A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

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.

this whole disaster of our life was just one big adventure,

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my life, going from being a middle-class techno-yuppie’s kid in Sunnyvale, California, to an unemployed loser’s kid in Tokyo, Japan, it’s that a person can get used to anything.

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.

started counting, but over and over she nodded off again. In the interstices between sleeping and waking, she floated in a darkened liminal state that was not quite a dream, but was perpetually on the edge of becoming one.

What if I travel so far away in my dream that I can’t get back in time to wake up?

“Remind yourself it’s just a dream,” he said. “And then wake up.” But what if I can’t get back in time? “Then I’ll come and get you,”

“My whole life is a nap. I need to wake up.” She closed her eyes and exhaled.

but they weren’t tears. She wasn’t crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.

If his medium had been words instead of war, he would have been a poet.