夏日的謎思 - The Myth of Summer

    在《華爾街日報》周末版上看到 The Myth of Summer 這篇文章，覺得題目非常感性，浪漫和詩意，就先入為主的認為這一定是一篇記述迷人夏天的優美散文。讀過之後，才發現作者筆下的夏天與我預期中的印象是完全不同的。

　

    Richard Ford 雖然在文中花了不少的筆墨描述夏天的美麗 － 清涼的海風吹過寂靜的海灣，小鎮上緩慢悠閑的生活節奏，遠道而來海邊度假的旅客，在夏日的陽光下海邊獨自垂釣。。。。。但是，在緩緩的筆調背後，他所描述的遠遠不是一個“迷死”（myth）人的夏天。相反，他眼中的夏天充滿了“謎思”（myth）和困惑。

　

    對於夏天的期盼，對於夏天到來之後稍縱即逝的憂慮，由鄰居家裏房子擴建引起的欲說還休的煩惱，令人厭惡的戰爭，遙遙無期的總統競選，以及對童年時代歡樂夏日的懷念。。。。。。等等，所有這些在作者的筆下都顯得如此的沉重，鬱悶，成了一個個永遠解不開的心結。對於 Richard Ford 來說，好像明麗的夏日帶來的不是活力，激情和歡欣，不是擁抱夏天的渴望，而更多的是悸動，不安和倦怠，是難以言及的情感躁動和掙紮。外界自然季節的交替和景物的變換，在他那裏引起的是一種完全不同的心理感受。這種些細膩，委婉和難以言盡的感受是極其個人的，因而是獨特的和值得珍視的。

　

   中國古人有“智者樂山，仁者樂水”的說法，表明了不同的性格和文化背景決定了人們會對大自然的愛好作不同的取舍。除此以外，年齡會不會也是一個因素呢？讀完這篇文章後，我的第一個想法是，"How old is he?"

　

　

　

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The Myth of Summer

June in Maine begins with noble ambitions and the promise of a summer idyll. But this is a shallow season, one that does not live up to its billing.

By RICHARD FORD
June 14, 2008; Page W1
Wall Street Journal

　

My neighbors are enlarging their guest house this summer. It sits quite close to our property line, so that from inside I can regularly hear the sounds of construction -- the whine of saws cutting flagstone, the clatter of lumber being unloaded, the pop of the nail guns, the low comforting music of a radio played softly in a pickup truck. All this is entirely agreeable with me. Here, on the coast of Maine, summer comes late and is quickly gone, and the few warm days and weeks we're allotted are as much the fix-up season as the longed-for time of childhood, the blissful season of indolence. I have my own sparse list of things to do -- storm windows to re-glaze, a porch step to patch, some fresh pea gravel for the drive. Nothing as grand as a new guest house, but I have yet to get much done.

　

Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos

Still, my wife and I have come to feel the need to install some foliage between ourselves and our neighbors. Their new cottage is somewhat larger than the old one. Their kids have kids now; more room's needed. It is not a bone of contention. However, what we can now see of their property presents a somewhat larger and imposing aspect, frames the landscape slightly differently. Some form of "protection planting" has seemed like the best idea -- though we truly need no protection from our neighbors. I suspect we are on different sides politically, but they have been our friends and should still be once the summer's over.

　

So, today, the local landscaping people -- Conley's -- have delivered onto our driveway what we feel will be enough new planting to produce the desired effects. A few shiny rhododendrons, six new hemlocks and a good-sized Norway spruce, all of which we have found strategic places for between our ground and theirs. We are all "on ledge" here, and much of what appears to be diggable soil is really only the soft duff of years' accumulation. Therefore planting something with the expectation that it will "take" and grow is largely a matter of luck, against which planning is not much good.

　

When I walk outside at 10 and into the bright, breezy sunshine (which in Maine always contains a bracing if occasionally ominous seam of chill), I find that the Conley's men -- two large, amiable, untalkative fellows in dirty T-shirts and work gloves -- have delivered the entire load of greenery to the gravel driveway, all the individual trees and bushes lying on their sides, their root balls swaddled in burlap, each item with a red-and-white SOLD tag attached to a limb to show that all here is now ours.

　

Only to my surprise -- dismay being too strong a word -- the big Norway spruce which has arrived is half again the size of the tree we have asked for. When I show it to my wife, who tends to trust that most things will work out well, she agrees with me, and in a jovial way tells the Conley's men who have struggled the tree to its current location a few feet from where we mean to site it, that this is a tree one could easily stand on the White House lawn at Christmas, and should be, she believes, replaced with something smaller.

　

We all four of us stand for a while then and look at the grand and bounteous spruce, resting on its side like a slumberous giant soon to awake and cause trouble. "It's lucky we noticed it now," my wife says, seeing the good side of things. The Conley's men are patient good men. One walks down toward the presumed ground where the tree would grow, on the side of a small woodsy hill sloping to our neighbors. He stands and deliberates a moment, looks back at the tree, then again at the ground. Then he nods. "It's pretty big," he says. "It would take a lot of loam for sure." "I think you're right," my wife says confidently. "Something smaller definitely would be better. I'm just happy we noticed it in time." "Yes," he says. His name, I believe, is Freeman. "Yes, it's lucky we caught it now. We'll just put it on the truck and take it back."

　

From where I stand I can see down through the trees and across the property line to our neighbors' new summer cottage, which is all but finished, with most of the work going on inside. The sounds of hammers and saws scarcely interrupt the quiet that the breeze has brought in from the south and off the bay that provides our house and our neighbors' house their lovely views. One man there, a young carpenter wearing a carpenter's apron and holding a claw hammer, has stopped to watch the goings-on here on our side. He waves his hammer at me in a gesture meant to be genial. I wave back. We all know what we know. I decide I might take a walk now, then later think about lunch.

　

SEASONAL VIEWS

　

The Wall Street Journal asked photographers to submit some of their favorite images of summer, along with a few words about them.

Stephen Shore
Yosemite National Park - 1979

My walk takes me down past the general store and past our local lobster shack to the Post Office. It is a small village we live in. Fewer than 400 most of the year. Though because it is a seaside town, there are more people now that it's summer. Their cars are on the road and in the grocery store lot. Massachusetts and New Jersey and Pennsylvania plates. They are not the best drivers in the world, or always friendly. But I welcome them. They are as much a part of things here as I am, and a democratic side of me thinks they should have their shot at a good life, too. As well, their presence means that our few restaurants -- dark through the snowy months -- are open now, their lights burning merrily into the summer evenings. Even the grocery stocks more fruit and better vegetables when the summer people arrive. Though it is worth noting that to live in a place where other people come just for pleasure has the odd effect of making me feel transient, while the visitors seem more fixed and permanent in their lives, coming as they do from more conventional homes far away. It is as if I am always waiting for them and am here at their discretion.

　

At the Post Office I see that the flag is out but seems to be at half mast. Possibly another Maine soldier has died -- in Iraq, or else Afghanistan. Two people are standing on the Post Office steps, talking quietly. When I pass them -- they are strangers to me -- I pick it up that they are not talking about the war or even the election, but about our chances to see 80 today, and the bad bridge traffic in Wiscassett, and how far north we really are here. Summer is, of course, the season at odds with seriousness (winter being gravity's more natural ally). And here in the breezy sunlight, the war and the endless dismaying election -- the one that must somehow save us all -- seem far away, almost illusory, like the clouds we stare at until we think they're mountains. Of course, the war pronounces on us all. Some precious glee we seek is absent, the season less substantial, less likeable. But for now it seems right enough to wear a campaign button, display a bumper sticker, to lower the flag in public places, and wait for the fall. To do more could make us all feel bad about everything.

　

　

Sylvia Plachy
New York - 1966

Romance was in the air that hot summer of 1966, when I looked out the window of our first apartment and watched for the promise of the future.

There is no mail for me, today -- only catalogs and a few bills -- and I leave them in the box for later. I speak to the postmistress about the increased clientele she's seeing for the summer, about the high-school kids graduating then scattering, and about motorcycles, an enthusiasm we share. We are both Harley riders. There is a rally next month to support a charity. I'm considering joining in -- though I haven't before -- which seems to please her. And then I start for home again.

　

Truthfully, I find summer a hard time to concentrate, and a hard season to concentrate on -- as if I were one of those flies that buzz around the warm sunlit windows in late August. I sense change in everything, long before the season's fully on us. Every flower I think will be gone by tomorrow. I note a dry yellowing in the pale birch leaves even as the sunlight's shot through them. The cold sea here offers only a small window for pleasurable swimming, but I most often miss it. My wife is amused by me and hints that I may be a fatalist in things, owing to a Pre*****yterian past. I remind her that I do not feel this way in the long monochrome winter, the standard-bearer season here, when all the pressure feels gone off and I can somehow relent. But now, when we revel that the summer light falls through the trees in a truly "different" way, and my wife keeps her hopeful account of each day's lengthening hours, I can only sense that this is a shallow season, one that does not live up to its billing, though perhaps I simply do not use it well. Still, I cannot help wondering: was there ever a summer that made us sleepy and forgetful and settled in the precise way we want and need? Only in childhood, possibly. Though childhood, I seem to recall, had its own concerns.

　

Sometimes, since distraction comes so easily, I go down to the dock, climb into my skiff and row a ways to where I know the stripers lie, off the granite point that frames our little harbor here. I take my rod and a pack of frozen mackerel, and I anchor there and fish. I am not in any way a boater, and the ocean in fact always scares me. But I have caught a fish here once -- years ago -- and could again, I choose to believe. Resting at anchor, however, is a good place just to be still and to do one thing and only one. And as I fish, I watch the sleek contrails of the passenger jets passing silently over on their way to Boston and New York. They come from Europe. I watch the ospreys who nest on Perch Island high atop their white spruce. Our sense of a plausible summer depends much on their diligent success at nest-building and procreation, and on their chicks fledging in late August. I watch a power boat bounce noisily across the bay, headed apparently nowhere. I watch a lobsterman working among his bright buoys in the distance. And I hear voices -- from the shore -- some laughter, guests arriving, car doors slamming. "We thought you'd never get here," someone says. "But now you are. Come inside. Come inside. We're so happy...." It is enough. I've caught what I came for, and can now row home again.

　

　

Mary Ellen Mark
Brighton, England - 1965

I took this when I first started to discover the world and photograph it. England is full of funny and eccentric people. That day, there were many of them at the beach. I also took a picture of a woman with a parrot on her shoulder. As I took her picture, the parrot bit her nose.

At home, a medium-sized John Deere tractor has appeared in the driveway -- a number 855 -- a backhoe and front loader attached on opposite ends. It is green like no other green, its springing deer medallion shiny in what has become hazier sunlight. A more modest Norway spruce has also arrived, ready for planting and protection duties. The Conley's men are opening a hole for it, using the toothed bucket of the backhoe, and have already torn through earth and roots to reveal the hard flat pan of rock, half a foot below. I venture down the little hillside that ends at our neighbors' new guest house, and stand as close as I can to the digging, as the bucket scrapes the revealed rock surface and leaves white scars. I want to gain a feel for the bucket's power and its canny precision, and am secretly happy to have a need for such an implement at my own house. The Conley's men are maestros at this digging business. One gives direction from beside the hole, while the other sits and calmly operates the levers. Neither speaks to me, though it is clear I would like to be of use, to assist in making something happen better. But I'm not needed. One of them says to me, or perhaps to no one -- it is Freeman in his clean NRA T-shirt -- "It's not really soil here. It's duff. It won't hold much. We'll have to put in loam and mound it up for anything to grow." "Yes," I say and think of the sentence, "We are putting in the Norway." I run this line over in my head. It is a sentence Vonnegut might've written, full of sad, appealing irony, meant to do no one harm. The Conley's men have done this many times, with no one's help. In an hour or less the tree will be in, all loamed and mounded and ready for life and a future longer than mine. And then they will be gone.

　

Early in the morning, long before the workmen arrive next door, I wake in the gray light to the sound of the lobsterman, hauling traps a quarter mile out on the bay. I go to the window, entirely naked, just to watch him at his duties. He is a single-hander, a seasonal fisherman, wenching his traps up in the furred light, barely visible to me, but visible enough. His radio is playing out across the still, metallic water. I can hear, by some strange chance, a Red Sox score from the night just past. 8-3. A late-night loss in Oakland. I stand and watch, hear the motor-grind of his wench, the clatter of the heavy basket down onto the deck, the deep gurgling thrust of his smoky engine as his boat comes about then motors on. My legs grow cold, my hands, my feet. The dog in our room makes a whimper from some dream he's having. My wife stirs in the bed behind me, aware even in her sleep that I'm away. It is summer now. Summer of course is a variable time, different in whatever place you are at this hour. Though what could it be, I wonder, whatever could it possibly be, that any of us are disguising, are mimicking, are seeking shelter from in a too-brief season when shelter's of no avail? Too hard, I think. No answers are forthcoming as the new day wanders up. Summer is a different time. Not much a season for reckoning.

　

Richard Ford, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. His most recent novel is "The Lay of the Land."

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所有跟帖： 

• Is this the auther of Independence Day? -RPV- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/14/2008 postreply 18:34:49

• Yeah. But, not the one the movie based on. -edrifter- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/14/2008 postreply 19:13:44

• Richard Ford is 64, old, but still can write. -RPV- ♂ (192 bytes) () 06/14/2008 postreply 19:36:40