Me and Writing
我笔下的奇异世界
This was the summer that I think I became a writer. I was thirteen years old. I wore steel-rimmed glasses and I was a very solemnboy. Not that I was sad, but I simply was paying attention. I'd been given a typewriter by my Uncle George, when he got an electric. He gave me his old Underwood typewriter and I set it up in the basement. I had a secret place under the stairs behind a stackof sheet rock. I sat in there and wrote where my parents could not see me because they were worried, you know, that I didn't go outside. And they believed in the illusion of a balanced life, you know, you do a little bit of this, you do a little bit of that. I just wanted to do one thing. I just wanted to find things to write about.
我想当作家的念头是在这个夏天冒出来的。那年我十三岁了，戴着一副银边眼镜，是个不苟言笑的男孩。倒不是因为心情不好，我只是在琢磨事儿。乔治叔叔买了一台电打字机后，就把手打打字机给了我。他给我的是一台安德伍牌老式打字机，我把它架在地下室里。楼梯下石砖墙后是我的密室。我坐在里面写东西，爸妈看不到我，你知道，我之所以要秘密行事是因为他们担心我总不出门。他们相信生活应该有多方面平衡，就是让你做做这个又做做那个。而我只想做一件事——练笔。
I liked to write about tornadoes: Tornadoes, which come out of a peaceful summer day in the Midwest. And the sky's blue and then suddenly it's dark as night and this great snake-like cloud comes slithering across the landscape, smashinghouses at random, destroying this one, leaving this standing. I liked that idea.我想写写龙卷风：一个平静的夏日里，在中西部骤然刮起了龙卷风。蔚蓝的天空霎时间变得像夜晚一样漆黑，蛇一般的巨大烟云卷过地面，将房屋揉得粉碎，摧毁了这间，放过了那间。我太喜欢写龙卷风了。
I wrote a story, a sort of autobiographicalstory, about a family from New York, a microbiologist and his actress wife, and their son, who looked, and walked, and talked, and thought, and felt exactly like me. I sat in the backseat and they were driving across the Midwest, and they forgot me... at a gas station. We stopped for a rest stop... and they forgot me, and they drove away. I walked up the road that they had driven and suddenly the sky turned dark and... a tornado came up and it picked me up and it carried me and dropped me, uninjured, in the yard of a sanctified Brethren family. I knocked on the door and a woman in a white satingown holding a flaming torch came out and asked me what I wanted. And I was going to tell them that I had to leave to look for my parents and then the dog spoke to me. The dog said, "Stay." So, I stayed. But still, I missed the life of glamourthat I had known on New York's exclusiveUpper West Side. I love to write stories like that.我写了一个故事，自传式的故事，说的是一个纽约家庭，家里有一个微生物学家，当演员的妻子，还有他们的儿 子--那孩子的模样和走路、说话、思考的方式简直跟我一样。我坐在汽车的后座，他们开车穿越中西部，后来他们把我忘在了一个加油站。我们停车休息，然后他 们就把我给落下了，开车走了。我沿着他们车驶去的方向走着，突然间，天空暗了下来， 龙卷风大作，风卷起我吹啊吹，毫发不伤地把我扔在一个圣教徒家的后院里。我敲敲门，一个身穿白色缎袍的女人举着一把熊熊的火炬，走出来问我想干什么。我正 想说我想去找我的爸妈，一条狗冲着我说话了：“留下来吧。于是，我就留下了。但是，我还是很怀念在纽约高尚住宅区的好日子。我就喜欢写这样的故事。
I sat there at my Underwood typewriter, but I wished that something real would happen.我坐在安德伍牌打字机前，想写些真实的事儿。
That was the summer that my cousin, Helen-Marie, came to stay with us suddenly. She was seventeen. She was four years older than I and I'd always admired her. She was lovelier than the rest of us. The rest of us had our family's looks; we had homelyfaces and she was pretty. She had blondehair, a rarity in our family.
那年夏天，我的表姐海伦·玛莉突然来我们家住下。她十七岁，比我大四岁，我很喜欢她。她比我们家的其他人都可爱。其他人都有着家族的容貌特征，脸蛋儿一点儿也不起眼，她却很漂亮。那一头金发在我们家族里是极少见的。
Then I wrote a story about her; about a girl who is cooking lunch at home one day and a woman in a white satin dress holding a flaming torch bursts in through the door, and it startles the girl so much that she drops the cast iron skillet on her dog and the dog bites her and she gets an incurableblood disease from this. Doctors give her two weeks to live, and then, on top of everything, a tornado comes in and it blows the roof off the house and itimpalesfour blades of grass in her side. And there's something on that grass that cures that blood disease. Medical science has never seen anything like it. She's cured. She comes home. And that night the dog scratches on her door, and the dog says, "Aren't you curious to know what it was on the grass that cured that blood disease?" I sort of liked the story.
于是我就写了一个关于她的故事，说的是有一天，一个女孩正在家里做午饭时，有个穿着白色缎袍的女人手里举 着熊熊的火炬从门外闯了进来，女孩吓了一大跳，把铁锅砸到了她的狗，狗咬了她一口，她从此就得了一种没法治的血液病。医生说她只能活两个星期了，这时，一 股龙卷风刮了进来，它掀掉屋顶，四片草叶子刺到她的身上。草叶子上面的什么东西就把她的血液病给治好了。医学上从来没有见过这种奇事。她痊愈了，回到了 家。那天晚上，小狗抓挠着她的房门，那狗问她说： “你难道不想知道草叶子上面是什么东西治好了你的血液病吗？我喜欢这样的故事。
a. 1.冷峻的；表情严肃的 2.庄严的；严正的；郑重的 3.(宗教礼仪或正式场合 )庄严的；隆重的 basement['beism nt]
n. 地下室，地窖，建筑物的基部stack[st k]
n.1.整齐的一叠；堆；垛2.（stacks）大量；许多3.（轮船等的）排气管；烟囱4.（stacks）（图书馆的）藏书书架；书库5.（英）堆，垛6.三角枪架7.（作为赌注用的）一堆筹码；一堆钱8.【计】堆栈9.【空】定高分层盘旋的飞机群10.（海面的）岩柱11.（高炉的）炉身12.【无】多层天线13.（美俚）烤饼；薄煎饼v.[T]1.把…叠成堆；堆放于2.洗（牌）作弊；暗中做手脚3.【空】指令（landscape['l ndskeip]
n.[C]1.（陆上）风景，（陆上）景色2.（一张）（陆上）风景画；（陆上）风景绘画；（陆上）风景摄影3.地形，地貌4.【喻】全景5.【废】前景v.[T]对...作景观美化；美化v.[I]从事景观美化工作，从事园艺设计autobiographical[' :t bai 'g fikl]
a. 自传的,自传体的satin['s tin]
n.[U] 缎子，假缎a. 绸缎做的，缎子一般的，光滑的glamour['gl m ]
n. [U]1.魅力，诱惑力2.迷人的美；妖艳v. [T]1.使着魔；迷住；迷惑2.使有魅力；美化(+up)exclusive[iks'klu:siv]
adj. 1. 高级的，奢华的2. 专用的；独家的3. 排外的；不愿接收新成员4. 排斥的；排他的5. 不包括；不算；除…外6. 排除其他一切的；专一的，全部的7. 绝无仅有的；惟一的8. 单独的；独享的，独占的，独有的9. 专售(或只经营)高档商品的；高级趣味的；新式的，时髦的；奢华的，高级的10. (商品等)独家经营的n. 1. 独家资讯，独家报道2. 专有物，独占物3. 独家经营（更多略）。homely['h umli]
a. 家常的,平凡的,丑陋的blonde[bl nd]
a.[也作blond]1.（头发）金黄色的2.（人）头发金黄的n.[C]金发女郎incurable[in'kjur bl]
a. 不能医治的,不能矫正的,无救的n. 不治的病人,无救的人tornado[t :'neid u]
n. 旋风,龙卷风 smash[sm ]
v.1.[T,I]（哗啦一声）打碎，打破2.[T,I]（使）猛烈撞击3.[T]（用力）撞开，击穿，闯过4.[T]猛击5.[T]捣毁，打败，粉碎，使结束6.[T]撞毁（车辆）7.[T]打高压球，扣球n.1.破碎，打碎，破碎（或打碎）的哗啦声2.[C]【英】撞车3.[C]高压球，扣球4.[C]十分走红的歌曲（或电影、戏剧）impale[im'peil]
v.[T] 刺穿，使绝望，钉住
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