《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 49 (104):玄學危機

When I was nine years old, going on ten, I experienced a true metaphysical crisis. Maybe this seems young for such a thing, but I was always a precocious child. It all happened over the summer between fourth and fifth grade. I was going to be turning ten years old in July, and there was something about the transition from nine to ten—from single digit to double di-gits—that shocked me into a genuine existential panic, usually reserved for people turning fifty. I remember thinking that life was passing me by so fast. It seemed like only yesterday I was in kindergarten, and here I was, about to turn ten. Soon I would be a teenager, then middle-aged, then elderly, then dead. And everyone else was aging in hyperspeed, too. Everybody was going to be dead soon. My parents would die. My friends would die. My cat would die. My older sister was almost in high school already; I could remember her going off to first grade only moments ago, it seemed, in her little knee socks, and now she was in high school? Obviously it wouldn't be long before she was dead. What was the point of all this?

在我九歲、即將十歲的時候，我體驗到某種真實的玄學危機。或許年紀輕輕似乎不太可能有此體驗，但我向來是個早熟的小孩。事情發生在四年級升五年級之間的暑假。我在七月將邁向十歲，從九歲變十歲，不得不讓人有所感觸——從個位數變成二位數——恐懼使我陷入真正的存在恐慌，而這通常是留待邁向五十歲的人去擔心的事。我記得自己心裏在想，生命過得如此之快；進幼稚園彷彿還是昨天的事，而現在我即將邁入十歲。過不久，我將成爲青少年，而後進入中年，而後邁入老年，而後邁向死亡。其他每個人也是超速老去。每個人不久都不免一死。我的父母會死。我的朋友們會死。我的貓會死。我的姐姐差不多上中學了；我猶記得她似乎才上小學一年級沒多久，穿着小長統襪，而現在她上了中學？顯然再過不久，她就要死了。這一切有什麼意義？

The strangest thing about this crisis was that nothing in particular had spurred it. No friend or relative had died, giving me my first taste of mortality, nor had I read or seen anything particular about death; I hadn't even read Charlotte's Web yet. This panic I was feeling at age ten was nothing less than a spontaneous and full-out realization of mortality's inevitable march, and I had no spiritual vocabulary with which to help myself manage it. We were Protestants, and not even devout ones, at that. We said grace only before Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner and went to church sporadically. My dad chose to stay home on Sunday mornings, finding his devotional practice in farming. I sang in the choir because I liked singing; my pretty sister was the angel in the Christmas pageant. My mother used the church as a headquarters from which to organize good works of volunteer service for the community. But even in that church, I don't remember there being a lot of talking about God. This was New England, after all, and the word God tends to make Yankees nervous.

最奇怪的是，沒有任何特別的事情促使這場危機發生。沒有親朋好友的過世讓我初嘗死亡的滋味，我也未特別讀到或看見有關死亡的事情；我甚至尚未讀過《夏洛的網》。我在十歲時所感受的恐慌，正是自發而全面地認識到死亡過程的無可避免，而我沒有任何心靈詞彙幫助自己面對。我們是新教徒，甚至不是虔誠信徒，以致很難對思索這件事有所助益。我們只在聖誕前夕和感恩節大餐前做飯前禱告，不定期上教堂做禮拜。週日早上，我父親選擇待在家裏，從農事勞動中來尋找祈禱實踐。我在唱詩班唱歌，因爲我喜歡唱歌；我漂亮的姐姐在聖誕晚會扮演天使。我母親以教會做總部，組織社區義工服務。但即使在教會中，我不記得曾談論很多有關神的事。畢竟這裏是新英格蘭，“神”一詞往往讓北方佬神經緊張。

My sense of helplessness was overwhelming. What I wanted to do was pull some massive emergency brake on the universe, like the brakes I'd seen on the subways during our school trip to New York City. I wanted to call a time out, to demand that everybody just STOP until I could understand everything. I suppose this urge to force the entire universe to stop in its tracks until I could get a grip on myself might have been the beginning of what my dear friend Richard from Texas calls my "control issues." Of course, my efforts and worry were futile. The closer I watched time, the faster it spun, and that summer went by so quickly that it made my head hurt, and at the end of every day I remember thinking, "Another one gone," and bursting into tears.

我的無助感壓倒一切。我想急踩煞車，讓宇宙暫停，就像我們學校專程前往紐約市旅行時，我在地下鐵看到的煞車。我想叫停，要求大家“停下來”，直到讓我搞清楚一切。我想，這種強迫整個宇宙停住腳步、直到我能掌握自己的衝動，可能就是我親愛的朋友德州理查所謂“控制問題”的開始。當然，我的努力和憂心都是徒勞。我愈仔細觀察時間，時間轉得愈快，而那年夏天過得如此之快，使我頭痛；每天結束時，我記得自己心想，“又一天過去了”，而後失聲痛哭。

I have a friend from high school who now works with the mentally handicapped, and he says his autistic patients have a particularly heartbreaking awareness of time's passage, as if they never got the mental filter that allows the rest of us to forget about mortality every once in a while and just live. One of Rob's patients always asks him the date at the beginning of every day, and at the end of the day will ask, "Rob—when will it be February fourth again?" And before Rob can answer, the guy shakes his head in sorrow and says, "I know, I know, never mind . . . not until next year, right?"

我有個中學朋友羅布，目前從事弱智患者的治療工作；他說他的自閉症病人對於時間的流逝具有某種令人心碎的認識，彷彿他們缺乏那種讓我們偶爾忘卻死亡、只是活下去的心理過濾器。他有個病人老是在一天開始的時候問他日期，一天結束的時候則問“羅布——什麼時候纔會再碰到二月四號？”沒等羅布回答，這傢伙便哀傷地搖頭，說“我曉得，我曉得，不要緊……直到明年纔會，對吧？”