双语·当呼吸化为空气 这就是塞拉高山营的暑假

这就是塞拉高山营的暑假。这里也许和其他高山营地没什么不同，但我每一天都觉得充实美好，生机勃勃。我和不同的人与事物建立联系，赋予自己生命丰富的意义。某些夜晚，我们一堆人会围坐在餐厅桌边，和营地的助理主管同饮威士忌。他叫莫，是斯坦福校友，暂时休学的英文博士。我们畅谈文学，畅谈壮年人生各种沉甸甸的责任。第二年他回去读博士，后来寄给我自己发表的第一部短篇，写的就是我们共度的那段时光：
This was summer at Sierra camp, perhaps no different from any other camp, but every day felt full of life, and of the relationships that give life meaning. Other nights found a group of us on the dining room deck, sipping whiskey with the assistant director of the camp, Mo, a Stanford alum taking a break from his English PhD, and discussing literature and the weighty matters of postadolescent life. The next year he returned to his PhD, and later he sent me his first published short story, summing up our time together:

此时此刻，电光石火，我明白了自己想要什么。我希望这里的工作人员能堆起柴堆……让我的骨灰在风中飘落，与沙尘混杂；让我的尸骨随浮木一起漂流；让我的牙齿消隐在沙土之间……我不相信孩子或长者的智慧。当下便是风口浪尖，人生积累的经验，被生存的细节磨损消耗。我们智慧的高峰，便是生活的当下。
Suddenly, now, I know what I want. I want the counselors to build a pyre. . . and let my ashes drop and mingle with the sand. Lose my bones amongst the driftwood, my teeth amongst the sand. . . I don’t believe in the wisdom of children, nor in the wisdom of the old. There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.

回到校园以后，我也没有过多思念山中的岁月。校园生活丰富充实，接下来的两年我也一直坚持探索，致力于更深入地了解精神世界。我学习文学与哲学，探究生活的意义；我学习神经科学，在一个功能磁共振成像（fMRI）实验室工作，了解大脑的运行机制，比如如何赋予一个有机体探索世界深意的能力，如何让我和一群亲密的朋友通过恶作剧加深友情。我们打扮成蒙古人，突袭学校食堂；我们建立了一个完全虚假的兄弟会，找了间房子，开展了一系列装模作样的开学活动；我们装扮成大猩猩，在白金汉宫门前搔首弄姿；我们午夜闯入大学纪念教堂，躺在地上，听我们的声音在拱顶之间回荡……如此种种，不一而足。（不过，接着我就读到弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫曾经乔装成阿比西亚皇室成员登上一艘军舰的轶事，再加上旁人的斥责，也就停止大肆吹嘘我们那些微不足道的小把戏了。）
Back on campus, I didn’t miss the monkeys. Life felt rich and full, and over the next two years I kept at it, seeking a deeper understanding of a life of the mind. I studied literature and philosophy to understand what makes life meaningful, studied neuroscience and worked in an fMRI lab to understand how the brain could give rise to an organism capable of finding meaning in the world, and enriched my relationships with a circle of dear friends through various escapades. We raided the school cafeteria dressed as Mongols; created a full fake fraternity, complete with fake rush-week events, in our co-op house; posed in front of the gates at Buckingham Palace in a gorilla suit; broke into Memorial Church at mid-night to lie on our backs and listen to our voices echo in the apse; and so on. (Then I learned that Virginia Woolf once boarded a battleship dressed as Abyssinian royalty, and, duly chastened, stopped boasting about our trivial pranks.)