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精美英文欣赏:一个人的空间

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他说:“我不理解为何每个人都认为我的工作很枯燥。我有一个街角办公室,四周都是玻璃。我可以看见金门海峡、旧金山和伯克利山,半个西方世界都在这儿度假,每天我只是漫步到这里,练习跳舞。

If you have ever gone through a toll booth, you know that your relationship to the person in the booth is not the most intimate you’ll ever have. It is one of life’s frequent non-encounters: You hand over some money; you might get change; you drive off. I have been through every one of the 17 toll booths on the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge on thousands of occasions, and never had an exchange worth remembering with anybody.

Late one morning in 1984, headed for lunch in San Francisco, I drove toward one of the booths. I heard loud music. It sounded like a party, or a Michael Jackson concert. I looked around. No other cars with their windows open. No sound trucks. I looked at the toll booth. Inside it, the man was dancing.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m having a party,” he said.

“What about the rest of these people?” I looked over at other booths; nothing moving there.

“They’re not invited.”  

I had a dozen other questions for him, but somebody in a big hurry to get somewhere started punching his horn behind me and I drove off. But I made a note to myself: Find this guy again. There’s something in his eye that says there’s magic in his toll booth.

Months later I did find him again, still with the loud music, still having a party.

Again I asked, “What are you doing?”

He said, “I remember you from the last time. I’m still dancing. I’m having the same party.”

I said, “Look. What about the rest of the people”

He said. “Stop. What do those look like to you?” He pointed down the row of toll booths.

“They look like tool booths.”

“Nooooo imagination!’

I said, “Okay, I give up. What do they look like to you?”

He said, “Vertical coffins.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can prove it. At 8:30 every morning, live people get in. Then they die for eight hours. At 4:30, like Lazarus from the dead, they reemerge and go home. For eight hours, brain is on hold, dead on the job. Going through the motions.”

I was amazed. This guy had developed a philosophy, a mythology about his job. I could not help asking the next question: “Why is it different for you? You’re having a good time.”

He looked at me. “I knew you were going to ask that, “ he said. “I’m going to be a dancer someday.” He pointed to the administration building. “My bosses are in there, and they’re paying for my training.”

Sixteen people dead on the job, and the seventeenth, in precisely the same situation, figures out a way to live. That man was having a party where you and I would probably not last three days. The boredom! He and I did have lunch later, and he said, “I don’t understand why anybody would think my job is boring. I have a corner office, glass on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate, San Francisco, the Berkeley hills; half the Western world vacations here and I just stroll in every day and practice dancing.”

重点单词   查看全部解释    
concert ['kɔnsət]

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n. 音乐会,一致,和谐
vt. 制定计划,通

 
horn [hɔ:n]

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n. 动物角,喇叭,触角,角状物,力量源泉

 
administration [əd.mini'streiʃən]

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n. 行政,管理,行政部门

联想记忆
betrayal [bi'treiəl]

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n. 背叛,暴露

 
understand [.ʌndə'stænd]

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vt. 理解,懂,听说,获悉,将 ... 理解为,认为<

 
mythology [mi'θɔlədʒi]

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n. 神话,神话学,神话集

联想记忆
punch [pʌntʃ]

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n. 打洞器,钻孔机,殴打
n. (酒、水、糖

联想记忆
vertical ['və:tikəl]

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adj. 垂直的,顶点的,纵向的
n. 垂直物

联想记忆
boring ['bɔ:riŋ]

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adj. 令人厌烦的

 
row [rəu,rau]

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n. 排,船游,吵闹
vt. 划船,成排

 


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