生活中总有一些小确幸。
例如在软卧车厢,伴着火车有节奏的哐哐哐,读一本书。William Zinsser在On Writing Well中写自己查字典(Roget’s Thesaurus)的喜悦:
Look up “villain,” for instance, and you’ll be awash in such rascality as only a lexicographer could conjure back from centuries of iniquity, obliquity, depravity, knavery, profligacy, frailty, flagrancy, infamy, immorality, corruption, wickedness, wrongdoing, backsliding and sin, You’ll find ruffians and riffraff, miscreants and malefactors, reprobates and rapscallions, hooligans and hoodlums, scamps and scapegraces, scoundrels and scalawags, jezebels and jades.
What a read! Zinsser为这些冷冰冰的词编了一支舞,像是George Carlin的“贯口”,忍不住读上几遍。
例如serendipity,意外之喜。Zinsser提到了记者H.L. Mencken对Monkey Trial的报道,一下子想到大概是6年前,在《高级英语》课中学过一篇The Trial that Rocked the World。我还记得老师叫我起来读课文,那个时候我讲一口东北味十足的英国郊区口音。
例如坐了一夜火车,6:30到站,出站后见到也刚睡醒的天空。在就近的麦当劳…不…金拱门,点豆浆、薯饼、鸡肉汉堡。找一个角落坐下来,一边吃一边听店林俊杰唱《当你》。
例如,我想到这些,就想也分享给你。
这几天就要搬到北京来了,新生活将要开始,充满了期待和压力。不过,一切都会好的。Gradatim Ferociter. Live with gusto!
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