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0f19a08
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Premonitions are coincidences waiting to happen," he said, without looking up. "I" --
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Ruth Ozeki |
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283b7b8
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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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2add8cf
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Blessed Stars, please make this world into a place where we will never again be forced to kill an enemy whom we cannot hate. Were such a thing to come about, I would not complain even if my body were torn to pieces, again and again.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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7ee30f9
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Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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e37e833
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Later on, I asked her [her mother], "How does it feel?" "What?" "When you can't remember things. Does it frighten you? Do you feel sad?" "Well, not really. I have this condition, you see. It's called osteo...ost..." "You mean Alzheimer's?" I said, helping her out. She looked astonished. "Yes! How on earth did you know that?" "Just a guess..." "I can never remember the name," she explained. "Of course not." "It affects my memory..." "...And ..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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b53c1d1
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time isn't something you can spread out like butter or jam, and death isn't going to hang around and wait for you to finish whatever you happen to be doing before it zaps you
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Ruth Ozeki |
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a310504
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Stocking up" is what our robust Americans called it, laughing nervously, because profligate abundance automatically evokes its opposite, the unspoken specter of dearth."
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Ruth Ozeki |
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6418d37
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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 exist but doesn't now, then where did it go?
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Ruth Ozeki |
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87c4537
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In trying to stop your tears, I was already obeying the officer's command to the letter, not out of patriotic allegiance, but out of cowardice, in order not to feel the pain of my own heart, breaking.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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33227e5
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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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5b8cc31
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Once in a while a story is spectacular enough to break through and attract media attention, but the swell quickly subsides into the general glut of bad news over which we, as citizens, have so little control.
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spectacle
media
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Ruth Ozeki |
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0fcf5e8
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I would like to think of my 'ignorance' less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterizes the end of the millennium. If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance.
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powerlessness
knowledge
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Ruth Ozeki |
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d6cf54d
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As I bathe myself I pray with all beings that we can purify body and mind and clean ourselves inside and out.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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35031bd
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When she had him along, the world looked different, and she liked the way she saw things she'd never seen before. . . But she noticed other things, too -- the way she herself felt acutely visible with the baby in her arms, and the way some people's faces lit up when they saw a child. His warm weight was like living ballast, thrumming with energy, giving her substance. Folks were drawn to that.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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a730835
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As someone who has to teach for a living, I shouldn't be saying this, but the planet can do quite well without books.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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a842a03
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Could Pesto be his own observer? Interesting question. He used to like to raise his leg and study his asshole. It didn't seem like this observation caused him to split into multiple cats with multiple assholes.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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4f736df
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Adjunct teachers are the professorial equivalent of the migrant Mexican farm laborers hired during harvest. If you can get a good contract at the same farm every year, where the farmer pays you on time and doesn't cheat or abuse you, then it's in your best interest to show up consistently from year to year.
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migrant-laborers
mexicans
teaching
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Ruth Ozeki |
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62b6487
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Time plays tricks on mothers. It teases you with breaks and brief caesuras, only to skip wildly forward, bringing breathtaking changes to your baby's body. Only he wasn't a baby anymore, and how often did I have to learn that? The lessons were painful.
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motherhood
time
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Ruth Ozeki |
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153e3fa
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I asked her once why she liked to hear stories like this, and she explained to me that when she got ordained, she shaved her head and took some vows to be a bosatsu.21 One of her vows was to save all beings, which basically means that she agreed not to become enlightened until all the other beings in this world get enlightened first. It's kind of like letting everybody else get into the elevator ahead of you. When you calculate all the bein..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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afdb903
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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 critical to the whole world.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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d71cbd3
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If you've ever tried to keep a diary, then you'll know that the problem of trying to write about the past really starts in the present: No matter how fast you write, you're always stuck in the and you can never catch up to what's happening ; which means that is pretty much doomed to extinction.
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time
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Ruth Ozeki |
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5f487c5
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You wonder about me. I wonder about you. Who are you and what are you doing? Are you in a New York subway car hanging from a strap, or soaking in your hot tub in Sunnyvale? Are you sunbathing on a sandy beach in Phuket, or having your toenails buffed in Brighton? Are you a male or a female or somewhat in between? Is your girlfriend cooking you a yummy dinner, or are you eating cold Chinese noodles from a box? Are you curled up with your bac..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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27d2d34
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Her failure didn't matter, because at least she'd been true to her impossible dream until the very end.
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dreams
inspirational
nothing-is-impossible
trying-hard
end
failure
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Ruth Ozeki |
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3929a5c
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Otaku (ota) is also a formal way of saying "you". ta means "house", and with the honorific o, it literally means "your honorable house", implying that you are less of a person and more of a place, fixed in space and contained under a roof. Makes sense that the stereotype of the modern otaku is a shut-in, an obsessed loner and social isolate who rarely leaves his house."
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otaku
language
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Ruth Ozeki |
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df0d298
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Whenever I think about my stupid empty life, I come to the conclusion that I'm just wasting my time, and I'm not the only one. Everybody I know is the same, except for old Jiko. Just wasting time, killing time, feeling crappy. And what does it mean to waste time anyway? If you waste time is it lost forever? And if time is lost forever, what does that mean? It's not like you get to die any sooner, right? I mean, if you want to die sooner, yo..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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7c5f9cc
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Because, you see, this feeling of alive is not so easy to experience
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Ruth Ozeki |
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64a3c4d
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Next you just relax and hold really still and concentrate on your breathing. You don't have to make a big deal about it. It's not like you're thinking about breathing, but you're not not thinking about it either. It's kind of like when you're sitting on the beach and watching the waves lapping up on the sand or some little kids you don't know playing in the distance. You're just noticing everything that's going on, both inside you and outsi..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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a0cb044
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You know how good-byes feel. How the air gets excited when all its ions and electrical charges are disrupted, first by the intent to leave and later by the leaving itself. Then, when the bodies move away through space, they create empty pockets where feelings get caught and eddy around in the vacuum, creating little vortices of relief or sadness or confusion.
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sadness
ruth-ozeki
leaving
goodbye
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Ruth Ozeki |
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82dc4be
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Time interacts with attention in funny ways. At one extreme, when Ruth was gripped by the compulsive mania and hyperfocus of an Internet search, the hours seemed to aggregate and swell like a wave, swallowing huge chunks of her day. At the other extreme, when her attention was disengaged and fractured, she experienced time at its most granular, wherein moments hung around like particles, diffused and suspended in standing water. There used ..
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Ruth Ozeki |
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bb4baaf
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I knew I was dead, even if my parents didn't notice.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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f6bb4a2
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But maybe that was the trick--to accept the responsibility and forgo the control? To love without expectation?
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Ruth Ozeki |
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43e2c47
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A paradox for sure, but such a relief.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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367b776
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I thought I understood everything about cruelty, but it turns out, I didn't understand anything at all.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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70b4b9c
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Time itself is being, he wrote, and all being is time . . . In essence, everything in the entire universe is intimately linked with each other as moments in time, continuous and separate. Ruth
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Ruth Ozeki |
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6cce7e9
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Everything in the universe is 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.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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b4a96c8
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Everything in the universe is 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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Ruth Ozeki |
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a3938d5
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Don't waste a single moment of your precious life! Wake up now! And now! And now! 6.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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d7776db
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this feeling of alive is not so easy to experience. Even although life is a thing that seems to have some kind of weight and shape, this is only an illusion. Our feeling of alive has no real edge or boundary.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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0075674
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Suicide feels like One Authentic Thing. Suicide feels like Meaning of Life. Suicide feels like having the Last Word. Suicide feels like stopping Time Forever. But of course this is all just delusion, too! Suicide is just part of life, so it is part of the delusion.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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b93490f
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Time interacts with attention in funny ways.
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Ruth Ozeki |
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9c4c82a
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I don't mind the risk, because the risk makes it more interesting
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Ruth Ozeki |
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dee7fc1
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Assumptions suck. They're like expectations. Assumptions and expectations will kill any relationship
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Ruth Ozeki |
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a81bcc7
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And what does it mean to waste time anyway? If you waste time is it lost forever? And if time is lost forever, what does that mean? It's not like you get to die any sooner, right?
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Ruth Ozeki |
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314782c
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But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It's already then. Then is the opposite of now. So saying now obliterates its meaning, turning it into exactly what it isn't.
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Ruth Ozeki |