各位（如果還有人在看的話）不要被英文嚇跑。偶的英文粉簡單的。國中單字程度足已。
I came to know Kate McGarrigle's music from,sadly, the articles that memorize her after she passed away of a rare cancer last month. Her last piece, Properpina became the first one I heard. It's so emotional to hear this song when you know that this gifted and graceful lady was suffering from cancer for years and this was her last night to share her works with fans. This "Not so silent night" concert was held in London one month before she left the world, at the concert Kate and her family & friends performed together to fundraise for cancer research.
I immediately fell in love with her folk music style. Yet what really moves me is her passion: passion for music and life. Her family are all talented singers (her son is Rufus Wainwright and her daughter is Martha Wainwright, and so are ex-husband and her sister Anna....) and the bonding they showed in the last concert touched me deeply. Kate's health seemed wasn't well then and you can see the family and friends were there to support and keep her in good spirit through their beautiful voices.
Kate began the song with an introduction in simple piano chords:
“It’s a story of Persephone, or Proserpina, as I’ve chosen to do it, and this is a song about her. Proserpina causes winter. I’m not going to explain it, you can look it up later. She runs away with Pluto and goes to the dark world, and her mother gets very angry, because she doesn’t come back. Her mother is the goddess of good stuff, like food. So they make a deal that her mother gets her six months of the year, and her husband, who lives underground, gets her the other six.”
(sources and a short biographic account of Kate: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/culture/2010/01/20/kate-mcgarrigle-a-tribute.html)
Here is the lyrics. The melody and lyrics is so simple yet full of love and sadness. My tears welled up when I watched the clip, not only because of the heavy heart of her passing but also about the inspiration of a wonderful life. And a song about mother-daughter-bond like this always comforts me when I feel to cry. Kate's music and life confirm me again that the healing power of art, any kinds, can be great and transformative. I can only hope that before I leave this world, I am able to offer something to people who I know or not, even in a very trivial way. I hope I can be a provider of healing power, rather than just be a consumer (if not a parasite...).
Dear Kate, thanks for your beautiful music. R.I.P.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
手紙一封
台灣時間凌晨三點,妳打電話來說又因為家人關係輾轉難眠。雖然妳待會兒六點多就要出門去機場飛去巴里島度假,可是一點也沒有假期放鬆愉快的感覺。我們聊了快一個鐘頭,我很用力地把自己新學來卻也還用的不太靈光的自強原則重覆講述給妳聽,像是只要在乎那些珍惜自己的人的感覺不要理會一些八卦型評價、像是往者已矣我們能掌握的只有眼前這一分鐘要讓自己自在滿足。我希望妳能記住一兩個關鍵字,然後在那些和其他家人相關的煩惱思緒一飄進腦海的瞬間,這些關鍵字,特別是先愛/珍惜自己,可以幫妳擋掉這些。我希望妳有個愉快的假期、還有更重要的：一個慢慢長成的、健康的self。
扭曲的家庭關係形塑扭曲的自我,當這自我開始覺醒而這家庭關係卻未改變甚至問題加劇時,這覺醒但仍脆弱的自我將面臨比沈睡時更多的考驗甚至苦痛。幸運的話,她可以蛻變成一個獨立自由的靈魂。只能這樣相信,才有勇氣繼續保持清醒地去面對與處理過往童年經驗對現在的她的烙印：把別人的需要與價值置於自己的需要與價值之上、以為執著地付出可以交換到真心的珍惜、別人有權定義我是不是乖＊＊與值不值得被愛。一定要先把這痂慢慢剝掉才能長出健康的新組織、長出一個完整的自我。而不是讓那疤繼續去餵養那扭曲的ego。唯有這樣,在這一世結束時,她才能跟她的靈魂說：我沒有辜負任何人,包括我自己。我相信妳也和我這樣地期待這樣的結局。所以我們現在就要開始一點一滴地改變,彼此提醒彼此幫助。
在巴里島盡情地享樂頹廢吧！等妳回來等我回去時我們再好好痛快地聊。
扭曲的家庭關係形塑扭曲的自我,當這自我開始覺醒而這家庭關係卻未改變甚至問題加劇時,這覺醒但仍脆弱的自我將面臨比沈睡時更多的考驗甚至苦痛。幸運的話,她可以蛻變成一個獨立自由的靈魂。只能這樣相信,才有勇氣繼續保持清醒地去面對與處理過往童年經驗對現在的她的烙印：把別人的需要與價值置於自己的需要與價值之上、以為執著地付出可以交換到真心的珍惜、別人有權定義我是不是乖＊＊與值不值得被愛。一定要先把這痂慢慢剝掉才能長出健康的新組織、長出一個完整的自我。而不是讓那疤繼續去餵養那扭曲的ego。唯有這樣,在這一世結束時,她才能跟她的靈魂說：我沒有辜負任何人,包括我自己。我相信妳也和我這樣地期待這樣的結局。所以我們現在就要開始一點一滴地改變,彼此提醒彼此幫助。
在巴里島盡情地享樂頹廢吧！等妳回來等我回去時我們再好好痛快地聊。
Thursday, January 28, 2010
學習當一個公民
從國外看國內,比較的觀點讓人焦慮讓人困惑也讓人謙卑讓人好奇。外國的月亮真的沒有比較圓,但是美國的公共生活真的看起來比較有原則章法可循、美國人似乎也比較願意學習如何做一個認真的公民。
劉瑜是政治學者,她總可以旁徵博引許多歷史道出我的「感受」。學習公民的第一步就是少些情緒性的主張而多些基於事實/資訊的論理。所以在我有時間去實踐這公民的義務之前,先聽聽劉瑜下了苦功夫研究比較後的心得。她在《民主的細節》的許多文章都可以在其部落格裡找到。
寫到這裡我想到得過諾貝爾和平獎的前美國總統卡特。在台灣因為中美斷交的歷史讓我們對這個名字似乎有負面的印象,但他其實在美國是個非常受尊重的政治人物。細節以後再說。我只是想引用他任期屆滿後的告別演講裡的一段話：
In a few days, I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office, to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president, the title of citizen.
---------
以下轉貼自http://www.drunkpiano-liuyu.net/
我身边有很多看透了世界的人。有一次一个朋友跟我说：我女儿长大了，决不能从政，政治太肮脏了，哪里都一样。虽然当时我们坐在闹哄哄的车里，非常不适宜谈论政治，我的严肃病还是犯了，我反驳道：政治到处可能都是肮脏的，但是一些地方比另一些地方更肮脏一些。
后来我在别的地方看到一个更好的表述方式，那句话说的是：不要让“最好”成为“更好”的敌人。就是说，这个世界上也许没有完美的人性、完美的制度，完美的政治，但是完美的不存在，不应该是我们放弃追求“稍微美好一些”社会的理由。
《民主的细节》是一本很家常的书，试图从具体的政治事件、甚至柴米油盐的角度来观察分析美国的当代政治——确切地说，分析政治本身——再确切一点说，分析什么样的公共生活更接近合理与正义。我在书的后记里写道，这本书其实在做一个很“笨”的工作：讲故事、讲常识、讲人物。这件事情如此之“笨”，以至于有读者可能对一个剑桥大学的老师没有戴上术语的墨镜、穿上晦涩理论的马靴出来讲话而失望，但我之所以愿意做这个很“笨”的工作，是因为我不介意“天真”——我还没有看透一切，并拒绝看透一切，事实上，谁想让我“看透一切”我就跟谁急。
对这个世界有一天会成为人间天堂我不抱希望，但是我想，一个居民房子被推土机强拆的世界，和一个开发商必须跟某人谈判拆迁价的世界，还是略有不同的；一个婴儿喝奶粉不小心会得重病的世界，和一个食物标签上必须写明所有成分和卡路里的世界，也是略有不同的；一个高考分数线向本来就占有教育资源优势的大城市倾斜的世界，和一个照顾弱势群体上大学机会的世界，同样是不同的……那种无视所有这些不同而一屁股坐到“看透一切”的高度上挥斥方遒的态度，有些人称之为 “智慧”，我称之为“傲慢”。
世界如此之博大精深，我们短短一生真的能看透吗？再说看透了接下来干嘛呢？坐在云端捋着智慧的胡须等死？
深入这个世界的细节，观察它的微妙，捕捉它的变化，在非黑即白之外看到所有那些丰富的过渡色彩，需要谦卑、耐心和好奇心。 有这么多人热衷于看透的“智慧”，不过是因为看透是逃避社会责任感的最好理由。你说我都看透了，自然也不用操任何心了。
而对“肮脏”的政治家来说，民众的政治虚无主义则是他们最强大的堡垒：如果我无意于将自己清洗得更干净，至少我希望你相信干净是不可能的。
以前曾有朋友跟我讨论，为什么很多出了国的人政治上也会很保守，他们难道不是见多识广了吗？我说，以前有个心理学家做过实验，一个人如果买了某个牌子的车，以后他就会更留心这个牌子车的广告，而对其它牌子的广告往往充耳不闻。这说明什么呢？说明当一个人的头脑开始封闭时，他明明身处一个信息开放的世界里，但是他吸收知识的方式却是选择性的和片面的。在我的留学生涯中，身边有太多的中国人，身在美国，但是看不到美国，身在一个全新的制度中，但是看不到它的新意。大约因为在他们出国之前，头脑里已经安装了“某个牌子的车”了，出了国以后，也只留心这个牌子车的广告，而对其它牌子视而不见。我想说的是，我们当中，有太多年纪轻轻就已对世界全然失去好奇心的人，他们的头脑里充满了感叹号，但是没有了问号。
那么我希望《民主的细节》所达到的效果，就是在更多人的脑子里种上更多的问号。希望有一些人，越多越好的人，看完了这本书，从先前“看透的智慧”中倒退下来，退回天真，退回好奇，退回困惑。这本书并不指望也不可能告诉读者什么是对什么是错，如果一个读者在读了此书之后感到糊涂和困惑，那么他应该恭喜自己恢复了困惑的能力，因为他又回到了一个丰富的世界，在琳琅满目的“汽车”之间，又有了选择的可能性。
劉瑜是政治學者,她總可以旁徵博引許多歷史道出我的「感受」。學習公民的第一步就是少些情緒性的主張而多些基於事實/資訊的論理。所以在我有時間去實踐這公民的義務之前,先聽聽劉瑜下了苦功夫研究比較後的心得。她在《民主的細節》的許多文章都可以在其部落格裡找到。
寫到這裡我想到得過諾貝爾和平獎的前美國總統卡特。在台灣因為中美斷交的歷史讓我們對這個名字似乎有負面的印象,但他其實在美國是個非常受尊重的政治人物。細節以後再說。我只是想引用他任期屆滿後的告別演講裡的一段話：
In a few days, I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office, to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president, the title of citizen.
---------
以下轉貼自http://www.drunkpiano-liuyu.net/
我身边有很多看透了世界的人。有一次一个朋友跟我说：我女儿长大了，决不能从政，政治太肮脏了，哪里都一样。虽然当时我们坐在闹哄哄的车里，非常不适宜谈论政治，我的严肃病还是犯了，我反驳道：政治到处可能都是肮脏的，但是一些地方比另一些地方更肮脏一些。
后来我在别的地方看到一个更好的表述方式，那句话说的是：不要让“最好”成为“更好”的敌人。就是说，这个世界上也许没有完美的人性、完美的制度，完美的政治，但是完美的不存在，不应该是我们放弃追求“稍微美好一些”社会的理由。
《民主的细节》是一本很家常的书，试图从具体的政治事件、甚至柴米油盐的角度来观察分析美国的当代政治——确切地说，分析政治本身——再确切一点说，分析什么样的公共生活更接近合理与正义。我在书的后记里写道，这本书其实在做一个很“笨”的工作：讲故事、讲常识、讲人物。这件事情如此之“笨”，以至于有读者可能对一个剑桥大学的老师没有戴上术语的墨镜、穿上晦涩理论的马靴出来讲话而失望，但我之所以愿意做这个很“笨”的工作，是因为我不介意“天真”——我还没有看透一切，并拒绝看透一切，事实上，谁想让我“看透一切”我就跟谁急。
对这个世界有一天会成为人间天堂我不抱希望，但是我想，一个居民房子被推土机强拆的世界，和一个开发商必须跟某人谈判拆迁价的世界，还是略有不同的；一个婴儿喝奶粉不小心会得重病的世界，和一个食物标签上必须写明所有成分和卡路里的世界，也是略有不同的；一个高考分数线向本来就占有教育资源优势的大城市倾斜的世界，和一个照顾弱势群体上大学机会的世界，同样是不同的……那种无视所有这些不同而一屁股坐到“看透一切”的高度上挥斥方遒的态度，有些人称之为 “智慧”，我称之为“傲慢”。
世界如此之博大精深，我们短短一生真的能看透吗？再说看透了接下来干嘛呢？坐在云端捋着智慧的胡须等死？
深入这个世界的细节，观察它的微妙，捕捉它的变化，在非黑即白之外看到所有那些丰富的过渡色彩，需要谦卑、耐心和好奇心。 有这么多人热衷于看透的“智慧”，不过是因为看透是逃避社会责任感的最好理由。你说我都看透了，自然也不用操任何心了。
而对“肮脏”的政治家来说，民众的政治虚无主义则是他们最强大的堡垒：如果我无意于将自己清洗得更干净，至少我希望你相信干净是不可能的。
以前曾有朋友跟我讨论，为什么很多出了国的人政治上也会很保守，他们难道不是见多识广了吗？我说，以前有个心理学家做过实验，一个人如果买了某个牌子的车，以后他就会更留心这个牌子车的广告，而对其它牌子的广告往往充耳不闻。这说明什么呢？说明当一个人的头脑开始封闭时，他明明身处一个信息开放的世界里，但是他吸收知识的方式却是选择性的和片面的。在我的留学生涯中，身边有太多的中国人，身在美国，但是看不到美国，身在一个全新的制度中，但是看不到它的新意。大约因为在他们出国之前，头脑里已经安装了“某个牌子的车”了，出了国以后，也只留心这个牌子车的广告，而对其它牌子视而不见。我想说的是，我们当中，有太多年纪轻轻就已对世界全然失去好奇心的人，他们的头脑里充满了感叹号，但是没有了问号。
那么我希望《民主的细节》所达到的效果，就是在更多人的脑子里种上更多的问号。希望有一些人，越多越好的人，看完了这本书，从先前“看透的智慧”中倒退下来，退回天真，退回好奇，退回困惑。这本书并不指望也不可能告诉读者什么是对什么是错，如果一个读者在读了此书之后感到糊涂和困惑，那么他应该恭喜自己恢复了困惑的能力，因为他又回到了一个丰富的世界，在琳琅满目的“汽车”之间，又有了选择的可能性。
Saturday, January 23, 2010
回溫
昨天寫完失溫記,心情指數很快就止跌回升了。再加上今早Mr. Gator 從南方捎來幾束冬陽,決定來貼幾句最近讀到不錯的嘉言錄,為這還需要密集工作的週末加點油。
Whenever we need to make a very important decision, it is best to trust to impulse, to passion, because reason usually tries to remove us from our dream, saying that the time is not yet right. Reason is afraid of defeat, but intuition enjoys life and its challenges. (這個實在太像India會講的、只不過現在是英文版)
Every person on the face of the earth has a gift. In some this reveals itself spontaneously, others have to work to find it. (優美版的天生我才必有用)
The gift belongs to whoever chooses to accept it. It is enough to believe and not to be afraid to make mistakes.
I believe that every single day people are offered the chance to make the best possible decision about everything they do.
No one can avoid defeat. This is why it is better to lose a few battles in the fight for your dreams than to be defeated without even knowing why you are fighting.
先來五句,有需要再補給。
Whenever we need to make a very important decision, it is best to trust to impulse, to passion, because reason usually tries to remove us from our dream, saying that the time is not yet right. Reason is afraid of defeat, but intuition enjoys life and its challenges. (這個實在太像India會講的、只不過現在是英文版)
Every person on the face of the earth has a gift. In some this reveals itself spontaneously, others have to work to find it. (優美版的天生我才必有用)
The gift belongs to whoever chooses to accept it. It is enough to believe and not to be afraid to make mistakes.
I believe that every single day people are offered the chance to make the best possible decision about everything they do.
No one can avoid defeat. This is why it is better to lose a few battles in the fight for your dreams than to be defeated without even knowing why you are fighting.
先來五句,有需要再補給。
Friday, January 22, 2010
失溫
今天下午心情有點低落。前幾天發了封信給老師提醒她我二月初需要她兩封推薦信。其實我在十二月初就跟她寄了個今年上半年的時間表和申請單位的資訊。今天她回信給我要我以後不要那麼晚通知她。我其實很不舒服。因為我非常不喜歡麻煩人（雖然美國人會說這是教授的義務、工作的一部份,根本不用覺得麻煩）,所以能事先準備的資訊都先處理好並且提前通知。根本不是像她說的兩個禮拜前才來要推薦信。
我當然還是很小心翼翼、用詞謹慎地回信再提醒她之前的通訊、並且為造成她的不便覺得抱歉。我當然知道她開學之初一定很忙,任何來自學生的要求都是負擔。然而這件事只是冰山一角,我覺得最感慨的其實是,我和她的距離如此之遠。在我做了許多事表達善意與體貼、表示我不只是想要利用她讓我畢業而已。我希望建立一份有溫度的師生關係。
一位朋友曾說過,寫博士論文是非常密集而親密的（在我的個案還要加上「漫長的」）智識交流（我們需要指導教授幫我們把自己嘔心瀝血想/寫出來的東西以符合專業要求的形式吐出來）,需要一定程度的親近感來完成這樣的交流。就算不要期待擁有一個mentor,就算只是因為業務需要兩個人需要密集工作六、七年（這是一個學生六分之一的生命長度耶）,難道不能有一點用心、一點溫度、一點同情、一點理解嗎？
我知道最安全的答案是不要期待。這幾年我也不斷扭曲自己學習距離學習絕望學習不要在乎。我只是擔心,當我不再期待之後,我也將成為一個情感上的虛無主義者。
然而最深的恐懼或許是,我或許不值得別人多給一點用心、一點溫度、一點同情、一點理解。這恐懼太強烈也太沈重了,我決定很怯懦地把她塞進心裡的儲藏室,不想看清楚她的根源也不想面對她的存在。
我當然還是很小心翼翼、用詞謹慎地回信再提醒她之前的通訊、並且為造成她的不便覺得抱歉。我當然知道她開學之初一定很忙,任何來自學生的要求都是負擔。然而這件事只是冰山一角,我覺得最感慨的其實是,我和她的距離如此之遠。在我做了許多事表達善意與體貼、表示我不只是想要利用她讓我畢業而已。我希望建立一份有溫度的師生關係。
一位朋友曾說過,寫博士論文是非常密集而親密的（在我的個案還要加上「漫長的」）智識交流（我們需要指導教授幫我們把自己嘔心瀝血想/寫出來的東西以符合專業要求的形式吐出來）,需要一定程度的親近感來完成這樣的交流。就算不要期待擁有一個mentor,就算只是因為業務需要兩個人需要密集工作六、七年（這是一個學生六分之一的生命長度耶）,難道不能有一點用心、一點溫度、一點同情、一點理解嗎？
我知道最安全的答案是不要期待。這幾年我也不斷扭曲自己學習距離學習絕望學習不要在乎。我只是擔心,當我不再期待之後,我也將成為一個情感上的虛無主義者。
然而最深的恐懼或許是,我或許不值得別人多給一點用心、一點溫度、一點同情、一點理解。這恐懼太強烈也太沈重了,我決定很怯懦地把她塞進心裡的儲藏室,不想看清楚她的根源也不想面對她的存在。
Thursday, January 21, 2010
週記
1.
最近都搭7:54的那班公車。走去公車站的路上或是站在站牌旁等公車時可以遇到由父母陪伴走去上學的小朋友。看著他們紅噗噗的雙頰、戴著色彩繽紛的雪帽與手套、遇到陌生人靦腆的笑容、讓人由衷相信這又將是美好的一天。
還有我喜歡這樣的規律性。同樣的時間、同一對去上學的母子（媽媽還推著弟弟或妹妹一起陪哥哥出門上學）、同一個一起等同班車的路人（或車友）、同一班公車、同一個公車司機。規律讓我覺得安定、安定讓人自在。無可救藥的金牛座。
2.
有一陣子我一直把一些學習的困境歸因於所遇非人、運氣不佳。但是最近打掉重練的過程中、我才驚覺自己要負很大的責任。才發現自己曾錯誤地、驕傲地（兩者加起來真的是致命）以為知道如何讀書與作研究、但是其實根本就不是。如果作研究也是個技藝、我覺得我在門外觀望的時間多於進來住進工坊、挽起袖子認真當學徒。這覺悟來的晚也來的痛、但我也只能扛著這樣沈重的覺悟繼續往前走、希望走走走、走到某個路口、這覺悟就會轉化成真正的實力。
3.
William Zinsser說 Writing is thinking on paper.當然現在我們可以說 Writing is thinking on screen 但是重點就是寫的出來的才算是你想清楚的。關於這點我深深同意。
我大部份時間都在與遙遠的研究者對話或自言自語。每天上百個思緒、關於研究關於世事關於歷史關於生活關於瑣碎、閃過腦海。如果不記錄下來、他們幾乎等於不存在。而如果這些思緒不存在、我的生活也不存在的。這樣的虛無空白令人難以忍受。如果我真能靜下心來、透過刻在螢幕上的一字一字濾蕪存菁地看清楚這些思緒、我的存在焦慮感就能因此消除一大半。另一方面、這些未處理過的思緒如果一直堆積在腦中、除了阻塞其他思緒的沈澱、也會逐漸腐敗。定期清理有助於更健康的腦部衛生、促進新陳代謝。
又我也曾擔心中英文互相敗壞的問題。後來發現這是個虛假的問題。重點在於我用何種語言思考與寫作時、我有多專注多認真地多下定決心地多義蕪反顧地想要用這語言表達自己。如果我一但心存偷懶、就讓思緒散亂在兩種語言的邊界、沒人要去認養、思緒就只是思緒、難成想法。
對了還好有噗友、讓我有機會專注地聊天。
最近都搭7:54的那班公車。走去公車站的路上或是站在站牌旁等公車時可以遇到由父母陪伴走去上學的小朋友。看著他們紅噗噗的雙頰、戴著色彩繽紛的雪帽與手套、遇到陌生人靦腆的笑容、讓人由衷相信這又將是美好的一天。
還有我喜歡這樣的規律性。同樣的時間、同一對去上學的母子（媽媽還推著弟弟或妹妹一起陪哥哥出門上學）、同一個一起等同班車的路人（或車友）、同一班公車、同一個公車司機。規律讓我覺得安定、安定讓人自在。無可救藥的金牛座。
2.
有一陣子我一直把一些學習的困境歸因於所遇非人、運氣不佳。但是最近打掉重練的過程中、我才驚覺自己要負很大的責任。才發現自己曾錯誤地、驕傲地（兩者加起來真的是致命）以為知道如何讀書與作研究、但是其實根本就不是。如果作研究也是個技藝、我覺得我在門外觀望的時間多於進來住進工坊、挽起袖子認真當學徒。這覺悟來的晚也來的痛、但我也只能扛著這樣沈重的覺悟繼續往前走、希望走走走、走到某個路口、這覺悟就會轉化成真正的實力。
3.
William Zinsser說 Writing is thinking on paper.當然現在我們可以說 Writing is thinking on screen 但是重點就是寫的出來的才算是你想清楚的。關於這點我深深同意。
我大部份時間都在與遙遠的研究者對話或自言自語。每天上百個思緒、關於研究關於世事關於歷史關於生活關於瑣碎、閃過腦海。如果不記錄下來、他們幾乎等於不存在。而如果這些思緒不存在、我的生活也不存在的。這樣的虛無空白令人難以忍受。如果我真能靜下心來、透過刻在螢幕上的一字一字濾蕪存菁地看清楚這些思緒、我的存在焦慮感就能因此消除一大半。另一方面、這些未處理過的思緒如果一直堆積在腦中、除了阻塞其他思緒的沈澱、也會逐漸腐敗。定期清理有助於更健康的腦部衛生、促進新陳代謝。
又我也曾擔心中英文互相敗壞的問題。後來發現這是個虛假的問題。重點在於我用何種語言思考與寫作時、我有多專注多認真地多下定決心地多義蕪反顧地想要用這語言表達自己。如果我一但心存偷懶、就讓思緒散亂在兩種語言的邊界、沒人要去認養、思緒就只是思緒、難成想法。
對了還好有噗友、讓我有機會專注地聊天。
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Always on the side of the egg
村上春樹到以色列領了一個文學獎「耶路撒冷文學獎」的演講。
資料來源： http://www.my1510.cn/article.php?7d291cdae6269d0f
「Always on the side of the egg 永遠站在雞蛋的一側」
Good evening. I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.
各位晚上好，我今天作為一名小說家來到耶路撒冷的，也就是說一名職業謊言製造者。
Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and generals tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?
當然，並不是只有小說家才說謊的。政治家也說謊，正如大家所知道的。外交官和將軍有時也要說著他們自己的謊言，就如同二手車推銷員、劊子手以及建築師一樣。但是，小說家的謊言與其他人不一樣，因爲沒有人會批評小說家，稱他們說謊不道德。實際上，小說家的謊言說得越大越好，編造謊言的能力越高明，他才更可能受到公衆和評論家的認可和好評。這是爲什麽呢？
My answer would be this: namely, that by telling skilful lies--which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true--the novelist can bring a truth out to a new place and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth-lies within us, within ourselves. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
我的答案是：通過更有技巧地說謊——也就是說，創作看起來似乎是真實的小說——小說家才能夠将真相帶到新的地方，才能讓新的陽光撒到這片新的土地上。在多數情況下，幾乎不可能以其原始形式掌握真相，也不可能準确地闡述真相。這就是爲什麽我要将真相從衆多掩蓋之中拉出來，将它放到一個虛幻的地方，再用一種虛幻的形式将它替代。但是要想做到這一點，我們首先要清楚真實的謊言在我們心中，就在我們自己的心中。這是要想編造完美謊言的一個非常重要的資質。
Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are only a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
但今天，我并不想說謊。我會盡可能地做到誠實。這也是一年當中我不說謊的爲數不多的幾天之一，今天碰巧就是其中之一。
So let me tell you the truth. In Japan a fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came. The reason for this, of course, was the fierce fighting that was raging in Gaza. The U.N. reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded city of Gaza, many of them unarmed citizens--children and old people.
讓我來告訴你們真相。在日本有許多人建議我不要來這裏接受“耶路撒冷文學獎”。甚至有些人警告我，如果我要堅持來的話，他們就會掀起抵制閱讀我的小說的活動。當然，原因是加沙的戰争正如火如荼。據聯合國報道，已經有一千多人在已封鎖的加沙城失去了他們的生命，許多都是手無寸鐵的平民——孩子和老人。
Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.
在接到這個獲獎通知後我不斷地問自己，是否要在這樣一個特殊時刻來耶路撒冷，接受這樣的文學獎是否是現在該做的事情，這樣做是否會讓人産生一種印象，說我支持沖突中的其中一方，說我支持選擇向世界展示其龐大軍事力量的國家的政策呢。當然我也不希望看到我的書遭到抵制。
Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me-- and especially if they are warning me-- “Don’t go there,” “Don’t do that,” I tend to want to “go there” and “do that”. It’s in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.
但最後在經過深思熟慮後，我還是決定來到耶路撒冷。我之所以做出這樣的決定，原因之一就是有太多的人不想讓我來這裏。可能與許多其他小說家一樣，我總是要做人們反對我做的事情。如果人們對我說——并且特别是如果他們警告我——“不要去那裏”、“不要這樣做”，我就偏偏要去那裏，偏偏要這樣做。你可能會說，這就是小說家的性格。小說家是另類。如果他們沒有親眼所見，沒有親手觸摸，他們是不會真正相信任何事情的。
And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.
這就是我來到這裏的原因。我選擇來這裏，而不是逃避。我選擇親自來看一看，而不是回避，我選擇在這裏向大家說幾句，而不是沉默。
Please do allow me to deliver a message, one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
請允許我在這裏向你們傳遞一條信息，是一個非常私人的信息。在我寫小說時我總是在心裏牢記，但我從來都不會把它寫在紙上，貼在牆上，我是把它刻在了心靈的牆上，這條信息是這樣的：
“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”
“在一座高大堅實的牆和與之相撞的雞蛋之間，我永遠都站在雞蛋的一側”。
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will do it. But if there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
是的，無論牆是多麽的正确，雞蛋是多麽地錯誤，我都站在雞蛋的一側。其他人可能會判斷誰是誰非，也許時間或歷史會來判斷。但是，如果一個小說家無論因何種原因站在牆的一側來創造，那麽他的作品的價值何在呢？
What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.
這個比喻是什麽意思呢，在有些時候，非常簡單明了。轟炸機、坦克、火箭以及白磷彈就是那堵高牆，雞蛋是被這些武器毀滅、燒傷并擊斃的手無寸鐵的百姓。這就是這個比喻的其中一層含義。
But this is not all. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is “The System.” The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others--coldly, efficiently, systematically.
但是，并不僅僅是這些。它還有更深一層的含義，我們來這樣考慮一下，我們中的每一個人或多或少都是一個雞蛋。我們中的每一個人都是存在于一個脆弱外殼中唯一的、不可替代的靈魂。我也一樣，對你們中的每一個人也一樣。并且，我們中的每一個人在某種程度上也面臨着一堵高大堅實的牆。這個牆有一個名字：那就是“體制”。這個體制本來是要保護我們的，但是有時候它會呈現出它自己的一面，然後就開使殘殺我們，并使我們去殘殺他人——冷酷、有效、系統地殘殺。
I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I truly believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories--stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
我寫小說只有一個原因，那就是要給予每一個靈魂以尊嚴，并且讓他們接受陽光的沐浴。情節的目的聽起來是一種警報，是對體制進行光芒的培訓，阻止它將我們的靈魂纏結在它的圈套中，防止踐踏我們的靈魂。我忠實地相信，小說家的職責就是通過創作故事——關于生死、關于愛情、讓人哭泣和顫慄以及讓人大笑不已的故事，讓人們意識到每一個靈魂的唯一性。這就是我不停創作的原因，日復一日，以十分嚴肅的態度創作小說。
My father passed away last year at the age of ninety. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school in Kyoto, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the small Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the battlefield. He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.
我的父親是在去年去世的，享年九十歲。他是一名退休教師，是一名兼職佛教高僧。他從京都的研究生院畢業後，應征入伍，被派到中國打仗。作爲一個戰後出生的孩子，我每天早晨在早飯前，總是看到他的在我家的小佛教祭壇前非常虔誠地長時間地祈禱。有一次我就問父親爲什麽要這樣做，他就告訴我說，他是在爲戰争中死去的人們祈禱。他說，他爲所有死去的人祈禱，無論是同盟還是敵人。當我看着他跪在祭壇前的背影時，我似乎感受到了萦繞在他周圍的死亡的陰影。
My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.
我的父親去世了，帶着他的記憶，我永遠都不可能知道的記憶。但是環繞在他周圍的那些死亡卻留在了我自己的記憶中。這是我從他那裏學習到東西之一，也是最重要的東西之一。
I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, and we are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong--and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from our believing in the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
今天我只希望向你們傳達一個信息。我們都是人類，是超越國籍、種族和宗教的個體的人，我們都是脆弱的雞蛋，要面臨被稱作“體制”的堅實的牆。從外表來看，我們根本就沒有赢的希望。這堵牆太高太堅實 ——并且太冷酷了。如果我們有一點戰勝它的希望，那就是來源于我們對我們自己以及他人靈魂唯一性和不可替代性的信念，來源于我們對将靈魂聯合起來可獲得溫暖的信念。
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: we made the System.
花一點時間來考慮這些，我們每一個人都擁有有形的生動的靈魂，而體制沒有。我們不能讓體制來剝削我們。我們不能讓體制現出它自己的一面。不是體制創造了我們，而是我們建立了體制。
That is all I have to say to you.
這就是我想要對你們說的。
I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I would like to express my gratitude to the readers in Israel. You are the biggest reason why I am here. And I hope we are sharing something, something very meaningful. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.
非常感謝授予了我耶路撒冷文學獎。我也非常感謝世界各地有那麽多人看了我寫的書。我還要感謝以色列的讀者們。你們是我來到這裏的最主要原因。我希望我們能夠分享一些東西，一些有非常有意義的東西。我也非常高興今天有機會在這裏發言。
Thank you very much.
謝謝大家。
資料來源： http://www.my1510.cn/article.php?7d291cdae6269d0f
「Always on the side of the egg 永遠站在雞蛋的一側」
Good evening. I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.
各位晚上好，我今天作為一名小說家來到耶路撒冷的，也就是說一名職業謊言製造者。
Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and generals tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?
當然，並不是只有小說家才說謊的。政治家也說謊，正如大家所知道的。外交官和將軍有時也要說著他們自己的謊言，就如同二手車推銷員、劊子手以及建築師一樣。但是，小說家的謊言與其他人不一樣，因爲沒有人會批評小說家，稱他們說謊不道德。實際上，小說家的謊言說得越大越好，編造謊言的能力越高明，他才更可能受到公衆和評論家的認可和好評。這是爲什麽呢？
My answer would be this: namely, that by telling skilful lies--which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true--the novelist can bring a truth out to a new place and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth-lies within us, within ourselves. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
我的答案是：通過更有技巧地說謊——也就是說，創作看起來似乎是真實的小說——小說家才能夠将真相帶到新的地方，才能讓新的陽光撒到這片新的土地上。在多數情況下，幾乎不可能以其原始形式掌握真相，也不可能準确地闡述真相。這就是爲什麽我要将真相從衆多掩蓋之中拉出來，将它放到一個虛幻的地方，再用一種虛幻的形式将它替代。但是要想做到這一點，我們首先要清楚真實的謊言在我們心中，就在我們自己的心中。這是要想編造完美謊言的一個非常重要的資質。
Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are only a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
但今天，我并不想說謊。我會盡可能地做到誠實。這也是一年當中我不說謊的爲數不多的幾天之一，今天碰巧就是其中之一。
So let me tell you the truth. In Japan a fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came. The reason for this, of course, was the fierce fighting that was raging in Gaza. The U.N. reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded city of Gaza, many of them unarmed citizens--children and old people.
讓我來告訴你們真相。在日本有許多人建議我不要來這裏接受“耶路撒冷文學獎”。甚至有些人警告我，如果我要堅持來的話，他們就會掀起抵制閱讀我的小說的活動。當然，原因是加沙的戰争正如火如荼。據聯合國報道，已經有一千多人在已封鎖的加沙城失去了他們的生命，許多都是手無寸鐵的平民——孩子和老人。
Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.
在接到這個獲獎通知後我不斷地問自己，是否要在這樣一個特殊時刻來耶路撒冷，接受這樣的文學獎是否是現在該做的事情，這樣做是否會讓人産生一種印象，說我支持沖突中的其中一方，說我支持選擇向世界展示其龐大軍事力量的國家的政策呢。當然我也不希望看到我的書遭到抵制。
Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me-- and especially if they are warning me-- “Don’t go there,” “Don’t do that,” I tend to want to “go there” and “do that”. It’s in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.
但最後在經過深思熟慮後，我還是決定來到耶路撒冷。我之所以做出這樣的決定，原因之一就是有太多的人不想讓我來這裏。可能與許多其他小說家一樣，我總是要做人們反對我做的事情。如果人們對我說——并且特别是如果他們警告我——“不要去那裏”、“不要這樣做”，我就偏偏要去那裏，偏偏要這樣做。你可能會說，這就是小說家的性格。小說家是另類。如果他們沒有親眼所見，沒有親手觸摸，他們是不會真正相信任何事情的。
And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.
這就是我來到這裏的原因。我選擇來這裏，而不是逃避。我選擇親自來看一看，而不是回避，我選擇在這裏向大家說幾句，而不是沉默。
Please do allow me to deliver a message, one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
請允許我在這裏向你們傳遞一條信息，是一個非常私人的信息。在我寫小說時我總是在心裏牢記，但我從來都不會把它寫在紙上，貼在牆上，我是把它刻在了心靈的牆上，這條信息是這樣的：
“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”
“在一座高大堅實的牆和與之相撞的雞蛋之間，我永遠都站在雞蛋的一側”。
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will do it. But if there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
是的，無論牆是多麽的正确，雞蛋是多麽地錯誤，我都站在雞蛋的一側。其他人可能會判斷誰是誰非，也許時間或歷史會來判斷。但是，如果一個小說家無論因何種原因站在牆的一側來創造，那麽他的作品的價值何在呢？
What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.
這個比喻是什麽意思呢，在有些時候，非常簡單明了。轟炸機、坦克、火箭以及白磷彈就是那堵高牆，雞蛋是被這些武器毀滅、燒傷并擊斃的手無寸鐵的百姓。這就是這個比喻的其中一層含義。
But this is not all. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is “The System.” The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others--coldly, efficiently, systematically.
但是，并不僅僅是這些。它還有更深一層的含義，我們來這樣考慮一下，我們中的每一個人或多或少都是一個雞蛋。我們中的每一個人都是存在于一個脆弱外殼中唯一的、不可替代的靈魂。我也一樣，對你們中的每一個人也一樣。并且，我們中的每一個人在某種程度上也面臨着一堵高大堅實的牆。這個牆有一個名字：那就是“體制”。這個體制本來是要保護我們的，但是有時候它會呈現出它自己的一面，然後就開使殘殺我們，并使我們去殘殺他人——冷酷、有效、系統地殘殺。
I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I truly believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories--stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
我寫小說只有一個原因，那就是要給予每一個靈魂以尊嚴，并且讓他們接受陽光的沐浴。情節的目的聽起來是一種警報，是對體制進行光芒的培訓，阻止它將我們的靈魂纏結在它的圈套中，防止踐踏我們的靈魂。我忠實地相信，小說家的職責就是通過創作故事——關于生死、關于愛情、讓人哭泣和顫慄以及讓人大笑不已的故事，讓人們意識到每一個靈魂的唯一性。這就是我不停創作的原因，日復一日，以十分嚴肅的態度創作小說。
My father passed away last year at the age of ninety. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school in Kyoto, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the small Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the battlefield. He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.
我的父親是在去年去世的，享年九十歲。他是一名退休教師，是一名兼職佛教高僧。他從京都的研究生院畢業後，應征入伍，被派到中國打仗。作爲一個戰後出生的孩子，我每天早晨在早飯前，總是看到他的在我家的小佛教祭壇前非常虔誠地長時間地祈禱。有一次我就問父親爲什麽要這樣做，他就告訴我說，他是在爲戰争中死去的人們祈禱。他說，他爲所有死去的人祈禱，無論是同盟還是敵人。當我看着他跪在祭壇前的背影時，我似乎感受到了萦繞在他周圍的死亡的陰影。
My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.
我的父親去世了，帶着他的記憶，我永遠都不可能知道的記憶。但是環繞在他周圍的那些死亡卻留在了我自己的記憶中。這是我從他那裏學習到東西之一，也是最重要的東西之一。
I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, and we are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong--and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from our believing in the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
今天我只希望向你們傳達一個信息。我們都是人類，是超越國籍、種族和宗教的個體的人，我們都是脆弱的雞蛋，要面臨被稱作“體制”的堅實的牆。從外表來看，我們根本就沒有赢的希望。這堵牆太高太堅實 ——并且太冷酷了。如果我們有一點戰勝它的希望，那就是來源于我們對我們自己以及他人靈魂唯一性和不可替代性的信念，來源于我們對将靈魂聯合起來可獲得溫暖的信念。
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: we made the System.
花一點時間來考慮這些，我們每一個人都擁有有形的生動的靈魂，而體制沒有。我們不能讓體制來剝削我們。我們不能讓體制現出它自己的一面。不是體制創造了我們，而是我們建立了體制。
That is all I have to say to you.
這就是我想要對你們說的。
I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I would like to express my gratitude to the readers in Israel. You are the biggest reason why I am here. And I hope we are sharing something, something very meaningful. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.
非常感謝授予了我耶路撒冷文學獎。我也非常感謝世界各地有那麽多人看了我寫的書。我還要感謝以色列的讀者們。你們是我來到這裏的最主要原因。我希望我們能夠分享一些東西，一些有非常有意義的東西。我也非常高興今天有機會在這裏發言。
Thank you very much.
謝謝大家。
Monday, January 18, 2010
Writing English as a Second Language by William Zinsser
前年為了改進英文寫作、看了些談寫作的書。William Zinsser的 On Writing Well是美國修習寫作的經典。昨天在圖書館看American Scholar這雜誌時意外發現他居然還在哥大教寫作(他是1922年出生的)、而且這次是哥大的新聞學院請他教國際學生英文寫作。只能說哥大的學生實在太幸福了、也還好有網路我也得以分享他的建議。只是如果真要把他的寫作箴言運用在學術寫作上、大概歷史學或人類學會比較能接受。其他領域則有待研究者以身試法看看。
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Writing English as a Second Language
Posted By William Zinsser On December 1, 2009 @ 5:59 pm In P of D, Point of Departure, Winter 2010 | Comments Disabled
A talk to the incoming international students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, August 11, 2009
Five years ago one of your deans at the journalism school, Elizabeth Fishman, asked me if I would be interested in tutoring international students who might need some extra help with their writing. She knew I had done a lot of traveling in Asia and Africa and other parts of the world where many of you come from.
I knew I would enjoy that, and I have—I’ve been doing it ever since. I’m the doctor that students get sent to see if they have a writing problem that their professor thinks I can fix. As a bonus, I’ve made many friends—from Uganda, Uzbekhistan, India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Iraq, Nigeria, Poland, China, Colombia and many other countries. Several young Asian women, when they went back home, sent me invitations to their weddings. I never made it to Bhutan or Korea, but I did see the wedding pictures. Such beautiful brides!
I can’t imagine how hard it must be to learn to write comfortably in a second—or third or fourth—language. I don’t think I could do it, and I admire your grace in taking on that difficult task. Much of the anxiety that I see in foreign students could be avoided if certain principles of writing good English—which nobody ever told them—were explained in advance. So I asked if I could talk to all of you during orientation week and tell you some of the things my students have found helpful.
So that’s why we’re here today.
I’ll start with a question: What is good writing?
It depends on what country you’re from. We all know what’s considered “good writing” in our own country. We grow up immersed in the cadences and sentence structure of the language we were born into, so we think, “That’s probably what every country considers good writing; they just use different words.” If only! I once asked a student from Cairo, “What kind of language is Arabic?” I was trying to put myself into her mental process of switching from Arabic to English. She said, “It’s all adjectives.”
Well, of course it’s not all adjectives, but I knew what she meant: it’s decorative, it’s ornate, it’s intentionally pleasing. Another Egyptian student, when I asked him about Arabic, said, “It’s all proverbs. We talk in proverbs. People say things like ‘What you are seeking is also seeking you.’” He also told me that Arabic is full of courtesy and deference, some of which is rooted in fear of the government. “You never know who’s listening,” he said, so it doesn’t hurt to be polite. That’s when I realized that when foreign students come to me with a linguistic problem it may also be a cultural or a political problem.
Now I think it’s lovely that such a decorative language as Arabic exists. I wish I could walk around New York and hear people talking in proverbs. But all those adjectives and all that decoration would be the ruin of any journalist trying to write good English. No proverbs, please.
Spanish also comes with a heavy load of beautiful baggage that will smother any journalist writing in English. The Spanish language is a national treasure, justly prized by Spanish-speaking people. But what makes it a national treasure is its long sentences and melodious long nouns that express a general idea. Those nouns are rich in feeling, but they have no action in them—no people doing something we can picture. My Spanish-speaking students must be given the bad news that those long sentences will have to be cruelly chopped up into short sentences with short nouns and short active verbs that drive the story forward. What’s considered “good writing” in Spanish is not “good writing” in English.
So what is good English—the language we’re here today to wrestle with? It’s not as musical as Spanish, or Italian, or French, or as ornamental as Arabic, or as vibrant as some of your native languages. But I’m hopelessly in love with English because it’s plain and it’s strong. It has a huge vocabulary of words that have precise shades of meaning; there’s no subject, however technical or complex, that can’t be made clear to any reader in good English—if it’s used right. Unfortunately, there are many ways of using it wrong. Those are the damaging habits I want to warn you about today.
First, a little history. The English language is derived from two main sources. One is Latin, the florid language of ancient Rome. The other is Anglo-Saxon, the plain languages of England and northern Europe. The words derived from Latin are the enemy—they will strangle and suffocate everything you write. The Anglo-Saxon words will set you free.
How do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general they are long, pompous nouns that end in -ion—like implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables long!)—or that end in -ent—like development and fulfillment. Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something. Here’s a typical sentence: “Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That means “Before we fixed our money problems.”
Believe it or not, this is the language that people in authority in America routinely use—officials in government and business and education and social work and health care. They think those long Latin words make them sound important. It no longer rains in America; your TV weatherman will tell that you we’re experiencing a precipitation probability situation.
I’m sure all of you, newly arrived in America, have already been driven crazy trying to figure out the instructions for ordering a cell phone or connecting your computer, or applying for a bank loan or a health insurance policy, and you assume that those of us who were born here can understand this stuff. I assure you that we don’t understand it either. I often receive some totally unintelligible letter from the telephone company or the cable company or the bank. I try to piece it out like a hieroglyphic, and I ask my wife, “Can you make any sense of this?” She says, “I have no idea what it means.”
Those long Latin usages have so infected everyday language in America that you might well think, “If that’s how people write who are running the country, that’s how I’m supposed to write.” It’s not. Let me read you three typical letters I recently received in the mail. (I keep letters like this and save them in a folder that I call “Bullshit File.”)
The first one is from the president of a private club in New York. It says, “Dear member: The board of governors has spent the past year considering proactive efforts that will continue to professionalize the club and to introduce efficiencies that we will be implementing throughout 2009.” That means they’re going to try to make the club run better.
Here’s a letter to alumni from the head of the New England boarding school I attended when I was a boy. “As I walk around the Academy,” she writes, “and see so many gifted students interacting with accomplished, dedicated adults” [that means boys and girls talking to teachers] and consider the opportunities for learning that such interpersonal exchanges will yield…” Interpersonal exchanges! Pure garbage. Her letter is meant to assure us alumni that the school is in good hands. I’m not assured. One thing I know is that she shouldn’t be allowed near the English department, and I’m not sure she should even be running the school. Remember: how you write is how you define yourself to people who meet you only through your writing. If your writing is pretentious, that’s how you’ll be perceived. The reader has no choice.
Here’s one more—a letter from the man who used to be my broker; now he’s my investment counsel. He says, “As we previously communicated, we completed a systems conversion in late September. Data conversions involve extra processing and reconciliation steps [translation: it took longer than we thought it would to make our office operate better]. We apologize if you were inconvenienced as we completed the verification process [we hope we’ve got it right now]. “Further enhancements will be introduced in the next calendar quarter” [we’re still working on it]. Notice those horrible long Latin words: communicated, conversion, reconciliation, enhancements, verification. There’s not a living person in any one of them.
Well, I think you get the point about bad nouns. (Don’t worry—in a minute I’ll tell you about good nouns.) I bring this up today because most of you will soon be assigned to a beat in one of New York’s neighborhoods. Our city has been greatly enriched in recent years by immigrants from every corner of the world, but their arrival has also brought a multitude of complex urban problems. You’ll be interviewing the men and women who are trying to solve those problems—school principals, social workers, health-care workers, hospital officials, criminal justice officials, union officials, church officials, police officers, judges, clerks in city and state agencies—and when you ask them a question, they will answer you in nouns: Latin noun clusters that are the working vocabulary of their field. They’ll talk about “facilitation intervention” and “affordable housing” and “minimum-density zoning,” and you will dutifully copy those phrases down and write a sentence that says: “A major immigrant concern is the affordable housing situation.” But I can’t picture the affordable housing situation. Who exactly are those immigrants? Where do they live? What kind of housing is affordable? To whom? As readers, we want to be able to picture specific people like ourselves, in a specific part of the city, doing things we might also do. We want a sentence that says something like “New Dominican families on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx can’t pay the rent that landlords ask.” I can picture that; we’ve all had trouble paying the landlord.
So if those are the bad nouns, what are the good nouns? The good nouns are the thousands of short, simple, infinitely old Anglo-Saxon nouns that express the fundamentals of everyday life: house, home, child, chair, bread, milk, sea, sky, earth, field, grass, road … words that are in our bones, words that resonate with the oldest truths. When you use those words, you make contact—consciously and also subconsciously—with the deepest emotions and memories of your readers. Don’t try to find a noun that you think sounds more impressive or “literary.” Short Anglo-Saxon nouns are your second-best tools as a journalist writing in English.
What are your best tools? Your best tools are short, plain Anglo-Saxon verbs. I mean active verbs, not passive verbs. If you could write an article using only active verbs, your article would automatically have clarity and warmth and vigor.
Let’s go back to school for a minute and make sure you remember the difference between an active verb and a passive verb. An active verb denotes one specific action: JOHN SAW THE BOYS. The event only happened once, and we always know who did what: it was John who activated the verb SAW. A passive-voice sentence would say: THE BOYS WERE SEEN BY JOHN. It’s longer. It’s weaker: it takes three words (WERE SEEN BY instead of SAW), and it’s not as exact. How often were the boys seen by John? Every day? Once a week? Active verbs give momentum to a sentence and push it forward. If I had put that last sentence in the passive—“momentum is given to a sentence by active verbs and the sentence is pushed forward by them”—there is no momentum, no push.
One of my favorite writers is Henry David Thoreau, who wrote one of the great American books, Walden, in 1854, about the two years he spent living—and thinking—in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau’s writing moves with simple strength because he uses one active verb after another to push his meaning along. At every point in his sentences you know what you need to know. Here’s a famous sentence from Walden:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of nature, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Look at all those wonderful short, active verbs: went, wished, front, see, learn, die, discover. We understand exactly what Thoreau is saying. We also know a lot about him—about his curiosity and his vitality. How alive Thoreau is in that sentence! It’s an autobiography in 44 words—39 of which are words of one syllable. Think about that: only five words in that long, elegant sentence have more than one syllable. Short is always better than long.
Now let me turn that sentence into the passive:
A decision was made to go to the woods because of a desire for a deliberate existence and for exposure to only the essential facts of life, and for possible instruction in its educational elements, and because of a concern that at the time of my death the absence of a meaningful prior experience would be apprehended.
All the life has been taken out of the sentence. But what’s the biggest thing I’ve taken out of that sentence? I’ve taken Thoreau out of that sentence. He’s nowhere to be seen. I’ve done it just by turning all the active verbs into passive verbs. Every time I replaced one of Thoreau’s active verbs with a passive verb I also had to add a noun to make the passive verb work. “I went to the woods because” became “A decision was made.” I had to add the noun decision. “To see if I could learn what it had to teach—two terrific verbs, learn and teach; we’ve all learned and we’ve all been taught—became “for possible instruction.” Can you hear how dead those Latin nouns are that end in i-o-n? Decision. Instruction. They have no people in them doing something.
So fall in love with active verbs. They are your best friends.
I have four principles of writing good English. They are Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity.
First, Clarity. If it’s not clear you might as well not write it. You might as well stay in bed.
Two: Simplicity. Simple is good. Most students from other countries don’t know that. When I read them a sentence that I admire, a simple sentence with short words, they think I’m joking. “Oh, Mr. Zinsser, you’re so funny,” a bright young woman from Nigeria told me. “If I wrote sentences like that, people would think I’m stupid.” Stupid like Thoreau, I want to say. Or stupid like E. B. White. Or like the King James Bible. Listen to this passage from the book of Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all. [Look at all those wonderful plain nouns: race, battle, bread, riches, favor, time, chance.]
Or stupid like Abraham Lincoln, whom I consider our greatest American writer. Here’s Lincoln addressing the nation in his Second Inaugural Address as president, in 1865, at the end of the long, terrible, exhausting Civil War:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right [eleven straight one-syllable words], let us strive on [active verb] to finish the work we are in, to bind up [active verb] the nation’s wounds, to care [active verb] for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan [specific nouns],—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Here’s another American President, Barack Obama, also a wonderful writer, who modeled his own style on Lincoln’s. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father. a beautifully written book, Obama recalls how, as a boy,
At night, lying in bed, I would let the slogans drift away, to be replaced with a series of images, romantic images, of a past I had never known.
They were of the civil rights movement, mostly, the grainy black-and-white footage that appears every February during Black History Month. . . . A pair of college students . . . placing their orders at a lunch counter teetering on the edge of riot. . . . A county jail bursting with children, their hands clasped together, singing freedom songs.
Such images became a form of prayer for me [beautiful phrase], bolstering my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could. They told me [active verb] . . . that I wasn’t alone in my particular struggles, and that communities . . . had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens [specific detail]. They expanded or contracted [active verbs] with the dreams of men. . . . In the sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs [specific detail], I saw [active verb] the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been raised [simple nouns: place, house]. . . . Because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself—I believed [active verb] that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life.
So remember: Simple is good. Writing is not something you have to embroider with fancy stitches to make yourself look smart.
Principle number 3. Brevity. Short is always better than long. Short sentences are better than long sentences. Short words are better than long words. Don’t say currently if you can say now. Don’t say assistance if you can say help. Don’t say numerous if you can say many. Don’t say facilitate if you can say ease. Don’t call someone an individual [five syllables!]; that’s a person, or a man or a woman. Don’t implement or prioritize. Don’t say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. Writing is talking to someone else on paper or on a screen.
Which brings me to my fourth principle: Humanity. Be yourself. Never try in your writing to be someone you’re not. Your product, finally, is you. Don’t lose that person by putting on airs, trying to sound superior.
There are many modern journalists I admire for their strong, simple style, whom I could recommend to you as models. Two who come to mind are Gay Talese and Joan Didion. Here’s a passage by Talese, from his book of collected magazine pieces, The Gay Talese Reader, about the great Yankee baseball star, Joe DiMaggio, who at one point was married to Marilyn Monroe:
Joe DiMaggio lives with his widowed sister, Marie, in a tan stone house on a quiet residential street near Fisherman’s Wharf. He bought the house almost thirty years ago for his parents, and after their death he lived there with Marilyn Monroe. . . . There are some baseball trophies and plaques in a small room off DiMaggio’s bedroom, and on his dresser are photographs of Marilyn Monroe, and in the living room downstairs is a small painting of her that DiMaggio likes very much [how nice that sentence is—how simple and direct]: It reveals only her face and shoulders, and she is wearing a very wide-brimmed sun hat, and there is a soft sweet smile on her lips, an innocent curiosity about her that is the way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be seen by others.
[Notice all those one-syllable words: “the way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be seen.” The sentence is absolutely clean—there’s not one word in it that’s not necessary and not one extra word. Get rid of every element in your writing that’s not doing useful work. It’s all clutter.]
And here’s Joan Didion, who grew up in California and wrote brilliant magazine pieces about its trashy lifestyle in the 1960s. No anthropologist caught it better. This passage is from her collection of early magazine pieces, Slouching Toward Bethlehem.
There are always little girls around rock groups—the same little girls who used to hang around saxophone players, girls who lived on the celebrity and power and sex a band projects when it plays—and there are three of them out here this afternoon in Sausalito where the Grateful Dead rehearse. They are all pretty and two of them still have baby fat and one of them dances by herself with her eyes closed [perfect simple image]. . . .
Somebody said that if I was going to meet some runaways I better pick up some hamburgers and Cokes on the way, so I did, and we are eating them in the Park together, me, Debbie who is fifteen, and Jeff who is sixteen. Debbie and Jeff ran away twelve days ago, walked out of school with $100 between them [active verbs: ran away, walked out of school]. . . .
Debbie is buffing her fingernails with the belt to her suède jacket. She is annoyed because she chipped a nail and because I do not have any polish remover in the car. I promise to get her to a friend’s apartment so that she can redo her manicure, but something has been bothering me and as I fiddle with the ignition I finally ask it. I ask them to think back to when they were children, to tell me what they had wanted to be when they were grown up, how they had seen the future then.
Jeff throws a Coca-Cola bottle out the car window. “I can’t remember I ever thought about it,” he says.
“I remember I wanted to be a veterinarian once,” Debbie says. “But now I’m more or less working in the vein of being an artist or a model or a cosmetologist. Or something.”
Here’s the first paragraph of an article of mine that originally ran in The New Yorker. (It’s now in my book Mitchell & Ruff.)
Jazz came to China for the first time on the afternoon of June 2, 1981, when the American bassist and French-horn player Willie Ruff introduced himself and his partner, the pianist Dwike Mitchell, to several hundred students and professors who were crowded into a large room at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The students and the professors were all expectant, without quite knowing what to expect. They only knew that they were about to hear the first American jazz concert ever presented to the Chinese. Probably they were not surprised to find that the two musicians were black, though black Americans are a rarity in the People’s Republic. What they undoubtedly didn’t expect was that Ruff would talk to them in Chinese, and when he began they murmured with delight.
Five plain declarative sentences that get the story started at full speed—WHAP! You’re right in that room at the Shanghai Conservatory on that June afternoon in 1981.
I’ve given you these examples because writing is learned by imitation. We all need models. Bach needed a model; Picasso needed a model. Make a point of reading writers who are doing the kind of writing you want to do. (Many of them write for The New Yorker.) Study their articles clinically. Try to figure out how they put their words and sentences together. That’s how I learned to write, not from a writing course.
Two final thoughts. Some of you, hearing me talk to you so urgently about the need to write plain English, perhaps found yourself thinking: “That’s so yesterday. Journalism has gone digital, and I’ve come to Columbia to learn the new electronic media. I no longer need to write well.” I think you need to write even more clearly and simply for the new media than for the old media. You’ll be making and editing videos and photographs and audio recordings to accompany your articles. Somebody—that’s you—will still have to write all those video scripts and audio scripts, and your writing will need to be lean and tight and coherent: plain nouns and verbs pushing your story forward so that the rest of us always know what’s happening. This principle applies—and will apply—to every digital format; nobody wants to consult a Web site that isn’t instantly clear. Clarity, brevity, and sequential order will be crucial to your success.
I emphasize this because the biggest problem that paralyzes students is not how to write; it’s how to organize what they are writing. They go out on a story, and they gather a million notes and a million quotes, and when they come back they have no idea what the story is about—what is its proper narrative shape? Their first paragraph contains facts that should be on page five; facts are on page five that should be in the first paragraph. The stories exist nowhere in time or space; the people could be in Brooklyn or Bogotá.
The epidemic I’m most worried about isn’t swine flu. It’s the death of logical thinking. The cause, I assume, is that most people now get their information from random images on a screen—pop-ups, windows, and sidebars—or from scraps of talk on a digital phone. But writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?”
One maxim that my students find helpful is: One thought per sentence. Readers only process one thought at a time. So give them time to digest the first set of facts you want them to know. Then give them the next piece of information they need to know, which further explains the first fact. Be grateful for the period. Writing is so hard that all of us, once launched, tend to ramble. Instead of a period we use a comma, followed by a transitional word (and, while), and soon we have strayed into a wilderness that seems to have no road back out. Let the humble period be your savior. There’s no sentence too short to be acceptable in the eyes of God.
As you start your journey here at Columbia this week, you may tell yourself that you’re doing “communications,” or “new media,” or “digital media” or some other fashionable new form. But ultimately you’re in the storytelling business. We all are. It’s the oldest of narrative forms, going back to the caveman and the crib, endlessly riveting. What happened? Then what happened? Please remember, in moments of despair, whatever journalistic assignment you’ve been given, all you have to do is tell a story, using the simple tools of the English language and never losing your own humanity.
Repeat after me:
Short is better than long.
Simple is good. (Louder)
Long Latin nouns are the enemy.
Anglo-Saxon active verbs are your best friend.
One thought per sentence.
Good luck to you all.
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Writing English as a Second Language
Posted By William Zinsser On December 1, 2009 @ 5:59 pm In P of D, Point of Departure, Winter 2010 | Comments Disabled
A talk to the incoming international students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, August 11, 2009
Five years ago one of your deans at the journalism school, Elizabeth Fishman, asked me if I would be interested in tutoring international students who might need some extra help with their writing. She knew I had done a lot of traveling in Asia and Africa and other parts of the world where many of you come from.
I knew I would enjoy that, and I have—I’ve been doing it ever since. I’m the doctor that students get sent to see if they have a writing problem that their professor thinks I can fix. As a bonus, I’ve made many friends—from Uganda, Uzbekhistan, India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Iraq, Nigeria, Poland, China, Colombia and many other countries. Several young Asian women, when they went back home, sent me invitations to their weddings. I never made it to Bhutan or Korea, but I did see the wedding pictures. Such beautiful brides!
I can’t imagine how hard it must be to learn to write comfortably in a second—or third or fourth—language. I don’t think I could do it, and I admire your grace in taking on that difficult task. Much of the anxiety that I see in foreign students could be avoided if certain principles of writing good English—which nobody ever told them—were explained in advance. So I asked if I could talk to all of you during orientation week and tell you some of the things my students have found helpful.
So that’s why we’re here today.
I’ll start with a question: What is good writing?
It depends on what country you’re from. We all know what’s considered “good writing” in our own country. We grow up immersed in the cadences and sentence structure of the language we were born into, so we think, “That’s probably what every country considers good writing; they just use different words.” If only! I once asked a student from Cairo, “What kind of language is Arabic?” I was trying to put myself into her mental process of switching from Arabic to English. She said, “It’s all adjectives.”
Well, of course it’s not all adjectives, but I knew what she meant: it’s decorative, it’s ornate, it’s intentionally pleasing. Another Egyptian student, when I asked him about Arabic, said, “It’s all proverbs. We talk in proverbs. People say things like ‘What you are seeking is also seeking you.’” He also told me that Arabic is full of courtesy and deference, some of which is rooted in fear of the government. “You never know who’s listening,” he said, so it doesn’t hurt to be polite. That’s when I realized that when foreign students come to me with a linguistic problem it may also be a cultural or a political problem.
Now I think it’s lovely that such a decorative language as Arabic exists. I wish I could walk around New York and hear people talking in proverbs. But all those adjectives and all that decoration would be the ruin of any journalist trying to write good English. No proverbs, please.
Spanish also comes with a heavy load of beautiful baggage that will smother any journalist writing in English. The Spanish language is a national treasure, justly prized by Spanish-speaking people. But what makes it a national treasure is its long sentences and melodious long nouns that express a general idea. Those nouns are rich in feeling, but they have no action in them—no people doing something we can picture. My Spanish-speaking students must be given the bad news that those long sentences will have to be cruelly chopped up into short sentences with short nouns and short active verbs that drive the story forward. What’s considered “good writing” in Spanish is not “good writing” in English.
So what is good English—the language we’re here today to wrestle with? It’s not as musical as Spanish, or Italian, or French, or as ornamental as Arabic, or as vibrant as some of your native languages. But I’m hopelessly in love with English because it’s plain and it’s strong. It has a huge vocabulary of words that have precise shades of meaning; there’s no subject, however technical or complex, that can’t be made clear to any reader in good English—if it’s used right. Unfortunately, there are many ways of using it wrong. Those are the damaging habits I want to warn you about today.
First, a little history. The English language is derived from two main sources. One is Latin, the florid language of ancient Rome. The other is Anglo-Saxon, the plain languages of England and northern Europe. The words derived from Latin are the enemy—they will strangle and suffocate everything you write. The Anglo-Saxon words will set you free.
How do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general they are long, pompous nouns that end in -ion—like implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables long!)—or that end in -ent—like development and fulfillment. Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something. Here’s a typical sentence: “Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That means “Before we fixed our money problems.”
Believe it or not, this is the language that people in authority in America routinely use—officials in government and business and education and social work and health care. They think those long Latin words make them sound important. It no longer rains in America; your TV weatherman will tell that you we’re experiencing a precipitation probability situation.
I’m sure all of you, newly arrived in America, have already been driven crazy trying to figure out the instructions for ordering a cell phone or connecting your computer, or applying for a bank loan or a health insurance policy, and you assume that those of us who were born here can understand this stuff. I assure you that we don’t understand it either. I often receive some totally unintelligible letter from the telephone company or the cable company or the bank. I try to piece it out like a hieroglyphic, and I ask my wife, “Can you make any sense of this?” She says, “I have no idea what it means.”
Those long Latin usages have so infected everyday language in America that you might well think, “If that’s how people write who are running the country, that’s how I’m supposed to write.” It’s not. Let me read you three typical letters I recently received in the mail. (I keep letters like this and save them in a folder that I call “Bullshit File.”)
The first one is from the president of a private club in New York. It says, “Dear member: The board of governors has spent the past year considering proactive efforts that will continue to professionalize the club and to introduce efficiencies that we will be implementing throughout 2009.” That means they’re going to try to make the club run better.
Here’s a letter to alumni from the head of the New England boarding school I attended when I was a boy. “As I walk around the Academy,” she writes, “and see so many gifted students interacting with accomplished, dedicated adults” [that means boys and girls talking to teachers] and consider the opportunities for learning that such interpersonal exchanges will yield…” Interpersonal exchanges! Pure garbage. Her letter is meant to assure us alumni that the school is in good hands. I’m not assured. One thing I know is that she shouldn’t be allowed near the English department, and I’m not sure she should even be running the school. Remember: how you write is how you define yourself to people who meet you only through your writing. If your writing is pretentious, that’s how you’ll be perceived. The reader has no choice.
Here’s one more—a letter from the man who used to be my broker; now he’s my investment counsel. He says, “As we previously communicated, we completed a systems conversion in late September. Data conversions involve extra processing and reconciliation steps [translation: it took longer than we thought it would to make our office operate better]. We apologize if you were inconvenienced as we completed the verification process [we hope we’ve got it right now]. “Further enhancements will be introduced in the next calendar quarter” [we’re still working on it]. Notice those horrible long Latin words: communicated, conversion, reconciliation, enhancements, verification. There’s not a living person in any one of them.
Well, I think you get the point about bad nouns. (Don’t worry—in a minute I’ll tell you about good nouns.) I bring this up today because most of you will soon be assigned to a beat in one of New York’s neighborhoods. Our city has been greatly enriched in recent years by immigrants from every corner of the world, but their arrival has also brought a multitude of complex urban problems. You’ll be interviewing the men and women who are trying to solve those problems—school principals, social workers, health-care workers, hospital officials, criminal justice officials, union officials, church officials, police officers, judges, clerks in city and state agencies—and when you ask them a question, they will answer you in nouns: Latin noun clusters that are the working vocabulary of their field. They’ll talk about “facilitation intervention” and “affordable housing” and “minimum-density zoning,” and you will dutifully copy those phrases down and write a sentence that says: “A major immigrant concern is the affordable housing situation.” But I can’t picture the affordable housing situation. Who exactly are those immigrants? Where do they live? What kind of housing is affordable? To whom? As readers, we want to be able to picture specific people like ourselves, in a specific part of the city, doing things we might also do. We want a sentence that says something like “New Dominican families on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx can’t pay the rent that landlords ask.” I can picture that; we’ve all had trouble paying the landlord.
So if those are the bad nouns, what are the good nouns? The good nouns are the thousands of short, simple, infinitely old Anglo-Saxon nouns that express the fundamentals of everyday life: house, home, child, chair, bread, milk, sea, sky, earth, field, grass, road … words that are in our bones, words that resonate with the oldest truths. When you use those words, you make contact—consciously and also subconsciously—with the deepest emotions and memories of your readers. Don’t try to find a noun that you think sounds more impressive or “literary.” Short Anglo-Saxon nouns are your second-best tools as a journalist writing in English.
What are your best tools? Your best tools are short, plain Anglo-Saxon verbs. I mean active verbs, not passive verbs. If you could write an article using only active verbs, your article would automatically have clarity and warmth and vigor.
Let’s go back to school for a minute and make sure you remember the difference between an active verb and a passive verb. An active verb denotes one specific action: JOHN SAW THE BOYS. The event only happened once, and we always know who did what: it was John who activated the verb SAW. A passive-voice sentence would say: THE BOYS WERE SEEN BY JOHN. It’s longer. It’s weaker: it takes three words (WERE SEEN BY instead of SAW), and it’s not as exact. How often were the boys seen by John? Every day? Once a week? Active verbs give momentum to a sentence and push it forward. If I had put that last sentence in the passive—“momentum is given to a sentence by active verbs and the sentence is pushed forward by them”—there is no momentum, no push.
One of my favorite writers is Henry David Thoreau, who wrote one of the great American books, Walden, in 1854, about the two years he spent living—and thinking—in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau’s writing moves with simple strength because he uses one active verb after another to push his meaning along. At every point in his sentences you know what you need to know. Here’s a famous sentence from Walden:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of nature, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Look at all those wonderful short, active verbs: went, wished, front, see, learn, die, discover. We understand exactly what Thoreau is saying. We also know a lot about him—about his curiosity and his vitality. How alive Thoreau is in that sentence! It’s an autobiography in 44 words—39 of which are words of one syllable. Think about that: only five words in that long, elegant sentence have more than one syllable. Short is always better than long.
Now let me turn that sentence into the passive:
A decision was made to go to the woods because of a desire for a deliberate existence and for exposure to only the essential facts of life, and for possible instruction in its educational elements, and because of a concern that at the time of my death the absence of a meaningful prior experience would be apprehended.
All the life has been taken out of the sentence. But what’s the biggest thing I’ve taken out of that sentence? I’ve taken Thoreau out of that sentence. He’s nowhere to be seen. I’ve done it just by turning all the active verbs into passive verbs. Every time I replaced one of Thoreau’s active verbs with a passive verb I also had to add a noun to make the passive verb work. “I went to the woods because” became “A decision was made.” I had to add the noun decision. “To see if I could learn what it had to teach—two terrific verbs, learn and teach; we’ve all learned and we’ve all been taught—became “for possible instruction.” Can you hear how dead those Latin nouns are that end in i-o-n? Decision. Instruction. They have no people in them doing something.
So fall in love with active verbs. They are your best friends.
I have four principles of writing good English. They are Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity.
First, Clarity. If it’s not clear you might as well not write it. You might as well stay in bed.
Two: Simplicity. Simple is good. Most students from other countries don’t know that. When I read them a sentence that I admire, a simple sentence with short words, they think I’m joking. “Oh, Mr. Zinsser, you’re so funny,” a bright young woman from Nigeria told me. “If I wrote sentences like that, people would think I’m stupid.” Stupid like Thoreau, I want to say. Or stupid like E. B. White. Or like the King James Bible. Listen to this passage from the book of Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all. [Look at all those wonderful plain nouns: race, battle, bread, riches, favor, time, chance.]
Or stupid like Abraham Lincoln, whom I consider our greatest American writer. Here’s Lincoln addressing the nation in his Second Inaugural Address as president, in 1865, at the end of the long, terrible, exhausting Civil War:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right [eleven straight one-syllable words], let us strive on [active verb] to finish the work we are in, to bind up [active verb] the nation’s wounds, to care [active verb] for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan [specific nouns],—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Here’s another American President, Barack Obama, also a wonderful writer, who modeled his own style on Lincoln’s. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father. a beautifully written book, Obama recalls how, as a boy,
At night, lying in bed, I would let the slogans drift away, to be replaced with a series of images, romantic images, of a past I had never known.
They were of the civil rights movement, mostly, the grainy black-and-white footage that appears every February during Black History Month. . . . A pair of college students . . . placing their orders at a lunch counter teetering on the edge of riot. . . . A county jail bursting with children, their hands clasped together, singing freedom songs.
Such images became a form of prayer for me [beautiful phrase], bolstering my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could. They told me [active verb] . . . that I wasn’t alone in my particular struggles, and that communities . . . had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens [specific detail]. They expanded or contracted [active verbs] with the dreams of men. . . . In the sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs [specific detail], I saw [active verb] the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been raised [simple nouns: place, house]. . . . Because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself—I believed [active verb] that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life.
So remember: Simple is good. Writing is not something you have to embroider with fancy stitches to make yourself look smart.
Principle number 3. Brevity. Short is always better than long. Short sentences are better than long sentences. Short words are better than long words. Don’t say currently if you can say now. Don’t say assistance if you can say help. Don’t say numerous if you can say many. Don’t say facilitate if you can say ease. Don’t call someone an individual [five syllables!]; that’s a person, or a man or a woman. Don’t implement or prioritize. Don’t say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. Writing is talking to someone else on paper or on a screen.
Which brings me to my fourth principle: Humanity. Be yourself. Never try in your writing to be someone you’re not. Your product, finally, is you. Don’t lose that person by putting on airs, trying to sound superior.
There are many modern journalists I admire for their strong, simple style, whom I could recommend to you as models. Two who come to mind are Gay Talese and Joan Didion. Here’s a passage by Talese, from his book of collected magazine pieces, The Gay Talese Reader, about the great Yankee baseball star, Joe DiMaggio, who at one point was married to Marilyn Monroe:
Joe DiMaggio lives with his widowed sister, Marie, in a tan stone house on a quiet residential street near Fisherman’s Wharf. He bought the house almost thirty years ago for his parents, and after their death he lived there with Marilyn Monroe. . . . There are some baseball trophies and plaques in a small room off DiMaggio’s bedroom, and on his dresser are photographs of Marilyn Monroe, and in the living room downstairs is a small painting of her that DiMaggio likes very much [how nice that sentence is—how simple and direct]: It reveals only her face and shoulders, and she is wearing a very wide-brimmed sun hat, and there is a soft sweet smile on her lips, an innocent curiosity about her that is the way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be seen by others.
[Notice all those one-syllable words: “the way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be seen.” The sentence is absolutely clean—there’s not one word in it that’s not necessary and not one extra word. Get rid of every element in your writing that’s not doing useful work. It’s all clutter.]
And here’s Joan Didion, who grew up in California and wrote brilliant magazine pieces about its trashy lifestyle in the 1960s. No anthropologist caught it better. This passage is from her collection of early magazine pieces, Slouching Toward Bethlehem.
There are always little girls around rock groups—the same little girls who used to hang around saxophone players, girls who lived on the celebrity and power and sex a band projects when it plays—and there are three of them out here this afternoon in Sausalito where the Grateful Dead rehearse. They are all pretty and two of them still have baby fat and one of them dances by herself with her eyes closed [perfect simple image]. . . .
Somebody said that if I was going to meet some runaways I better pick up some hamburgers and Cokes on the way, so I did, and we are eating them in the Park together, me, Debbie who is fifteen, and Jeff who is sixteen. Debbie and Jeff ran away twelve days ago, walked out of school with $100 between them [active verbs: ran away, walked out of school]. . . .
Debbie is buffing her fingernails with the belt to her suède jacket. She is annoyed because she chipped a nail and because I do not have any polish remover in the car. I promise to get her to a friend’s apartment so that she can redo her manicure, but something has been bothering me and as I fiddle with the ignition I finally ask it. I ask them to think back to when they were children, to tell me what they had wanted to be when they were grown up, how they had seen the future then.
Jeff throws a Coca-Cola bottle out the car window. “I can’t remember I ever thought about it,” he says.
“I remember I wanted to be a veterinarian once,” Debbie says. “But now I’m more or less working in the vein of being an artist or a model or a cosmetologist. Or something.”
Here’s the first paragraph of an article of mine that originally ran in The New Yorker. (It’s now in my book Mitchell & Ruff.)
Jazz came to China for the first time on the afternoon of June 2, 1981, when the American bassist and French-horn player Willie Ruff introduced himself and his partner, the pianist Dwike Mitchell, to several hundred students and professors who were crowded into a large room at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The students and the professors were all expectant, without quite knowing what to expect. They only knew that they were about to hear the first American jazz concert ever presented to the Chinese. Probably they were not surprised to find that the two musicians were black, though black Americans are a rarity in the People’s Republic. What they undoubtedly didn’t expect was that Ruff would talk to them in Chinese, and when he began they murmured with delight.
Five plain declarative sentences that get the story started at full speed—WHAP! You’re right in that room at the Shanghai Conservatory on that June afternoon in 1981.
I’ve given you these examples because writing is learned by imitation. We all need models. Bach needed a model; Picasso needed a model. Make a point of reading writers who are doing the kind of writing you want to do. (Many of them write for The New Yorker.) Study their articles clinically. Try to figure out how they put their words and sentences together. That’s how I learned to write, not from a writing course.
Two final thoughts. Some of you, hearing me talk to you so urgently about the need to write plain English, perhaps found yourself thinking: “That’s so yesterday. Journalism has gone digital, and I’ve come to Columbia to learn the new electronic media. I no longer need to write well.” I think you need to write even more clearly and simply for the new media than for the old media. You’ll be making and editing videos and photographs and audio recordings to accompany your articles. Somebody—that’s you—will still have to write all those video scripts and audio scripts, and your writing will need to be lean and tight and coherent: plain nouns and verbs pushing your story forward so that the rest of us always know what’s happening. This principle applies—and will apply—to every digital format; nobody wants to consult a Web site that isn’t instantly clear. Clarity, brevity, and sequential order will be crucial to your success.
I emphasize this because the biggest problem that paralyzes students is not how to write; it’s how to organize what they are writing. They go out on a story, and they gather a million notes and a million quotes, and when they come back they have no idea what the story is about—what is its proper narrative shape? Their first paragraph contains facts that should be on page five; facts are on page five that should be in the first paragraph. The stories exist nowhere in time or space; the people could be in Brooklyn or Bogotá.
The epidemic I’m most worried about isn’t swine flu. It’s the death of logical thinking. The cause, I assume, is that most people now get their information from random images on a screen—pop-ups, windows, and sidebars—or from scraps of talk on a digital phone. But writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?”
One maxim that my students find helpful is: One thought per sentence. Readers only process one thought at a time. So give them time to digest the first set of facts you want them to know. Then give them the next piece of information they need to know, which further explains the first fact. Be grateful for the period. Writing is so hard that all of us, once launched, tend to ramble. Instead of a period we use a comma, followed by a transitional word (and, while), and soon we have strayed into a wilderness that seems to have no road back out. Let the humble period be your savior. There’s no sentence too short to be acceptable in the eyes of God.
As you start your journey here at Columbia this week, you may tell yourself that you’re doing “communications,” or “new media,” or “digital media” or some other fashionable new form. But ultimately you’re in the storytelling business. We all are. It’s the oldest of narrative forms, going back to the caveman and the crib, endlessly riveting. What happened? Then what happened? Please remember, in moments of despair, whatever journalistic assignment you’ve been given, all you have to do is tell a story, using the simple tools of the English language and never losing your own humanity.
Repeat after me:
Short is better than long.
Simple is good. (Louder)
Long Latin nouns are the enemy.
Anglo-Saxon active verbs are your best friend.
One thought per sentence.
Good luck to you all.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
思緒
1.
剛從學校回來,發現快五點了還沒天黑,突然覺得好幸福。每天多一點點天光,慢慢就足以讓人探望見不遠處的春天。
2.
今天剛剛送走一個deadline,依照慣例好像可以犒賞自己一下,例如上網看部電影。不過這週還有兩個deadlines要接待,所以還是乖乖坐在桌前準備接客。原來之前壓力不夠大時,我都用閃躲法因應。最近壓力大到把整個腦子擠滿,沒有迴避的空間,連轉身都難時,只好正向面對、把自己擠進壓力裡。The feeling of living with pressures? Well, it's not too bad.
3.
朋友說自從答辯完畢、找到工作之後已經有一個月過著不用大腦、沒有deadlines的生活。暗自揣摩那種幾百年沒再遇到的解放與輕鬆感,真是羨刹我也。不敢想像還要多久才可以也享有這樣離開軌道的失重感。如果我真有資格離開軌道一下下,我想去走一趟西班牙聖地牙哥的朝聖之道。2000年以前這曾是我的夢想,但曾幾何時這想法就逐漸消失在我的腦袋中。偶爾想起也覺得無此心力。最近這想法又重新出現,而且不同於之前那種想要呼朋引伴同行的熱鬧心態。這感覺像是個sign,這次我要比較有耐心也比較專心,要等這sign慢慢變清楚。
4.
最近有非常多打掉重練的經驗,特別是整理資料與寫作方面。原來這些都是有好的方法可以學的,跟天賦異稟、天縱英明、人文資優一點關係都沒有。我也不相信那種每天25分鐘寫完你的博士論文那種寫作勵志工具書。不過最近讀到一本論文寫作去迷思解密小書加上如何進行歷史研究的寫作的小專欄文章,覺得受益良多。以後我若有機會誤人子弟,必當要他們從小好好練功。不要像師傅我閉門造車多年、蹉跎青春。任何精彩的人文或社會研究還是需要※年磨一劍的專注與投入（不敢用原文,以免一語成讖）。不過好的方法與習慣還是可以幫助研究者有系統地處理大量研究資料、讓寫作過程順暢一些、進而提升寫作成品的品質。往者已矣,只能從現在開始吧！
剛從學校回來,發現快五點了還沒天黑,突然覺得好幸福。每天多一點點天光,慢慢就足以讓人探望見不遠處的春天。
2.
今天剛剛送走一個deadline,依照慣例好像可以犒賞自己一下,例如上網看部電影。不過這週還有兩個deadlines要接待,所以還是乖乖坐在桌前準備接客。原來之前壓力不夠大時,我都用閃躲法因應。最近壓力大到把整個腦子擠滿,沒有迴避的空間,連轉身都難時,只好正向面對、把自己擠進壓力裡。The feeling of living with pressures? Well, it's not too bad.
3.
朋友說自從答辯完畢、找到工作之後已經有一個月過著不用大腦、沒有deadlines的生活。暗自揣摩那種幾百年沒再遇到的解放與輕鬆感,真是羨刹我也。不敢想像還要多久才可以也享有這樣離開軌道的失重感。如果我真有資格離開軌道一下下,我想去走一趟西班牙聖地牙哥的朝聖之道。2000年以前這曾是我的夢想,但曾幾何時這想法就逐漸消失在我的腦袋中。偶爾想起也覺得無此心力。最近這想法又重新出現,而且不同於之前那種想要呼朋引伴同行的熱鬧心態。這感覺像是個sign,這次我要比較有耐心也比較專心,要等這sign慢慢變清楚。
4.
最近有非常多打掉重練的經驗,特別是整理資料與寫作方面。原來這些都是有好的方法可以學的,跟天賦異稟、天縱英明、人文資優一點關係都沒有。我也不相信那種每天25分鐘寫完你的博士論文那種寫作勵志工具書。不過最近讀到一本論文寫作去迷思解密小書加上如何進行歷史研究的寫作的小專欄文章,覺得受益良多。以後我若有機會誤人子弟,必當要他們從小好好練功。不要像師傅我閉門造車多年、蹉跎青春。任何精彩的人文或社會研究還是需要※年磨一劍的專注與投入（不敢用原文,以免一語成讖）。不過好的方法與習慣還是可以幫助研究者有系統地處理大量研究資料、讓寫作過程順暢一些、進而提升寫作成品的品質。往者已矣,只能從現在開始吧！
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Fun Stuff
昨天剛開張的青少年專欄好像太嚴肅了些。今天來點輕鬆的好玩的。小朋友也可以練習一下英文。
Rate as【R】:For language and some violent image. Parents and teachers should ascertain whether these are adequate for your kids and students. :)
以下圖檔出處：http://pencilsatdawn.wordpress.com/
Rate as【R】:For language and some violent image. Parents and teachers should ascertain whether these are adequate for your kids and students. :)
以下圖檔出處：http://pencilsatdawn.wordpress.com/
Monday, January 11, 2010
寫給十五歲自己的信
耶誕節時寫了兩張卡片給外甥與外甥女。很怕耶誕卡變成越洋的老人碎碎唸。不過從他們媽媽那邊聽來的反應好像還okay。Jenny媽說,這次我寫給她兒子的卡片有主題有討論,很不錯。（意思是說以前裝可愛以求親近小朋友們的表達其實在小朋友眼中是幼稚加弱智。唉！我自找的。）我向她承諾說本格將開闢青少年專欄。結果一個禮拜過去了,都沒啥新鮮事和小朋友分享。
剛剛午休時看了一個朋友的部落格,知道了一首近年在日本很紅的歌「寫給十五歲自己的信」。是一個日本的創作型歌手Angela Aki的作品（真是氣質美女歌手啊！）。她在15歲時寫了一封信給30歲的自己,聽說30歲時她媽媽把這封15年前的收藏日記寄給她。她於是回了封信給15歲的自己。這兩封信所交流的心情就變成了這首歌的主軸。網路上說這首歌非常貼近日本青少年的心情,所以「成為平成20年，第75屆NHK全國學校音樂比賽的中學生合唱指定曲，到了畢業季節，甚至取代傳統的驪歌，成為畢業生感動的青春告別曲。」（消息來源：米果部落格）這幾年紅白對唱也都有找Aki來表演。
我以為這首歌該是給13歲的Vincent的,沒想到一聽之後（當然是配合歌詞中文翻譯）,覺得這首歌也是給Mark、給我自己、給任何一個曾經歷過困惑、恐懼、不安、晚熟的靈魂,給願意相信the best is yet to come的你。
以下是歌詞,建議先閱讀了解歌詞內容後專心觀賞Aki的琴藝歌聲肢體語言與那些小朋友的反應。(當然我現在超級羨慕那些根本不須要中文歌詞的日文高手朋友們！)
手紙～拝啓 十五の君へ
拝啓 この手紙 読んでいるあなたは 敬啟： 正在閱讀這封信的你
どこで 何をしているのだろう 現在身在何處？做些什麼事呢？
十五の僕には 誰にも話せない悩みの種があるのです 十五歲的我 有許多無法說與人聽的煩惱
未来の自分に 宛てて書く手紙なら 如果是寫信給未來的自己
きっと 素直に 打ち明けられるだろう 應該可以坦率的、毫無隱瞞的暢所欲言吧
今 負けそうで 泣きそうで 此時此刻 似乎要認輸了 似乎要掉下淚了
消えてしまいそうな僕は 好像下一個瞬間就要消失的我
誰の言葉を信じ歩けばいいの 應該相信誰的話，繼續往下走呢？
一つしかないこの胸が 只有這樣一顆心
何度もばらばらに割れて 不斷不斷被割成碎片
苦しい中で 今を生きている 痛苦之中 活在當下
今を生きている 活在當下
拝啓 ありがとう 敬啟 謝謝你
十五のあなたに 伝えたいことがあるのです 我也有些話想要告訴十五歲你
自分とは何で どこへ向かうべきか 自己到底是誰？該朝著哪個方向前進？
問い続ければ 見えてくる 只要不斷追問 就能得到答案
荒れた青春の海は厳しいけれど 狂亂的青春之海雖然很險惡
明日の岸辺へと 夢の舟よ進め 駕著夢想的船，朝著明日的岸邊前進吧
今 負けないで 泣かないで 此時此刻 不要放棄 不要流淚
消えてしまいそうな時は 彷彿下一秒就要消失的瞬間
自分の声を信じ歩けばいいの 相信自己的聲音，繼續往前走吧
大人の僕も 傷ついて 已經變成大人的我 也會有受傷的時候
眠れない夜はあるけど 當然也有輾轉難眠的夜晚
苦しくて甘い 今を生きている 苦中總是帶甜 活在當下
人生の全てに意味があるから 人生自有其意義
恐れずにあなたの夢を育てて 千萬不要害怕 去築夢吧
Keep on believing
Keep on believing
Keep on believing
Keep on believing
今 負けそうで 泣きそうで 此時此刻 好像快要認輸了 快要掉下眼淚了
消えてしまいそうな僕は 彷彿下一個瞬間就要消失的我
誰の言葉を信じ歩けばいいの 該相信誰的話，繼續往前走呢？
ああ 負けないで 泣かないで 啊 不要認輸 不要哭泣
消えてしまいそうな時は 幾乎要失去的瞬間
自分の声を信じ歩けばいいの 相信自己的聲音，繼續往前走吧
いつの時代も 悲しみを避けては 通れないけれど 不管什麼時代 只會逃避悲傷，是行不通的
笑顔を見せて 今を生きていこう 展開笑臉 活在當下吧
拝啓 この手紙 読んでいるあなたが 敬啟 正在閱讀這封信的你
幸せなことを願います 願你幸福
（中文歌詞引自米果部落格）
剛剛午休時看了一個朋友的部落格,知道了一首近年在日本很紅的歌「寫給十五歲自己的信」。是一個日本的創作型歌手Angela Aki的作品（真是氣質美女歌手啊！）。她在15歲時寫了一封信給30歲的自己,聽說30歲時她媽媽把這封15年前的收藏日記寄給她。她於是回了封信給15歲的自己。這兩封信所交流的心情就變成了這首歌的主軸。網路上說這首歌非常貼近日本青少年的心情,所以「成為平成20年，第75屆NHK全國學校音樂比賽的中學生合唱指定曲，到了畢業季節，甚至取代傳統的驪歌，成為畢業生感動的青春告別曲。」（消息來源：米果部落格）這幾年紅白對唱也都有找Aki來表演。
我以為這首歌該是給13歲的Vincent的,沒想到一聽之後（當然是配合歌詞中文翻譯）,覺得這首歌也是給Mark、給我自己、給任何一個曾經歷過困惑、恐懼、不安、晚熟的靈魂,給願意相信the best is yet to come的你。
以下是歌詞,建議先閱讀了解歌詞內容後專心觀賞Aki的琴藝歌聲肢體語言與那些小朋友的反應。(當然我現在超級羨慕那些根本不須要中文歌詞的日文高手朋友們！)
手紙～拝啓 十五の君へ
拝啓 この手紙 読んでいるあなたは 敬啟： 正在閱讀這封信的你
どこで 何をしているのだろう 現在身在何處？做些什麼事呢？
十五の僕には 誰にも話せない悩みの種があるのです 十五歲的我 有許多無法說與人聽的煩惱
未来の自分に 宛てて書く手紙なら 如果是寫信給未來的自己
きっと 素直に 打ち明けられるだろう 應該可以坦率的、毫無隱瞞的暢所欲言吧
今 負けそうで 泣きそうで 此時此刻 似乎要認輸了 似乎要掉下淚了
消えてしまいそうな僕は 好像下一個瞬間就要消失的我
誰の言葉を信じ歩けばいいの 應該相信誰的話，繼續往下走呢？
一つしかないこの胸が 只有這樣一顆心
何度もばらばらに割れて 不斷不斷被割成碎片
苦しい中で 今を生きている 痛苦之中 活在當下
今を生きている 活在當下
拝啓 ありがとう 敬啟 謝謝你
十五のあなたに 伝えたいことがあるのです 我也有些話想要告訴十五歲你
自分とは何で どこへ向かうべきか 自己到底是誰？該朝著哪個方向前進？
問い続ければ 見えてくる 只要不斷追問 就能得到答案
荒れた青春の海は厳しいけれど 狂亂的青春之海雖然很險惡
明日の岸辺へと 夢の舟よ進め 駕著夢想的船，朝著明日的岸邊前進吧
今 負けないで 泣かないで 此時此刻 不要放棄 不要流淚
消えてしまいそうな時は 彷彿下一秒就要消失的瞬間
自分の声を信じ歩けばいいの 相信自己的聲音，繼續往前走吧
大人の僕も 傷ついて 已經變成大人的我 也會有受傷的時候
眠れない夜はあるけど 當然也有輾轉難眠的夜晚
苦しくて甘い 今を生きている 苦中總是帶甜 活在當下
人生の全てに意味があるから 人生自有其意義
恐れずにあなたの夢を育てて 千萬不要害怕 去築夢吧
Keep on believing
Keep on believing
Keep on believing
Keep on believing
今 負けそうで 泣きそうで 此時此刻 好像快要認輸了 快要掉下眼淚了
消えてしまいそうな僕は 彷彿下一個瞬間就要消失的我
誰の言葉を信じ歩けばいいの 該相信誰的話，繼續往前走呢？
ああ 負けないで 泣かないで 啊 不要認輸 不要哭泣
消えてしまいそうな時は 幾乎要失去的瞬間
自分の声を信じ歩けばいいの 相信自己的聲音，繼續往前走吧
いつの時代も 悲しみを避けては 通れないけれど 不管什麼時代 只會逃避悲傷，是行不通的
笑顔を見せて 今を生きていこう 展開笑臉 活在當下吧
拝啓 この手紙 読んでいるあなたが 敬啟 正在閱讀這封信的你
幸せなことを願います 願你幸福
（中文歌詞引自米果部落格）
Sunday, January 10, 2010
質數
我又想起,我非常喜歡質數。
它獨自存在,它裡面除了自己和一之外不包含其他數字。它和其他數字都無關,沒有人除得盡它。大家都拿它沒辦法。它可以完成別的數字,但是別的數字無法參與它的完成。
我喜愛這種數字的感覺。我覺得我是一個質數。它感覺完整而厚實。它感覺很孤單卻又無所謂。
～～柯裕棻〈紀念一種孤寂〉《甜美的剎那》。
我想變成質數嗎？還是我已不知不覺變成質數了？
它獨自存在,它裡面除了自己和一之外不包含其他數字。它和其他數字都無關,沒有人除得盡它。大家都拿它沒辦法。它可以完成別的數字,但是別的數字無法參與它的完成。
我喜愛這種數字的感覺。我覺得我是一個質數。它感覺完整而厚實。它感覺很孤單卻又無所謂。
～～柯裕棻〈紀念一種孤寂〉《甜美的剎那》。
我想變成質數嗎？還是我已不知不覺變成質數了？
Thursday, January 7, 2010
臉書與我
今天一早我deactivate自己在Facebook的帳號。在此之前我花了一點時間了解這個流程。這個線上社交界面很有趣,你不能「說斷就斷」,提出申請之後,會有個14天的「考慮期」+「考驗期」。如果你在這14天內又不小心或忍不住或幡然悔改,只要一登錄進帳號,「很抱歉,你沒有通過考驗」或是「我 知道你還是離不開Facebook」,之前的退出申請就立即失效。所以本人目前正在考驗期第一天,各位請不要來誘惑我！
每個人都在尋找最適切的與世界溝通與互動的方式。對於我而言,臉書並不是答案。我花了幾天時間了解臉書界面的運作原則,就像朋友說的,是很容易上手用來寫 短篇留言與網路日記的界面。而且還有許多精彩的照片可以看（遊戲部份我沒有測試）。可是臉書的人群分類、聯繫方式和我的framework差異太大了,我只好放棄。
臉書的設計連social network研究該有的基本分類都沒有,人家網絡研究至少還分強聯繫與弱聯繫,然後強弱聯繫裡各有次群體。臉書只分朋友、朋友的朋友和大家。偏偏我有非常機車的差序格局,塞不進臉書的分類方式（朋友類下如果再分認識的人、朋友、好友或許還可以）,徒增互動的困擾,只好defriend 臉書了。
我想我在人際問題上最大的問題之一就是太認真、學不會假裝一下或敷衍一下（其實說到底是沒有彈性）。例如我在臉書上和一個熟識度90％的朋友交流,來了個熟識度50％的朋友要一起玩/聊,那我該怎麼辦？
（1）繼續維持各自90％和50％的差序格局,但是覺得很尷尬
（2）為了避免場子有點尷尬,通通拉到90％熟識度的互動方式與內容
（3）為了避免場子有點尷尬,通通降到50％熟識度的互動方式與內容
（4）以上皆非,天底下怎麼會有你這種無聊的人想這種無聊的問題
各位大德不要打我,這對我真的會是個問題耶,可能我潛意識裡太害怕尷尬。所以只好自創選項
(5) 太麻煩了,本小姐不玩了。
寫到這裡,想起臉書上有些「朋友」動輒有上百個朋友的人不乏其人,我終於心平靜氣地承認,今天之所以搞到和臉書分手,問題不在臉書,問題在我(Goffman爺爺會說,誰叫你在前台的扮相只有一種,而且跟後台那麼像)。不是我defriend臉書,是臉書defriend了我。
謹以此文紀念我與臉書的短暫交會時光,感謝他提醒我在人際關係裡,我還有許多要學習的。希望如果日後有機會再遇到他,我已經學會更有彈性與更自在些。:)
每個人都在尋找最適切的與世界溝通與互動的方式。對於我而言,臉書並不是答案。我花了幾天時間了解臉書界面的運作原則,就像朋友說的,是很容易上手用來寫 短篇留言與網路日記的界面。而且還有許多精彩的照片可以看（遊戲部份我沒有測試）。可是臉書的人群分類、聯繫方式和我的framework差異太大了,我只好放棄。
臉書的設計連social network研究該有的基本分類都沒有,人家網絡研究至少還分強聯繫與弱聯繫,然後強弱聯繫裡各有次群體。臉書只分朋友、朋友的朋友和大家。偏偏我有非常機車的差序格局,塞不進臉書的分類方式（朋友類下如果再分認識的人、朋友、好友或許還可以）,徒增互動的困擾,只好defriend 臉書了。
我想我在人際問題上最大的問題之一就是太認真、學不會假裝一下或敷衍一下（其實說到底是沒有彈性）。例如我在臉書上和一個熟識度90％的朋友交流,來了個熟識度50％的朋友要一起玩/聊,那我該怎麼辦？
（1）繼續維持各自90％和50％的差序格局,但是覺得很尷尬
（2）為了避免場子有點尷尬,通通拉到90％熟識度的互動方式與內容
（3）為了避免場子有點尷尬,通通降到50％熟識度的互動方式與內容
（4）以上皆非,天底下怎麼會有你這種無聊的人想這種無聊的問題
各位大德不要打我,這對我真的會是個問題耶,可能我潛意識裡太害怕尷尬。所以只好自創選項
(5) 太麻煩了,本小姐不玩了。
寫到這裡,想起臉書上有些「朋友」動輒有上百個朋友的人不乏其人,我終於心平靜氣地承認,今天之所以搞到和臉書分手,問題不在臉書,問題在我(Goffman爺爺會說,誰叫你在前台的扮相只有一種,而且跟後台那麼像)。不是我defriend臉書,是臉書defriend了我。
謹以此文紀念我與臉書的短暫交會時光,感謝他提醒我在人際關係裡,我還有許多要學習的。希望如果日後有機會再遇到他,我已經學會更有彈性與更自在些。:)
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
身體最誠實
最近其實壓力滿大的。雖然理智上運用了許多心理學諮商佛學的技巧或思維來舒緩,情緒上也都尚能勉強控制地平穩,日常作息也頗正常,但是身體真的是不會說謊阿。晨起打坐時還是可以感覺到壓力明顯累積在頸肩背,即使瑜珈練習似乎也不太管用。最明顯得是睡覺時入睡前可以聽到自己的心臟以過快速度蹦蹦跳的聲音,這種自律神經管的器官聽的我是心驚膽跳卻又無能為力。好怕下一秒她就真的決心罷工了。
想來這種身心分離的狀態對於身體其實是非常不公平的。因為心理狀態其實有時候是可以藉由玩些把戲或說服的動作來轉移焦點。但是身體實在太老實了,她就在那裡,承受所有好的不好的與不可辨識的、愉悅與悲傷、輕快與沈重。對於身體的傷害、不管任何類型、一旦造成,可不是耍耍嘴皮子就可以敷衍過去的,需要關注與實際行動去照顧她。所以還是得以不累積問題、避免造成傷害為最高指導原則啊。
過去兩年花了許多時間了解人的心理狀態與情緒,接下來要多花點時間了解這默默付出的身體啊！
想來這種身心分離的狀態對於身體其實是非常不公平的。因為心理狀態其實有時候是可以藉由玩些把戲或說服的動作來轉移焦點。但是身體實在太老實了,她就在那裡,承受所有好的不好的與不可辨識的、愉悅與悲傷、輕快與沈重。對於身體的傷害、不管任何類型、一旦造成,可不是耍耍嘴皮子就可以敷衍過去的,需要關注與實際行動去照顧她。所以還是得以不累積問題、避免造成傷害為最高指導原則啊。
過去兩年花了許多時間了解人的心理狀態與情緒,接下來要多花點時間了解這默默付出的身體啊！
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
新聞碎碎唸：Made in China
昨天在一家中國餐館吃飯時讀了上個月某天的大紀元日報,才知道原來中國商務部拍了個廣告在CNN上放送,希望藉此改善中國商品的國際信譽。我上了YouTube看了這則廣告Made in China,主題是強調有許多高品質的產品,從慢跑鞋、冰箱、iPod、歐美模特兒用的高檔衣飾配件到高科技的航空機件,中國製造的物件都是這些商品鍊中的重要一環。
看完之後滿同意那位新聞專欄作者說的,這隻廣告其實無意識地傳達另一個訊息,那就是中國產業目前還是以代工為主的這個事實。我自己所看到的其他新聞,國外消費者對於中國製造的疑慮主要有二,第一個當然就是品管問題。第二個是有關於勞動環境。過去至今沸騰一時的牙膏、玩具與奶粉等都令消費者心有顧慮。或許中國商務部的改善國外消費者觀感應該先從去除這些負面印象開始,不先用新事實打掉這些瑕疵商品的紀錄,一下跳到強調其他high-end的產品線,徒增消費者的困惑（那麼關於low-end商品呢）多於信心。
關於勞動環境,我想到之前讀到一篇德國之聲的文章「聖誕節禮物是否選擇中國製造？」非常有趣。這篇報導說,許多消費者擔心他們買給小孩的低價禮物其實是來自使用童工與惡劣工作環境的廠商,所以有些人抵制中國製造的玩具。但是事實上我們知道這樣的預設與消費行為對於那些謹守本分與各類規定的製造商是不公平的。這時候一個可供信賴的認證標準就可以同時媒合有道德意識的消費者與有責任感的製造商。公平交易咖啡就是這類消費行為影響生產關係的產物。可是玩具的商品鍊和咖啡非常不一樣,確認公平交易的咖啡只要看產地與生產的社群,可是玩具那麼多組件該怎麼辦呢？難道要消費者一個接一個零件供應商去確認對方是不是提供合理的勞動環境？
天啊,德國人還真的這麼搞耶。有一個叫做Fair Spielt的網站就專門收集符合認證的供應商和生產商名單。一些德國玩具大品牌也會要求他們的中國零件供應商提供合理的勞動環境。如果你想買玩具,可以上網查查哪些家廠牌有盡到其基本的雇傭責任作為你選購的判斷標準之一。這報導說,中國的10000家玩具生產商中有2000家參與這個認證。
原來關於公平正義原則是可以這樣深入到生活的各種細節。也唯有深入到這樣的細節,這些公平正義原則才會成為文化與意識的一部份,然後透過個人或集體各種有創意的方式體現在日常生活與打造新的社會關係。我對這樣的個人與團體充滿敬意,這和某些左青只打嘴泡是非常不一樣的。要警醒的是,我離嘴泡太近、離生活即行動太遠。
（有趣的是德文的spielt既指toy也有action的意涵）
看完之後滿同意那位新聞專欄作者說的,這隻廣告其實無意識地傳達另一個訊息,那就是中國產業目前還是以代工為主的這個事實。我自己所看到的其他新聞,國外消費者對於中國製造的疑慮主要有二,第一個當然就是品管問題。第二個是有關於勞動環境。過去至今沸騰一時的牙膏、玩具與奶粉等都令消費者心有顧慮。或許中國商務部的改善國外消費者觀感應該先從去除這些負面印象開始,不先用新事實打掉這些瑕疵商品的紀錄,一下跳到強調其他high-end的產品線,徒增消費者的困惑（那麼關於low-end商品呢）多於信心。
關於勞動環境,我想到之前讀到一篇德國之聲的文章「聖誕節禮物是否選擇中國製造？」非常有趣。這篇報導說,許多消費者擔心他們買給小孩的低價禮物其實是來自使用童工與惡劣工作環境的廠商,所以有些人抵制中國製造的玩具。但是事實上我們知道這樣的預設與消費行為對於那些謹守本分與各類規定的製造商是不公平的。這時候一個可供信賴的認證標準就可以同時媒合有道德意識的消費者與有責任感的製造商。公平交易咖啡就是這類消費行為影響生產關係的產物。可是玩具的商品鍊和咖啡非常不一樣,確認公平交易的咖啡只要看產地與生產的社群,可是玩具那麼多組件該怎麼辦呢？難道要消費者一個接一個零件供應商去確認對方是不是提供合理的勞動環境？
天啊,德國人還真的這麼搞耶。有一個叫做Fair Spielt的網站就專門收集符合認證的供應商和生產商名單。一些德國玩具大品牌也會要求他們的中國零件供應商提供合理的勞動環境。如果你想買玩具,可以上網查查哪些家廠牌有盡到其基本的雇傭責任作為你選購的判斷標準之一。這報導說,中國的10000家玩具生產商中有2000家參與這個認證。
原來關於公平正義原則是可以這樣深入到生活的各種細節。也唯有深入到這樣的細節,這些公平正義原則才會成為文化與意識的一部份,然後透過個人或集體各種有創意的方式體現在日常生活與打造新的社會關係。我對這樣的個人與團體充滿敬意,這和某些左青只打嘴泡是非常不一樣的。要警醒的是,我離嘴泡太近、離生活即行動太遠。
（有趣的是德文的spielt既指toy也有action的意涵）
Sunday, January 3, 2010
所有的文字,都是寫給時間的情書
T 問我最近喜歡看的那個部落格是哪個。我就把情書的連結寄給了她。
這格主叫劉瑜,哥大政治學博士,現在在劍橋教書。自稱常在文青與憤青認同間拉扯,所以既寫小說、散文,也寫政論、學術論文。我非常享受閱讀她各類文章時的樂趣,可能是為她的幽默與慧黠哈哈大笑,也可能是為她的敏感與真誠會心一笑,也可能是為她犀利與不媚俗沈吟思索。
剛剛上網看到她的一篇訪談稿（她在中國出了三本小說、一本政論、也算是知名作家了）。對方問她寫作是不是已成為她生活的一部份？她回的真好：
「写作不是生活的一部分，而是一种生活方式。写东西是一种很“慢”的行为，一个念头在你脑子里闪过，可能只需要一秒钟，但是要把它完整地表达出来，可能需要十分钟。选择这种缓慢的行为，是选择用一种咀嚼、回味的方式而不是囫囵吞枣的方式对待生活，是对生活的一种敬意。」
「所有的文字,都是寫給時間的情書」。這是她對自己部落格之所以命名為情書的註解。我既非文青也非憤青,充其量只是個ㄈㄟ\青（生理廢青與靈魂fake青）,但也想東施效顰。
那就從這些報平安的明信片開始好了。
這格主叫劉瑜,哥大政治學博士,現在在劍橋教書。自稱常在文青與憤青認同間拉扯,所以既寫小說、散文,也寫政論、學術論文。我非常享受閱讀她各類文章時的樂趣,可能是為她的幽默與慧黠哈哈大笑,也可能是為她的敏感與真誠會心一笑,也可能是為她犀利與不媚俗沈吟思索。
剛剛上網看到她的一篇訪談稿（她在中國出了三本小說、一本政論、也算是知名作家了）。對方問她寫作是不是已成為她生活的一部份？她回的真好：
「写作不是生活的一部分，而是一种生活方式。写东西是一种很“慢”的行为，一个念头在你脑子里闪过，可能只需要一秒钟，但是要把它完整地表达出来，可能需要十分钟。选择这种缓慢的行为，是选择用一种咀嚼、回味的方式而不是囫囵吞枣的方式对待生活，是对生活的一种敬意。」
「所有的文字,都是寫給時間的情書」。這是她對自己部落格之所以命名為情書的註解。我既非文青也非憤青,充其量只是個ㄈㄟ\青（生理廢青與靈魂fake青）,但也想東施效顰。
那就從這些報平安的明信片開始好了。
Friday, January 1, 2010
rewarding mechanism
之前聽有工作狂的魔羯座友人提到他們的工作模式,非常佩服他們能有紀律地利用心理學的奬賞機制。例如要搞定一篇稿債之後才會允許自己來篇交換日記電郵犒賞自己。我這個貪圖享樂的星座聽到這些經驗總是慚愧不已。因為總是找一堆藉口甚至根本無須藉口就享樂先行,完全無視於先甘後苦的厄運即將到來。
今天突然發現要有紀律地使用這個奬賞心理學機制背後另有一個重要的心理學機制前提,那就是你準備的奬賞要是你超想要的。當然給自己一些小恩小惠的獎賞也是會有些效果,可是這樣的奬賞的驅動力遠不及那種一但完成我就可以得到我超想要的東西（這東西可以包括物質、生理活動或情緒活動）。也就是說同樣都是rewarding的原理, a comforting reward和an encouraging reward的驅動效應可以有相當程度上的差別。我之前因為有某星座貪小便宜的性格,常選擇前者,只能享受到一點點的正向循環。今天很想寫部落格的慾望大到我充滿期待地先作一個早上的功課,然後現在靜靜地享受這三十分鐘寫篇短文的樂趣。這可是我去年開張時從沒想到的。
區辨出什麼屬於我的雞肋型奬賞與鼓勵型（或召喚型）奬賞,然後很有紀律地多攝取後者,是今年的第一個功課。
今天突然發現要有紀律地使用這個奬賞心理學機制背後另有一個重要的心理學機制前提,那就是你準備的奬賞要是你超想要的。當然給自己一些小恩小惠的獎賞也是會有些效果,可是這樣的奬賞的驅動力遠不及那種一但完成我就可以得到我超想要的東西（這東西可以包括物質、生理活動或情緒活動）。也就是說同樣都是rewarding的原理, a comforting reward和an encouraging reward的驅動效應可以有相當程度上的差別。我之前因為有某星座貪小便宜的性格,常選擇前者,只能享受到一點點的正向循環。今天很想寫部落格的慾望大到我充滿期待地先作一個早上的功課,然後現在靜靜地享受這三十分鐘寫篇短文的樂趣。這可是我去年開張時從沒想到的。
區辨出什麼屬於我的雞肋型奬賞與鼓勵型（或召喚型）奬賞,然後很有紀律地多攝取後者,是今年的第一個功課。
南澳的跨年煙火
昨天晚上接到幾通家人的電話,每個人都問我有沒有去趴踢,有沒有煙火可以看。我非常有耐心地一個接一個、一通接一通地像他們解釋,美國不是只有紐約、芝加哥、舊金山、西雅圖、洛杉磯。大部份的美國城市在台灣鄉親眼裡其實就算是鄉下啦。特別是中西部或是南方的小鎮。我能想到的比喻就是,我們這裡就像宜蘭的南澳鄉啦,你不期待在南澳鄉有除夕趴踢或是煙火表演吧。諸位家人馬上回以了解加同情的語氣。（雖然我估計我只要待在美國小鎮一年,同樣的問題就會年復一年。）
昨晚依照習慣還是十點半就寢,可是妹妹算錯時差打來祝賀新年快樂。我們不小心聊了許多沈重無奈,每日需要面對的困境。掛下電話後呆坐書桌前未能馬上入睡。突然間聽到遠處的煙火聲,一看手表,2010年零晨零點整！原來美國南澳也是有跨年煙火的！然後我的德國室友跑趴到凌晨3點才回來。
我或許該去查查宜蘭南澳昨天有沒有跨年煙火,或許明年的獨居老人除夕台詞與解釋文也得跟著修正。
昨晚依照習慣還是十點半就寢,可是妹妹算錯時差打來祝賀新年快樂。我們不小心聊了許多沈重無奈,每日需要面對的困境。掛下電話後呆坐書桌前未能馬上入睡。突然間聽到遠處的煙火聲,一看手表,2010年零晨零點整！原來美國南澳也是有跨年煙火的！然後我的德國室友跑趴到凌晨3點才回來。
我或許該去查查宜蘭南澳昨天有沒有跨年煙火,或許明年的獨居老人除夕台詞與解釋文也得跟著修正。
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