atkins:

Westview Tours- Outdoor Adventure in the Vancouver BC Area (Japanese or English)

Koto Tours- Private Arts and Crafts Tours of Traditional Japan

Santa Cruz Timber Frames- One-of-a-kind Wooden Structures Built in Exacting Japanese Tradition

Bellingham Impressionist Art- Landscapes and More by James Woods