The Bud­dhis­ti­cal­ly inflect­ed " ichi-go ichi‑e" is just one in the vast library of yoji­juku­go, high­ly con­densed apho­ris­tic expres­sions writ­ten with just four char­ac­ters. (Oth­er coun­tries with Chi­nese-influ­enced lan­guages have their ver­sions, includ­ing sajaseon­geo in Korea and chéngyǔ in Chi­na itself.) It descends, as the sto­ry goes, from a slight­ly longer say­ing favored by the six­teenth-cen­tu­ry tea mas­ter Sen no Rikyū, " ichi-go ni ichi-do " (一期に一度).
Just over a year ago, my mother died. It was a few months after my second baby was born and a month before Christmas. She was the last in the generation above me, and this fact reordered things in ways that are only just revealing themselves. This time last year, I was still unravelling months of hospitals, grief and the unmanageable weight of suffering pressing into my postpartum body.
In Troels Carlsen's exhibition Alt flyder - Everything flows - nothing is permanent, and everything is connected. Flora and fauna are quite literally intertwined in Carlsen's large tableaus, often painted with acrylics on intricately collaged archival material sourced from antiquarian bookstores. Dynamic, dancing skeletons with bodies of radiant green springy stems and lush leaves sprout blackberries and pink wildflowers, surrounded by bumblebees. Bodies, bees, flowers and fruit are interdependent in an ancient biological choreography.
Traveling in Bardo interweaves explorations of impermanence in our everyday existence with Slater's girlhood in America and time spent with her Tibetan family in Darjeeling. Like her great-grandfather before her, she spreads guidance about "bardo" between-states, or periods of life transition, to Western audiences. Change is inevitable, can come at any moment, and only by growing our acceptance of uncertainty and endings can we live more fully. Tibetan bardo teachings help us navigate and embrace life in its sorrow and joy.
"Time is a thief." I learned this phrase in elementary school. It was regularly uttered by an administrator who, on the first day of school, would wistfully greet the student body, marveling at how much each child had grown over the summer. As a 10-year-old kid, I didn't put much stock into the musings of a middle-aged vice principal. Decades later, however, I better understand and appreciate the sentiment of her words.
'The pavilion is called A Capsule in Time for many reasons... pavilions have a temporality, which is not about time but about a moment-to embrace and enjoy it.'