“Evanescent” is a haunting word. Even the sound of it suggests something lovely, but fleeting. Here today, gone tomorrow. It reminds me of one concept that I learned about when studying Japanese, and which I always loved: Uki-yo, the “Floating World.” It described the momentary pleasures of life, enjoyed by the growing middle class of the old capital of Edo (now Tokyo) and other growing cities in the seventeenth/eighteenth centuries. The “new rich” had money to spend. The Floating World was what we might call today a “cool” lifestyle. Actors, prostitutes, geisha, samurai, singers, artists… all populated the Floating World. There was a huge flowering of the arts.
But underneath it all was the sense (a play on words, actually) that this world would soon pass – like the cherry blossom that flowers briefly with incredible beauty, and then is gone. I hope these few photos capture something of that evanescence.
This work by artist/photographer Berette Macaulay, with its blurry depiction of herself, captures that evanescence perfectly for me. She was living in New York at the time (early 2014, when she held an exhibition in Kingston). My photo.
There is nothing more momentary than the spoken word – although with our recording techniques, we can still capture it (and every hand gesture) at a poetry reading like this one, where Millicent Graham is reading. (My photo)
Fish in a pond, changing moments in time, at the Alhambra Inn in Kingston. (My photo)
At a bird workshop at Seville Great House last year, we were interrupted by the loud cries of a Jamaican Crow. It was threatened by the presence of a Red-Tailed Hawk. It chose a high but precarious perch as a lookout. But it was a windy day, and he could not keep his balance for long. A moment after I took this photograph, he flew away.
There is perhaps nothing more fleeting than mist on the mountains. One of the pleasures of visiting Jamaica’s Blue Mountains is watching the ever-changing pattern of mist, as it comes and goes on the mountainsides. (My photo)
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