”Have
you ever tried to fight a wave?”. That's the question our
main character Naoko gets from her great grandmother in ”A Tale for
the Time Being”
by Ruth Ozeki. The two of them are
watching the sea standing side by side. Naoko is a sixteen year old
japaneese school girl with a rather dark everyday life situation. That, until she becomes part of her 104 year-old buddhist great
grandmothers monestry during a summerholiday.
The
story being told is a transpasific tale á la magical realism, where
disconnection is a central part of the main characters ambiguous lives
and platforms of communication. The perspective shifts between Nao
and the 40-50 year old writer Ruth, who finds Nao's diary, some old
letters and a kamikazi-watch inside a lunchbox in a plasticbag on the
beach. Ruth lives in a remote island in Canada with her husband after
having lived her entire life in New York, and she suspects that Nao's
story might have been brought to her by the tsunami.
So
this is Ozeki's setting to deal with a broad pallette of modern
issues such as: climate changes, suicide, internet bullying, remote
lifestyles and digitalisation of war. On top of that Ruth Ozeki
delicately explores which space the buddhist traditions have in a
modern society; in the forever accelerating new. I'll dig more into
that later on.
As
the title reveals, the book deals a great deal with time. The
execution of this theme is so amazingly put narratively, because time
itself becomes as hackable as the internet. In the end of the novelle
the last pages in Nao's diary are suddenly ”deleted” and then
reappears, which is presented parallely with the knowledge of a
software developed by Nao's dad to protect Nao. The software can delete
information (and thereby traces of internet bullying) on the
internet. Furthermore the very diary Nao's been writing in, has from
the beginning been a hacked piece made out of Marcel Proust's ”A la
reverche du temps perdu”: "In search of the lost time". And to Nao
the diary most certainly becomes the outlet for her longing back in
time to California and Sunnyvale, where she grew up. A time she links
with a ”lost identity”. In the same time the diary put forth ”a
coming of age”-process, where Nao explores her buddhist great
grandmother Jiko's attitude to life - a potential ”new identity”
- and the story of Jiko's son Haruki#1, whom she lost, when he was a
young kamikazi-pilot – ironically - in the second world war against
the US. In a sense Nao explores the time lost, because she needs
someone within her own family to be her hero, when her father fails:
A fatherfigure who's upsest with committing suicide as a way of
ending ”time”, but when the two of them finally dig into
their uncle's history together they luckily catch up on time - aswell
as their own relation and both of their lifewills are reestablished;
reconnected so to say. Daughter and father too.
In
a sense the historical level is the vertical level of time that the
book explores, but the novelle is also devided into the two
maincharacters' Naoko and Ruth's different worlds that might be seen
as the more horisontal level (that is nonetheless still staggered
timewise) exploring parallel ways of living. Ruth though gets to
travel in time without even noticing – while reading, the vertical
becomes parallel, but when Ruth finds and reads Naoki's diary on a
beachside, Nao is around 10 years from being that 16 year old girl,
that Ruth so lively wants to safe (from comitting suicide and so
on...). In that sense Ruth's reading is a timecapsel and a
disconnection from her actual life and a 1-1-experience of time. This
is similar for Naoko, who also disconnects from the real world with
her writing. In her case it means writing to her imaginary
friend in an unknown future, at time to come.
Naoko
adores her reader as a best friend or a potential lover, and Ruth too
identifies with Naoko and gets motherly feelings for this japaneese
mystery of a teenager. Both are having severe problems connecting in
their own worlds. Ruth with her writing and her islander lifestyle
and Naoko with the japaneese culture and in general other social
beings. Except from her grandmother, who's ironically truely
representing ancient Japan, but with her very own unique track of
history.
The
complexity of this book is obvious, but it also mirrors the
complexity of modern society and our growing awareness of lifestyle
choises mixed with a sense of both destiny and lack of resiliance and
control. In fact resiliance becomes a major theme in Nao's
development, where we get to hear about her being bullied in school.
First in a very violent manor, changing to a staging of her funeral
in class asewell as online and finally; with a worst case scenario
assault. This one of course, also gets filmed and ends up on the
internet with an auction of Nao's bloddy underwear. The difference
this time though is, that Nao's resilliance has been strengthened
after a summer in Niko's monestry learning to sit zazen and try to
find, what Niko calls her SUPAPAWA (p. 190).
In other words the
buddhist meditation is a way to find ease within yourself even in
extreme situations. In that sense meditation is a coping strategy in
line with the ideas of Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen's thoughts in
”The distracted mind: Ancient Brains in a high-Tech World”. The
book focuses on the meditators' ability to gain cognitive control and
thereby excell ”on selective attention tasks […] including
sustained attention, speed of processing, and working memory
capacity” (p. 190). This study mainly focus on meditation's
instrumental values and highlights the ability to get higher grades.
To Nao, meditation is indeed also a help to selfhelp tool, when she
finally chooses to rebel with renewed SUPAPAWAS, a shaped skull and a
”I don't give a fuck attitude” in her classroom and leave the
terrified classmates behind. This way of not showing any signs of
mental defeat though your body has been tortured is a highly
provocative and terrifying response to the person executing the
torture.
So
when Nico asks Nao, whether she has tried to fight a wave. This is
what she prepares Nao for: The movements of the peer pressure, but
also modernity, capitalism, society's expectations and any kind of
discomfort related to suffering.
Zisek
iroinically notes that: ”Although buddhism presents itself as the
remedy for the stressful tension of capitalist dynamics, allowing us
to uncouple and retain inner peace and Gelassenheit (self-surrender),
it actually functions as capitalism's perfect ideological supplement”
(p. 67). He also notes that the buddhist ideal matches
well with the idea of the ”perfect cold killing machine” (p.73),
because the ideal of detached enlightentment enables this selective
control of the mind including emotions and suffering.
Det
detachment or the disconnectivity though, is in Zizek's opinion also
highly critical: ”Buddhism is conserned with solving the problem
of suffering, so it's first axiom is: we don't want to suffer. (For a
Freudian, this already is problematic and far from selvevident –
not only on account of some obscure masochism, but on account of the
deep satisfaction by a passionate attachment[...]).”(p.69).
What Zizek underlines here is linked to a general concern of the
modern being getting more and more talented with the art of isolating
oneselves and becoming an independent reproductive being. This, in a
discourse related to biogenetics and sextoys and the fact that we
don't even need to touch eachother to feel pleasure or give birth to
children – to survive! In other words the buddhist ideal of
ascetism and zero-suffering as a way to regain inner peace aligns
with future scenarios of being disconnected with oneanother, while we
are connecting more and more with technology and our own
selfexploration.
Getting
back to the image of the wave, I would like to explore the further
meaning here. Parallely with Nao's horror highscool setup, her uncle
Haruki#1's story is being unfolded, and we get to hear how he managed
to look his military superior directly into the eyes while being
molested and thereby ending his punishments with mere kindness wich
shows heavy resiliance.
Haruki#1
is a pascifist, who chooses to ”fight the wave” instead of
killing american soldiers. He actually flies his plain directly into
the ocean, which is a beautyful image of actually trying to go
against stream by not taking orders. But it also underlines the big
theme of suicide throughout the novelle as a typical japaneese
phenomena.
Haruki#1's
death also suits Ruth and her husbands focus on the tsunami as a
phenomena out of human hands. Also, the ocean is typically seen as an
image of emotions, but also something uncontrollable and endless like
informations on the internet. Haruki#1 is actually dying inside a
machine, while letting his emotions and inner beliefs take him
directly into the endless blue. I can't think of a more beatiful
image for the future apocalypse: The technologized idealist meets the
force of nature (alone!) - just letting go of control – pure
surrendering, but with a certain integrity.
That
being said, though this action might be courages, it is also a very
passive form of rebellion. Luckily, Haruki#1's story ends up serving
as positive inspiration to Nao and her father instead of being mere
suicide material. One might say, that where the physical resiliance
is embeded in the tale of the survival of the fittest, today's actual
survivors will be found among the ones understading to fight the wave
mentally, but as the reonion between Nao and her father puts forth,
we have to connect with eachother in the process to not turn
into complete hentais.
Litterature:
Ruth
Ozeki. ”Tidens Væsen”/"A tale for the time being", Tiderne Skifter (2015).
Slavoj
Zizec. Buddhism Naturalized
Adam
Gazzaley and Lary Rosen. Boosting Control in The Distracted Mind:
Ancient Brains in a High Tech World. MIT Press, 2016
