Me and Writing

Me and Writing

 

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 ¹⁾solemn boy. 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 ²⁾basement. I had a secret place under the stairs behind a ³⁾stack of 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 ⁴⁾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. 

I liked to write about ⁵⁾tornadoes²: 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 ⁶⁾landscape, ⁷⁾smashing houses at random³, destroying this one, leaving this standing⁴. I liked that idea.

I wrote a story, a sort of ⁸⁾autobiographical story, 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 ⁹⁾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 tornado¹ came up and it picked me up and it carried me and dropped me, uninjured, in the yard of a ¹⁰⁾sanctified ¹¹⁾Brethren family. I knocked on the door and a woman in a white ¹²⁾satin gown holding a flaming ¹³⁾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 spoke⁵ to me. The dog said, "Stay." So, I stayed. But still, I missed the life of ¹⁴⁾glamour⁶ that I had known on New York's ¹⁵⁾exclusive Upper West Side. I love to write stories like that. 

I sat there at my Underwood typewriter, but I wished that something real would happen.

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 ¹⁶⁾homely⁷ faces and she was pretty. She had ¹⁷⁾blonde hair, a rarity in our family.

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 ¹⁸⁾cast iron skillet on her dog and the dog bites her and she gets an ¹⁹⁾incurable⁸ blood 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 it ²⁰⁾impales four 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 ²¹⁾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. 

 

 

我笔下的奇异世界

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。

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。

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。

我坐在安德伍牌打字机前，想写些真实的事儿。

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。

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。

 

注释:

1) solemn [5sClEm] a. 严肃的

2) basement [5beismEnt] n. 地下室

3) stack [stAk] n. 堆，叠，书架

4) illusion [i5lu:VEn] n. 幻想

5) tornado [tC:5neidEu] n. 龙卷风，旋风

6) landscape [5lAndskeip] n. 风景，地形

7) smash [smAF] v. 打碎，粉碎

8) autobiographical [C:tEJbaiE5^rAfik(E)l] a. 自传体的

9) backseat [5bAk7sit] n. 后座

10) sanctified [5sANktifaid] a. 神圣化的

11) Brethren [5breTrEn] n. 同胞，兄弟

12) satin [5sAtin] n. 绸缎

13) torch [tC:tF] n. 火炬

14) glamour [5^lAmE] n. 魅力，魔力

15) exclusive [iks5klu:siv] a 唯一的，高级的

16) homely [5hEumli] a. 不好看的

17) blonde [blCnd] a. 金发的

18) cast iron [kB:st 5aiEn] n. 铸铁

19) incurable [in5kjuErEbl] a. 不能治愈的

20) impale⁹ [im5peil] v. 刺穿

21) scratch [skrAtF] v. 刮，擦

1 tornado   

n.飓风，龙卷风

参考例句：

• A tornado whirled into the town last week.龙卷风上周袭击了这座城市。
• The approaching tornado struck awe in our hearts.正在逼近的龙卷风使我们惊恐万分。

2 tornadoes   

n.龙卷风，旋风( tornado的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Tornadoes, severe earthquakes, and plagues create wide spread havoc. 龙卷风、大地震和瘟疫成普遍的毁坏。 来自互联网
• Meteorologists are at odds over the working of tornadoes. 气象学者对龙卷风的运动方式看法不一。 来自互联网

3 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

4 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

5 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

6 glamour   

n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住

参考例句：

• Foreign travel has lost its glamour for her.到国外旅行对她已失去吸引力了。
• The moonlight cast a glamour over the scene.月光给景色增添了魅力。

7 homely   

adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的

参考例句：

• We had a homely meal of bread and cheese.我们吃了一顿面包加乳酪的家常便餐。
• Come and have a homely meal with us,will you?来和我们一起吃顿家常便饭，好吗？

8 incurable   

adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人

参考例句：

• All three babies were born with an incurable heart condition.三个婴儿都有不可治瘉的先天性心脏病。
• He has an incurable and widespread nepotism.他们有不可救药的，到处蔓延的裙带主义。

9 impale   

v.用尖物刺某人、某物

参考例句：

• Do not push me,or I wil impale you on my horns!别推我，要不我会用我的角顶你。
• I poisoned him,but I did not impale him on a spear!我毒死了他，但是我没有把他插在长矛上！