充滿奇想的一年

瓊·狄迪恩（Joan Didion，1934—），美國女作家，個性獨立，在美國當代文學中地位顯赫，以小說、雜文及劇本寫作見長，雜文與小說多次獲獎，由其擔任編劇的電影還獲得了戛納電影獎、奧斯卡獎、金球獎和格萊美獎等獎項。

狄迪恩一直過著令人羨慕的生活：事業有成、家庭美滿，幸福得幾乎忘記了人生還有陰陽相隔、生離死別。2003年，上天開玩笑似地一下子將種種不幸降臨到她頭上——女兒突然患病昏迷，而丈夫也毫無預兆地離世。雙重打擊之下，狄迪恩差點精神崩潰，但她卻沒有號啕大哭，也沒有失魂落魄，而是平靜地把極度的悲痛壓在心底。幾個星期，乃至幾個月間，她哀悼，她思索，心中原有的關于死亡、疾病、運氣、婚姻和悲傷的理解統統動搖。在陷入長達一年多的哀慟與奇想后，她拿起筆寫出此書，把與丈夫四十年共同生活的片斷回憶，以及許多關于生命的困惑與思考如鏡頭般地記錄了下來。

回憶，是因為延綿不盡的思念；叨念，是因為一顆因摯愛而破碎的心。

本書獲2005年美國國家圖書獎。

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

The question of self-pity.

Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file （“Notes on changes.doc”） reads “May 20， 2004， 11：11 p.m.，” but that would have been a case of my opening the file and 1）reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file in May. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words， in January 2004， a day or two or three after the fact.

For a long time I wrote nothing else.

Life changes in the instant.

The ordinary instant.

At some point， in the interest of remembering what seemed most striking about what had happened， I considered adding those words， “the ordinary instant.”I saw immediately that there would be no need to add the word “ordinary，” because there would be no forgetting it： the word never left my mind. It was， in fact， the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened， absorbing it， incorporating it， getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this： 2）confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred， the clear blue sky from which the plane fell， the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames， the swings where the children were playing as usual when the 3）rattlesnake struck from the ivy. “He was on his way home from work— happy， successful， healthy — and then， gone，” I read in the account of a 4）psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in 5）Honolulu on the morning of December 7， 1941； without exception， these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an “ordinary Sunday morning”it had been. “It was just an ordinary beautiful September day，” people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently 6）premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note：“Tuesday， September 11， 2001， dawned 7）temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.”

“And then — gone.” In the midst of life we are in death， 8）Episcopalians say at the graveside. Later， I realized that I must have repeated the details of what happened to everyone who came to the house in those first weeks， all those friends and relatives who brought food and made drinks and laid out plates on the dining room table for however many people were around at lunch or dinner time， all those who picked up the plates and froze the leftovers and ran the dishwasher and filled our（I could not yet think my） otherwise empty house， even after I had gone into the bedroom （our bedroom， the one in which there still lay on a sofa a faded terrycloth XL robe bought in the 1970s at 9）Richard Carroll in Beverly Hills）and shut the door. Those moments when I was abruptly overtaken by exhaustion， are what I remember most clearly about the first days and weeks. I have no memory of telling anyone the details， but I must have done so， because everyone seemed to know them. At one point I considered the possibility that they had picked up the details of the story from one another， but immediately rejected it： the story they had was in each instance too accurate to have been passed from hand to hand. It had come from me.

Another reason I knew that the story had come from me was that no version I heard included the details I could not yet face， for example the blood on the living room floor that stayed there until Jose came in the next morning and cleaned it up.

Jose. Who was part of our household. Who was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas later that day， December 31， but never went. Jose was crying that morning as he cleaned up the blood. When I first told him what had happened he had not understood. Clearly I was not the ideal teller of this story， something about my version had been at once too 10）offhand and too 11）elliptical， something in my tone had failed to convey the central fact in the situation （I would encounter the same failure later when I had to tell Quintana）， but by the time Jose saw the blood he understood.

I had picked up the abandoned 12）syringes and 13）ECG 14）electrodes before he came in that morning， but I could not face the blood.

In outline.

It is now， as I begin to write this， the afternoon of October 4， 2004.

Nine months and five days ago， at 15）approximately nine o’clock on the evening of December 30， 2003， my husband， John Gregory Dunne， appeared to （or did） experience， at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York， a sudden massive 16）coronary event that caused his death. Our only child， Quintana， had been for the previous five nights unconscious in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center’s Singer Division， at that time a hospital on East End Avenue （it closed in August 2004） more commonly known as “Beth Israel North” or “the old Doctors’ Hospital，” where what had seemed a case of December flu， sufficiently severe enough to take her to an emergency room on Christmas morning had exploded into pneumonia and 17）septic shock.

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed， weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death， about illness， about probability and luck， about good fortune and bad， about marriage and children and memory， about grief， about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends， about the shallowness of 18）sanity， about life itself. I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer， even as a child， long before what I wrote began to be published， I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs， a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly 19）impenetrable polish. The way I write is who I am， or have become， yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room， equipped with an 20）Avid， a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time， show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now， let you pick the takes， the marginally different expressions， the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable， if only for myself.

生活變化得很快。

生活瞬間發生變化。

你坐下來吃晚飯，你所熟知的生活就結束了。

自憐的問題。

那些都是我在事情發生后寫下的最初幾句話。電腦上的文字文檔（關于變化的筆記.doc）顯示的修改日期是“2004年5月20日23∶11”，但這是因為我當時打開了這個文檔，然后在關閉時條件反射按了保存。5月期間我沒有修改過這個文檔。2004年1月，我在事情發生一兩天或者三天后寫下了這些話。自那時起我就沒有修改過這個文檔。……