We All Have a Buddhist Nun Inside Us. What's a time being? You, reading this, are a time being, along with everyone else who is, was, or has been. And we're all floating around, bumping into each other at random, like bits of trash in the. The GPGP is in the middle of a gyre, a circular- moving current of water that draws in and traps debris. Condoms, plastic six- pack rings, plastic bags, water bottles, marine debris all float and whirl in the GPGP. The GPGP is a key catalyst and image in Ruth Ozeki's. As Ruth reads about Nao's life in Japan. And the reader is sucked in. A central theme is this relationship between reader and writer: how a writer can shape the reader's life, how the reader can identify and feel kinship with an improbable writer. I talked with Ozeki about her book, the idea of . We met for coffee in the West Village on a blisteringly cold day in January. Do you enjoy the opportunity to reflect on a book and how it's interpreted? RUTH OZEKI. Anybody who writes or understands story or genre understands that the way you create farce and comedy is through repetition. Anything you repeat often enough becomes funny. And it loses its reality, it loses its authenticity, and it loses its seriousness. Even if it's a comedy, it's still the most serious thing in your life. And then the book goes out in the world, and you talk about it . You say the same things over and over again, and eventually you start to sound ridiculous to yourself. And that's a problem, because here's this thing, this child of your mind that you start to feel is ungainly and misshapen and absurd.
So that's the downside of it. The upside is when you're asked things you've never been asked before. It can be a great chance to reflect on process, and very often a question will spark an insight that you haven't had before. Absolutely. In a way, it's absurd, because my work is over. My job is completely done. It's been done for a long time now. I haven't made any contribution to the making of this book since a year ago ? So the book has nothing to do with me anymore! It doesn't belong to me anymore. So there's nothing I can say. A Tale for the Time Being is a novel by Ruth L. Ozeki narrated by two characters, a sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl in Tokyo who keeps a diary, and a Japanese. Get Instant Access to free Read PDF Diary Of An Airedale A Terriers Tale at Our Ebooks Unlimited Database. DIARY OF AN AIREDALE A TERRIERS TALE. I can't give you any insight into this book, because it's not my book. It's our book. The neat thing about novels is the novel is a field of interaction, a field of collaboration. So it's my job to create the parameters of that field, and then I propose it to the world, and then you and other readers step into the field. And to go back to this idea of quantum many- worlds, the. It's a many- worlds phenomenon. The worlds proliferate, which I think is very cool. But in a cynical note, you quote Milan Kundera . But I enjoy that he thought of this back in 1. Internet. Not to mention Twitter. Right. I love his prescience. I love that he thought of it back then. It's not that I disagree with him, it's just that I agree that the Internet is not. There are other things going on involving understanding and access .. I think the Internet is kind of a gyre, like the one I wrote about in there . Information is kind of like plastic confetti in the gyre: It gets ground up into smaller and smaller and smaller particles. How do you make yourself present? In terms of techniques and practices, I am a meditator. It's a tried and true practice that's all about being in time. I mean, that's what meditation is: to be in time. You're just sitting there and being in time; you're not doing anything else! So that makes it pretty easy to drop into the moment when you're writing and to stay there. The present moment is like this endlessly receding thing. There's no way to grab hold of it. There's no way to catch it, to pin it down. If you start thinking about that when you're writing, you probably won't write. I try not to. But there is something very beautiful about writing by hand . You don't get that same idea of the slow emergence of language. The millimeter by millimeter language emerging through line, through word, through sentence, through paragraph. The character. Do you miss this place while you're away? Oh yeah. Like anyone else, I suffer from that never- happy- where- you- are syndrome. When I'm here I'm longing for the Island . But actually, aside from theater, museums, library, cultural institutions, interesting people and all of those kinds of things, what I really miss? You'd think going to an island in the middle of nowhere is a great place to be alone, but it's not. If you really want to be known, move to a small community. Because of course, the flipside of New York is that it's easy to feel lonely in a big city. Both have their merits and demerits. I haven't, but it's a good reminder. Like everyone else, I want to read the whole collection. I'm going to take her collection on the road with me on my book tour. Unfortunately I think I'll have to bring it on i. Books. Ah. I haven't made the transition yet. Don't, if you can help it. It totally changes the experience. Right now I'm reading. The discussion of the experience of the moment is so Woolfian, actually. Right! She talks about that very often, all the time. She talks about moments of being and moments of non- being, and how we spend so much of our time in moments of non- being. It's so beautiful. If I could just be a bit more like her, as a writer.. Wouldn't you be happy? I really think I would. Besides Munro, do you have other favorite Canadian authors? I've always liked Carol Shields. Margaret Atwood, of course. I especially like Margaret Atwood's essays. In particular, there's that beautiful essay . Writing is the act of negotiating with the dead. I was reading that while working on. Could you tell me about the Jiko figures in your life? I don't know that I have any; she was kind of a wishful thought. But I also like to think we all have our own inner Jikos, the archetypal character who serves as a moral compass. She's very much a part of our folklore. So I think that's why people like her: they recognize her, because we all have one. There were definitely influences, though. I see a lot of my mother in Jiko. There's a real Buddhist nun. She's most famous for translating. When she was a young woman, she wrote about sex from a woman's point of view. And when she translated. Yeah, like I said, she's.
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