A Tale For The Time Being (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
My dear friend, Pat Kalmans, gifted me this book soon after we made the decision to stop treatment for Alan, but several weeks before he died. I have not been able to read until very recently. I just finished this book of interwoven lives and time, interspersed with Zen Buddhism, ethics, morality, life and death. At her death, old Jiko (a 104-year old buddhist nun and sensei, former feminist activist) writes a poem, "To live" for her grandson and great granddaughter. I am writing this as I sit next to my dying 94+ year old mother (amazingly smart, strong and talented) and feel the connections of interwoven lives and time. She is peaceful and comfortable. The book has helped me regain my balance and strength. This book is mind bending and I cannot stop thinking of all the themes and messages that resonated inside of me. It is essentially a quest to solve a mystery of connections inside a family from Japan through their evolution and within ourselves and our evolution. Ultimately, one must read it, sit with it, and process it for one's self as words cannot adequately describe the myriad of feelings that arise while reading this book. This quote at Part II sums this book up precisely: "In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader's recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth." ~ Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouve
What do You think about A Tale For The Time Being (2013)?
Pretty Intriguing . A little dragged towards the end.
—3153727
