Ukiyo=floating world

The word "ukiyo" is a Japanese word that I think effectively illustrates what T.S. Elliot is exploring in the Four Quartets. Ukiyo means "floating world" and is used in reference to fleeting aesthetics, death, and time/spacial relations. As we have learned thus far in class, Eliot is working with complex notions of living life and experiencing all it has to offer. His words often times are confusing and contradictory and present a paradoxical display of "eye-opener" thoughts. But that is the way of the world, an "ukiyo-world". People are suspended in a moment of time that feels as if it has a purpose or a place to go, but in a broad perspective our time is not much more than blip. In this class we are learning to heighten our awareness of pretty much everything, and interestingly enough what is happening to me is that I feel as if time is slowing down. If I can notice the little changes and concentrate on each days events, I begin to understand time as only a series of events. There is no need to have my day exactly scheduled. It is very strange to me that people would want to have such order and structure to their lives that they might have only 5 minute poop-breaks or can only eat at this and this time. If we destroyed clocked time would we be happier? Would we be as motivated? I would like to think so, but then again having everyone in tune with each other is kinda cool too. Time works within the notion of Ukiyo to secure the past, present, and future all into individual moments of existence. Modern-time makes us pay attention to each moment as if that moment was all that mattered, but doesn't allow us to dottle away in the moment because we have a rigid system that slaps us in the face when we forget to look at our clocks. The beauty of a term like "Ukiyo" is how time is kept as a persistant thought, but floating right now in the suspended moment of emotion lasts as long as it can and that is all that matters. If Eliot knew about this term, I am sure he would have played with it in his poem.