機車!

哇勒
連續兩個周末都奉獻給我第一次嘗試的小說了

結果心情整個High
不起來

因為一開始的設定是悲劇

整個被拖下去

可能為了健康
要把它變成愛情浪漫Happy
Ending了....

還是把它變成愛情動作劇...

啊可是不就嗯嗯ㄚㄚ地沒台詞
…

哇哩勒 翻譯也不成
寫小說也不成

看來文學大夢粉遠

哎哎哎 宅男還能嘗試什麼?

A片男優好了
@-@

來企練身體....

Chapter 3. -- Good Afternoon

Chapter 3. Good Afternoon

I didn't go to college because Dr. Wang and Ms. Alexian didn't mention any plan for their retirement. Since the medical doctor and the high school teacher were the only positions requiring a college degree in Visione, the town people felt safe enough not to push the young smart candidates to squeeze their brain in somewhere out of the Valley polluted by what they called the Hippies. They would suddenly lower their volume and say, “Look what they did to Marian!”.

On the other hand this kind of words or “Marian was ever such a lovely girl...” often followed after the passing by of Katerina and her mom, Marian Blendy. Katerina had been always held firmly in hand by Ms. Blendy, but after Katerina's 8th grade Ms. Blendy was so weak that she couldn't go anywhere without Katerina's help. I had never seen Katerina's father, and Katerina told me that she had adopted her mom's family name, not her father's, and she knew nothing about her dad.

Katerina wasn't born in Visione, according to my mom. Neither the small size of Visione Valley nor the long history of being neighbors can force the town people to keep no secret to each other. It's the culture presented as the bonds of big family, which might be derived from the legacy of both the Italian and the Chinese early immigrants, making the town people automatically updated their own news and what they had heard to each other. The transmitting efficiency is quite amazing when I really think of it. I remembered that I felt momentarily confused when the neighbor of my mom's second cousin once removed, the first time visitor, felt sorry for me on the 2nd day of Katerina's left. This kind of the tight cultural bond didn't seem to connect to the Blendys though, or the Blendys had cut all the connections out. Ms. Blendy was cruelly strict to Katerina, and to anyone who attempted to be nice to her. Sometimes I could hear Ms. Blendy yelled to who had tried to be friendly by sharing a cake and some daily gossips:

“Leave us alone! How can you be so SELFISH? Don't you have your own space to stay?”

In Visione, no matter how nice a person could be, “selfish” was still a too heavy accusation even worse than “Liar”!

I might be the only exception who could approach Katerina, after I had seen Ms. Blendy's first smile to me. I was only 8, when my bicycle still attached two sub-wheels at the tail. That afternoon I just finished my self-training of downgrade sliding on the Upper Eyeline, I saw Ms. Blendy and Katerina taking a rest on the road side.

“Good Afternoon, Ms. Blendy.” The discipline I 'd been taught to respect the elders had defeated my fear of the unfriendly stare. Katerina was only a 6 year old girl with one hand in her mom's, seeking for shelter behind Ms. Blendy while revealing half of her face watching me.

“Leave, Kid! Don't make me start.” Ms. Blendy was pale with a voice sounds like exhausted.

“Ms. Blendy, you really have to go to see Dr. Wang. After he gives you a shot, then you can have a candy bar, and then your Hippies will be gone.” I tried to explain to Ms. Blendy as my mom had done to me.

“What Hippies?” Ms. Blendy asked.

“My mom said, you met the Hippies when you were not in Visione, and you became sick after then.”

“Oh, that Hippies.” It's that moment I saw Ms. Blendy's smile.

“What's your name, kid?”

“My name is Marco Hsu, I am 8 years old, I want to be an interpreter in the future.” I answered.

“Marco the interpreter, why don't you show little Katerina around with your pretty bike when I can rest a little more?”

“Yes, Ms. Blendy. Good afternoon, Katerina, my name is Marco Hsu, I am 8 years old, I want to be an interpreter in the future.”

關於戴爾標價烏龍事件

話說六月二十七日凌晨，被老姐通知戴爾(Dell)
網站大放送，液晶螢幕通通折台幣7000元，我也忍不住訂了兩台。

第二天新聞沸沸揚揚，倒是沒說戴爾將怎麼處理，聽說如果都出貨的話，損失上億。

看了一些網路評論，覺得台灣人好善良，一面倒地為戴爾說話，說出錯的訂單不用處理。

其實銀行也是，出錯而多給存戶的存款是要追回的。

但一方面也覺得有些人很奇怪，說下單的人心醜惡。我是想趁便宜買下螢幕，說我想佔便宜也行，因為真的很便宜。但說這樣就人心醜惡的話，我也很不服氣。零元起標的噱頭又不是沒見過，存貨出清也可能，如果我股票網路下單，打錯了幾個數字，最好我也能追回更正。

我不是非得買這兩台螢幕不可，戴爾不賣我我也無所謂，只是戴爾出錯，卻莫名其妙變得我有錯的話，那我可完全不同意。

Chapter 2. -- Visione

Chapter 2. Visione

Visione Valley is named after the Lake Visione, which split the Main Street into Upper Eyeline and Lower Eyeline, and merged back on the other end. Behind each of the tar-black eye line there revealed the eyelids formed by the hills, where the seasons routinely replaced the colorful shadows. The Lake was claimed to be firstly discovered by an Italian explorer, right before the ever-local aboriginal tribe migrated into the deep mountains. But it was in the late eighty's when Visione became temporarily well-known. In the summer of 1987, when I was 11, a large group of victims sued a fake monk who claimed to be able to read the ripples out of the Lake Visione to predict the horse race winner. It started when a luxury car drove by the Lake in one sunny afternoon. When the car pulled over, Katerina and I were ready to start our bicycle exploration. From the winding down car window a man wearing sunglasses and in shiny gray suit asked us where he was.

"Visione, Sir!" I replied him and thought, it must be a "Catillarc".
"Visione, Visione, I see...." the man mumbled and then the car left in a speed of deep thinking.

I turned to Katerina, "It must be your first time to see a 'Catillarc'".
"Catillarc?"
"Catillarc! The car!...Girls...."

A week later, in the middle of our bike trip we saw a bus parked beside the Upper Eyeline, and a group of people were streaming down to the shore. It was Katerina who recognized the leader as the "Catillarc man", despite I had disagreed. It wasn't my fault, because "Catillarc man" was now in brown gown with a book in hand, just the sunglasses positioned the same.

We couldn't help riding down to look closer. Among the crew in diverse Hawaiian shirts the "Catillarc man" stepped forward with a bible in left hand. And a green coconut in the right, that was new! As soon as we parked our bikes, "Mr. Catillarc" began his murmuring. Katerina and I were a little thrilled because we had never seen a magician in person. Out of a sudden a coconut was thrown forward high into the air. I held my breath and traced the parabola as the rest of the crew, kept waiting because the coconut didn't splash a lot and no wet teeth in big mouth breaking out the water, and kept staring because the coconut might explode in few seconds. On the water, A duck couple elegantly approached the green object without minding the ripples trying to push them away. People started to murmur wondering if "it still counts?". I was startled while concentrating on the drifting coconut when "Mr. Catillarc" shout:
"I see!"

Short, but efficient enough to shut up all the others.

When I turned my head I saw "Mr. Catillarc" freeze with a pose, raising both hands.
"I didn't see anything." I told Katerina.
"It must be the glasses".

Another man came out to collect the money from the crew and "Mr. Catillarc" started to draw some number alike symbols on the sand. People all stepped forward as if a foot ball scrimmage down began. I was stopped by the money collector – "Leave, kids. You didn't pay!"

When we rode back by the bus I stopped and shouted to the cults.

"Sir! Where is your Catillarc?" I really had to ask.

For the whole week, day and night, the buses came and left. We didn't approach them any more for they did no magic but the same routines. But Katerina and I loved it so much to imitate the dramatic gesture. Thereafter whenever meeting each other we always raised our hands and shouted "I see!". After the TV news revealed the fraud, those gestures became even more popular not only among the kids. When Mr. Du delivered the mails, he had to return not a few the raising-hands "I see!", though he didn't fully stretch his arms while muttering reluctantly "I see I see."

Visione didn't ripple too long. And the raising-both-hands game faded and became private as a secret bridge between only Katerina and me. When the "eye shadow" turned to orange red and dyed the "eye rim", the town came to peace and was again forgotten by the rest of the world. The rest of the world had left nothing but some of those drifted coconuts, which later settled on the shore and grew into the green eyelashes of Visione.

來一夏

阿波羅的船駛過正上方

拖著溫熱稠密的金紗網

迴游的覓食者啊

你能逃向何方?

逃進被剝離溫度的空氣方塊，

打開瑩瑩發光的方形窗，

學駝鳥把頭埋進

阿波羅也透視不了的互聯惘。

惘惘，每當，

想想，遺忘。

Chapter 1. -- I Remembered

It is so embarrassed to get lost in the city.


Chapter 1. I Remembered.


In my town, all the houses stood on the two sides of the Main Street. And I was so familiar with the town that when people asked me the location of certain place, I would play the trick like this: "Sir, please walk along until you see the bakery on the left side, you can't miss it for the fragrance of the 2 P.M bread, and the big pink flag of “Flower Flour”, which slightly tilting above the front door and pointing upward to the bronze church bell; Please enter the bakery, find the shelf with a name tag of “Raisin Toast”. Look outside through the shelf and the window pane, you'll see it frames an aged brown wooden door in the ten o'clock direction. That's the place, Sir." I would definitely say so if a stranger had wanted to visit Katerina.

Sure there was an address as " 2^nd Floor, Vizione Valley, Main St., 31". But nobody in the town would use them; I mean, to memorize one's own address for the mail purpose is one thing, but to use it as an index to find a location? Why bother? Only the strangers had troubles to find a place in town, and they could always get the direction from the town people!

Except Mr. Du, the postman; he might be the "only one" who still understood the mysterious syntax in the town. He was required to study it to pass the postal exam. When I was a child I had ever pushed him to teach me the address rule, and felt momentarily funny when seeing him blush.

"It is too complicated for a young kid like you." he said.

"I would teach you, only if you had finished the trigonometry class!"

I must have been too young to emotionally accept a great loss. I remembered that I shouted almost painfully: "Not trigonometry!!"

For a while I had been mad with Mr. Du, and had thought that I myself could be a qualified postman. I knew all the addressees' places in town, and Katerina would help me to read the addressee's name correctly. From the name to the place, who needed trigonometry? Who needed the freaky address!

Nevertheless for the most of the time I respected Mr. Du a lot. After all he was the man in town who could decrypt the address syntax! (Sure after all this time I heard both Dr. Wang and Ms. Alexian, my high school teacher, possessed this knowledge as well, but they had been on my avoiding list for long time, and somehow I never connected them other than disease and math!)

As the time went by I became more and more easily to get confused, while became lazier and lazier to find out the reason behind. It had been so many years, but once in a while, strangely, the scenes would jump up clearly in front of my eyes.

Memory is that odd. Like an unexpected nap on the sweater, once you notice it and try to pull it out, it draws more with a link of thread. A probably smart way might be, chop it out with a pair of scissors before it dissolves the whole sweater.

Or, just ignore it?

當文學撞到工程師

跟一些接觸文學的朋友，談到龍應台的新書
–『目送』，驚訝的發現他們並不喜歡龍應台的文學創作。我自己讀了許多龍應台的書，一直把她當成提升高度的鏡子，所以當幾次跟不同人提到龍應台時都遇到了反彈，我也想瞭解為什麼。

『目送』我只讀了一篇『雨兒』，談到龍應台與失智母親的相處。

我想，這有什麼問題呢?

我並不是個接觸文學的常客，讀龍應台之前的著作，我讀的是文化上的聚焦，比較不是創作，感覺算是仔細編排後的解釋。

我試著自圓己說，打個比喻:
龍應台，是拿方磚在建築。

題目不大時，不過就是面磚牆，不像雕刻家的作品那般，有著更奇麗的輪廓。於是靠近看，就覺得乏味了。又在砌磚!!

但有時，我這個工程師，離文學有點遠，把她的書當教科書看，不當藝術品。特別是獨立思考與文化比較時的敏銳，理想堅持與人生自省，她可是用磚在砌長城，時而高聳時而蜿蜒，可經挑戰而不憾。我就是被那長城天際線的高度所折服。

好吧，我是以讀科普的精神看龍應台，你們都說她的筆法乏味，仔細想想，我也能同意。山勢陡峻，築其上而自險，非牆之故矣。至少她介紹了山勢險峻，對你們登山者沒什麼，對我這宅男可就大開眼界囉。

如果是純文學方面，我比較被浪漫的作品所吸引。看看Fitzgerald
的描述:
“The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a
quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning
gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in
bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.” –
“它的草坪從海灘開始，朝前門奔跑了四分之一哩，其間跨躍過了日晷，磚道，和放肆燃燒的花園
– 最後當它抵達房子前，彷彿是藉著它奔跑的動量，在邊緣浮舉起了油亮亮的常春藤。
”

這也乏味的話，那那那，
工程師只好把 『殺很大!』拿出來討論了。