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.