A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

What I mean is that even though they still have arms and legs and tits and crotches like other human beings, extremely old people look more like aliens or beings from outer space.

I’m not kidding. They bowed and thanked the toilet and offered a prayer to save all beings. That one is kind of hilarious and goes like this: As I go for a dump, I pray with all beings that we can remove all filth and destroy the poisons of greed, anger, and foolishness.

in the end it kind of rubs off, and one day after I’d flushed, I turned to the toilet and said, “Thanks, toilet,” and it felt pretty natural.

“Are you very angry?” old Jiko asked one night, in the bath, as I scrubbed her back.

“No,” she said. “It feels good. Don’t stop.”

“You must be very angry,” she said. She spoke so quietly, it was like she was talking to herself, and maybe she was.

in. “Yes,” I told her. “I’m angry, so what?”

“So what am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can fix my dad’s psychological problems, or the dot-com bubble, or the lousy Japanese economy, or my so-called best friend in America’s betrayal of me, or getting bullied in school, or terrorism, or war, or global warming, or species extinctions, right?”

“So of course I feel angry,” I said, angrily.

“So why did you ask?”

“So you could hear the answer.”

<105>106 That’s what she just texted me. That’s how old she says you have to be before your mind really grows up, but since she’s a hundred and four, I’m pretty sure she’s joking.

She logged on. Nothing from the professor. It had been almost a week.

Japanese Shishsetsu and the Instability of the Female “I.”

The Journal of Oriental Metaphysics. Brilliant.

I get it now that writers aren’t exactly the life of the party, and I’m not doing my part to help create an upbeat and cheerful atmosphere around here.

I would say to you, and then we would smile at each other across time like we were friends, because we are friends by now, aren’t we?

It’s Jiko’s instructions on how to develop your superpower.

“Well, Nattchan, you don’t have to worry. You’re not really dead. Your funeral wasn’t real.” I was like, Huh? I kinda already knew that.

She was talking in Japanese, but she used the English word, superpower, only when she said it, it sounded like supah-pawah. Really fast. Supapawa. Or more like SUPAPAWA—!

“Yes,” she said. “Like a SUPAHIRO—! With a SUPAPAWA—!” She squinted at me from behind her thick glasses. “Would you like that?”

Not SUPAHIRO—! With SUPAPAWA—!

Being annihilated in a great big ball of fire was not Haruki #1’s choice, and from what old Jiko said, besides being peaceful, he was also a cheerful, optimistic boy who actually liked being alive, which is not at all the situation with me or my dad.

Old Jiko says that nowadays we young Japanese people are heiwaboke.112 I don’t know how to translate it, but basically it means that we’re spaced out and careless because we don’t understand about war.

Oh, hang on. Cool. Jiko just texted me back and she said it’s okay if I teach you how to do zazen as long as we’re both serious and not just horsing around.

Breathe in, breathe out . . . one. Breathe in, breathe out . . . two.

so when your mind wanders and gets tangled up in crazy thoughts, you don’t have to freak out. It’s no big deal. You just notice it’s happened and drop it, like whatever, and start again from the beginning.

Jiko is sure that if you do it every day, your mind will wake up and you will develop your SUPAPAWA—!

home. Zazen is a home that you can’t ever lose, and I keep doing it because I like that feeling, and I trust old Jiko, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to try to see the world a little more optimistically like she does.

Jiko also says that to do zazen is to enter time completely.

How do you think not-thinking? Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen.

“Have you ever bullied a wave?” Jiko asked me at the beach.

“Try it. Go to the water and wait for the biggest wave and give it a punch. Give it a good kick. Hit it with a stick. Go on.

Just let my body go. Would I be washed out to sea? The sharks would eat my limbs and organs. Little fish would feed on my fingertips. My beautiful white bones would fall to the bottom of the ocean, where anemones would grow upon them like flowers. Pearls would rest in my eye sockets.

“Maketa,” I said, throwing myself down in the sand. “I lost. The ocean won.” She smiled. “Was it a good feeling?” “Mm,” I said. “That’s good,” she said. “Have another rice ball?”

“Up, down, same thing,” she said. It’s a typical Jiko comment, all about pointing to what she calls the not-two120 nature of existence

Jiko looked out across the ocean to where the water met the sky. “A wave is born from deep conditions of the ocean,” she said. “A person is born from deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and rolls along like a wave, until it is time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave.”

I knew that her little wave was not going to last and soon she would join the sea again, and even though I know you can’t hold on to water, still I gripped her fingers a little more

Information is a lot like water; it’s hard to hold on to, and hard to keep from leaking away.

In medieval Japan, people used to believe that earthquakes were caused by an angry catfish who lived under the islands.

In one poignant drawing, seppuku namazu, the Suicide Catfish, slices open his stomach to atone for all the deaths he’s caused. Gold coins pour from the wide slit in his belly.

The association between catfish and earthquakes has persisted into modern times. The Yure Kuru mobile phone app warns users of a coming earthquake, providing information about the location of its epicenter, the arrival time, and the seismic intensity.

“What?” “Japan is coming here.” “What are you talking about?” “The earthquake,” Oliver said. “It moved the coast of Japan closer to us.”

By the end of the summer, with Jiko’s help, I was getting stronger.

strong in my mind. In my mind, I was becoming a superhero, like Jubei-chan, the Samurai Girl, only I was Nattchan, the Super Nun, with abilities bestowed upon me by Lord Buddha that included battling the waves, even if I always lost, and being able to withstand astonishing amounts of pain and hardship.

rest. Jiko says that everything has a spirit, even if it is old and useless, and we must console and honor the things that have served us well.

“You made him run up and down, too?” “Of course. He was a young boy with many troublesome thoughts. He needed lots of exercise.”

“Dad still has troublesome thoughts,” I said, watching the cat ignore me. “Maybe he should come back and live here with us. Maybe you could train him and teach him to be strong again.

Food is a big part of Obon. In Japan, there are thousands of different spirits and ghosts and goblins and monsters who can do tatari and attack you, so just to be on the safe

side we were going to kick things off with a big osegaki124 ceremony, with lots of guests, as well as priests and nuns from a nearby temple who were coming to help us feed the hungry ghosts.