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d7172f4
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Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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cfb7403
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Am I crazy?" she asked. "I feel like I am sometimes." "Maybe," he said, rubbing her forehead. "But don't worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It's your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It's a good thing not a bad thing."
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mindfulness
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Ruth Ozeki |
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f6d8aa4
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Life is fleeting. Don't waste a single moment of your precious life. Wake up now! And now! And now!
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Ruth Ozeki |
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5184700
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I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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764ea1e
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Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader's eye. Handwriting, by contrast, resists the eye, reveals its meaning slowly, and is as intimate as skin.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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b8d2597
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She smiled. "Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories. Good night, my dear Nao."
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Ruth Ozeki |
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1e83066
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That's what it feels like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it in order to write it down, I change it, and I can't ever get it back.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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216ba53
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Information is a lot like water; it's hard to hold on to, and hard to keep from leaking away.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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3b9a5af
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But memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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3388b27
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Do all kids have to worry about their parents' mental health? The way society is set up, parents are supposed to be the grown-up ones and look after the kids, but a lot of times it's the other way around.
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mental-health
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Ruth Ozeki |
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5883a3d
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I believe it doesn't matter what it is, as long as you can find something concrete to keep you busy while you are living your meaningless life.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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bd13b12
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Do not think that time simply flies away. Do not understand "flying" as the only function of time. If time simply flew away, a separation would exist between you and time. So if you understand time as only passing, then you do not understand the time being. To grasp this truly, every being that exists in the entire world is linked together as moments in time, and at the same time they exist as individual moments of time. Because all momen..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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413a40f
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It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit. And when I multiplied that sad feeling by all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furiously writing and posting to their lonely little pages that nobody has time to read because they're all so busy writing and posting, it kind of broke my heart.
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truth
cyberspace
internet
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Ruth Ozeki |
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94c8572
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What if I travel so far away in my dreams that I can't get back in time to wake up?
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Ruth Ozeki |
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a38560d
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And if you decide not to read anymore, hey, no problem, because you're not the one I was waiting for anyway. But if you decide to read on, then guess what? You're my kind of time being and together we'll make magic!
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Ruth Ozeki |
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f5cc777
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For the time being Words scatter Are they fallen leaves?
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words
leaves
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Ruth Ozeki |
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0851c9d
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The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist ? It feels like it exists, but where is it ? And if it did exists, but doesn't now, then where did it go ?
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time
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Ruth Ozeki |
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8121287
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Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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6aeb86c
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For the time being, the entire earth and the boundless sky.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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cf1823e
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Assumptions and expectations will kill any relationship, so let's you and me not go there, okay?
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Ruth Ozeki |
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a38b45b
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She sat back on her heels and nodded. The thought experiment she proposed was certainly odd, but her point was simple. Everything in the universe was constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives. That's what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again. And just like that, you die.
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time
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Ruth Ozeki |
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58c11d8
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An unfinished book. left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will and ruthless determination to tame it again.
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writing
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Ruth Ozeki |
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cded63f
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There are lots of superheroes with different superpowers, and some of them are big and flashy, like super strength and super speed, and molecular restructuring, and force fields. But these abilities are really not so different from the superpower stuff that old Jiko could do, like moving superslow, or reading people's minds, or appearing in doorways, or making people feel okay about themselves by just being there.
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love
superpowers
superheroes
grandma
japan
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Ruth Ozeki |
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7be0466
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Yes," I told her. "I'm angry, so what?" ..... I went on, giving her an executive summary of my crappy life. .... "So of course I feel angry," I said angrily. "What do you expect? It was a stupid thing to ask." "Yes," she agreed. "It was a stupid thing to ask. I see that you're angry. I don't need to ask such a stupid thing to understand that." "So why did you ask?" Slowly she turned herself around, pivoting on her knees, until finally she w..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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49d0b3c
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No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I have this hope, I can endure any pain.
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pain
hope
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Ruth Ozeki |
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c817929
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Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. Our collective norm.
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media
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Ruth Ozeki |
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8ba1a7b
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The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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686df02
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He's got this thing about Canada. He says it's like America only with health care and no guns, and you can live up to your potential there and not have to worry about what society thinks or about getting sick or getting shot.
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humor
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Ruth Ozeki |
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3ea778c
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But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It's already then.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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1493987
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At first I was like, No way am I saying that, but when you hang out with people who are always being supergrateful and appreciating things and saying thank you, in the end it kind of rubs off, and one day after I'd flushed, I turned to the toilet and said, "Thanks, toilet," and it felt pretty natural. I mean, it's the kind of thing that's okay to do if you're in a temple on the side of a mountain, but you'd better not try it in your junior ..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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ff8f16e
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She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.
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humanity
society
new-york-city
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Ruth Ozeki |
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30ce0e8
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True freedom comes from being unknown.
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freedom
fame
society
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Ruth Ozeki |
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d8feebb
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The way you write ronin is Lang Ren with the character for wave and the character for person, which is pretty much how I feel, like a little wave person, floating around on the stormy sea of life.
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life
stormy
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Ruth Ozeki |
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9d57338
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When I run out of the things I love, I move on to the things I don't hate too much, and sometimes I even discover that I can love the things I think I hate.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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1e72506
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Jiko: "Surfer, wave, same thing." "That's just stupid, " I said. " A surfer's a person. A wave is a wave. How can they be the same?" Jiko looked out across the ocean to where the water met the sky. "A wave is born from deep conditions of the ocean. A person is born from deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and rolls along like a wave, until it is time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave."
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wave
ocean
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Ruth Ozeki |
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9743c5b
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Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.
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zen
meditation
home
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Ruth Ozeki |
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58c886a
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The ancient Greeks believed that when you read aloud, it was actually the dead, borrowing your tongue, in order to speak again.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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09ba6ed
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Live. For Now. For the time being.
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time
live
wisdom
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Ruth Ozeki |
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283bca2
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there's the fact of her being a hundred and four years old. I keep saying that's her age, but actually I'm just guessing. We don't really know for sure how old she is, and she claims she doesn't remember, either. When you ask her, she says, "Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne." .... (footnote) Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne -- "I have been alive for a very long time, haven't I?" Totally impossible to translate, but t..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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2e3c5ae
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I helped Jiko to her feet and we walked back to the bus stop together, holding hands again. I was still thinking about what she said about waves, and it made me sad because I knew that her little wave was not going to last and soon she would join the sea again, and even though I know you can't hold on to water , still I gripped her fingers a little more tightly to keep her from leaking away.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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e0e0102
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I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.
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wisdom
time-being
memory
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Ruth Ozeki |
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9e6c249
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I believe that in the deepest places in their hearts, people are violent and take pleasure in hurting each other.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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ab7c720
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Where should I start? I texted my old Jiko this question, and she wrote back this: Xian Zai Di deShi marubeki. You should start where you are.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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8fa7b1d
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Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid cafe in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad Chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present, writing this and..
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Ruth Ozeki |