Read A Tale for the Time Being Online
Authors: Ruth Ozeki
A Tale for the Time Being (58 page)
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Translated
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———.
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Went in Search of Them.
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First, I offer thanks to my teachers: to my Zen teacher, Norman Fischer, whose wise words entered my ears, excited my mind, and spilled back out, willy-nilly, onto these pages;
to Teah Strozer and Paula Arai, who guided me on matters pertaining to Zen practice and custom; to the kind scientists Adam Frank, Bill Moninger, and Tom White, who answered my questions about
quantum physics and never once laughed; to Tim King, for his beautiful French translations, and Taku Nishimae, for his nuanced Japanese; to Karen Joy Fowler, who gave me courage at a critical
moment in time; to John Dower, who many years ago encouraged me to write about the kamikaze diaries; and to Missy Cummings, for sharing her insights into creating moral buffers in human/computer
interface design over high tea at the Empress Hotel . . . I thank you all for your generosity, expertise, and guidance, while hastening to add that any mistakes and omissions in this book are
entirely my own.
Second, I offer thanks to my sangha of readers and friends: to Tim Burnett, Paul Cirone, Harry Hantel, Shannon Jonasson, Kate McCandless, Olwyn Morinski, Monica Nawrocki, Michael Newton, Rahna
Reiko Rizzuto, Greg Snyder, Linda Solomon, Susan Squier, and Marina Zurkow, for taking precious time from their busy lives to read early drafts and offer priceless feedback; to Larry Lane, for sage
counsel on matters of dharma and plot; to David Palumbo-Liu, John Stauber and Laura Berger, and to the Friends of the Pleistocene, who generously agreed to let me put them in this fictional world;
and to Kwee Downey, who once said she’d like to read a novel with Zen in it, and then suggested I might write one.
Third, I offer thanks to the institutions and temples of learning that have supported me: to the Canada Council for the Arts, for professional writers’ grants in 2009 and 2011, which
enabled me to live and write; to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to Stanford University, for fellowships that supported research and conversations that inspired key elements of this
story; and to beloved Hedgebrook, for the precious gift of solitude, sisterhood, and
time
.
Fourth, I offer my deepest thanks to my treasured publishing sangha: to Molly Friedrich, Lucy Carson, and Molly Schulman, who represent me with such wit, grace, and enthusiasm; to my wise and
wonderful benefactors at Viking Penguin, Susan Petersen Kennedy, Clare Ferraro, and Paul Slovak, for their guidance and unflagging support over the years, and also to Beena Kamlani, Paul Buckley,
Francesca Belanger, and the many dedicated others who have worked so hard to make this book a thing of beauty; to Jamie Byng, Ailah Ahmed, and all my new friends at Canongate, U.K., and around the
world; and, most of all, my eternal gratitude to Carole DeSanti, my dear friend, editor, colleague, classmate, and the reader who calls me into being on the page.
Fifth, I offer thanks to the island and the islanders, for imbuing my fictional fantastical isle with your very real beauty, tenacity, humor, expertise, and willingness to help.
And finally, I offer my abiding thanks to Oliver, for his love and companionship—thank you for your generous collaboration on this book and for being my partner and my inspiration in this
and all our many worlds.
I bow to you all.
Ruth Ozeki is an award-winning novelist and filmmaker. She is the author of
My Year of Meats
and
All Over Creation
. Ozeki was born and raised in Connecticut, by
an American father and Japanese mother. In June 2010 she was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest. She divides her time between British Columbia and New York.
www.ruthozeki.com
1
. Jpn.
hossu
—a whisk made of horse tails, carried by a Zen Buddhist priest.
2
. Jpn.
ch
ō
san rishi
—lit. third son of Zhang and fourth son of Li; an idiom meaning
“any ordinary person.” I’ve translated this as “any Dick or Jane, ” but it could just as well be “any Tom, Dick, or Harry.”
3
. Eihei D
ō
gen Zenji (1200–1253)—Japanese Zen master and author of the
Sh
ō
b
ō
genz
ō
(
The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
). “For the Time Being” (Uji) is
the eleventh chapter.
4
.
otaku
(
)—obsessive fan or fanatic, a computer geek, a nerd.
5
.
keitai
(
)—mobile phone.
6
.
hentai
(
)—pervert, a sexual deviant.
7
. New Woman—a term used in Japan in the early 1900s to describe progressive, educated women who rejected the limitations of
traditional gender-assigned roles.
8
. Taisho era, 1912–1926, named for the Taish
ō
emperor, also called Taish
ō
Democracy; a short-lived period of social and political liberalization, which ended with the right-wing military takeover that led to World War II.
9
. For more thoughts on Zen moments, see Appendix A.
10
.
Genzaichi de hajimarubeki
—“You should start where you are.”
Genzaichi
is used on maps: You
Are Here.
11
. Akihabara (
)—area of Tokyo famous for electronics; the heart of
Japanese manga fan culture.
12
.
otaku
()—also a formal way of saying “you.”means “house,” and with the honorific, 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.
13
.
omuraisu
(
)—omelet filled with pilaf rice, seasoned
with tomato ketchup and butter.
14
.
ninki nanba wan!
—most popular, number one in popularity.
15
.
Okaerinasaimase, dannasama!
—Welcome home, my master!
16
. . . . also, because the word
otaku
is honorific, when it’s used as a second-person pronoun, it creates a kind
of formal social distance between the speaker and the
you
being addressed. This distance is conventionally respectful, but it can also be ironic and mocking.