A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

Because, you see, 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. So we Japanese people say that our life sometimes feels unreal, just like a dream. Death is certain. Life is always changing, like a puff of wind in the air, or a wave in the sea, or even a thought in the mind. So making a suicide is finding the edge of life. It stops life in time, so we can grasp what shape it is and feel it is real, at least for just a moment. It is trying to make some real solid thing from the flow of life that is always changing. Nowadays, in modern technological culture, sometimes we hear people complain that nothing feels real anymore. Everything in the modern world is plastic or digital or virtual. But I say, that was always life! That is life itself! Even Plato discussed that things in this life are only shadows of forms. So this is what I mean by the changing and unreal feeling of life. Maybe you would like to ask me how does suicide make life feel real? Well, by cutting into illusions. By cutting into pixels and finding blood. By entering the cave of mind and walking into fire. By making shadows bleed. You can feel life completely by taking it away. Suicide feels like One Authentic Thing.