mysophobia 潔癖

然而我的良心卻被狗吃了。至此以後，我到底是憑靠著甚麼而活著，就連我自己也不甚明瞭。

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有一陣子莎莉與傑森以為老黑狗杜比已經中風，大概不久人世了。就連獸醫也不看好這隻素來健康爽朗長命的黑狗。杜比某天在椅子後頭打了個冷顫，並無法抑制地漏尿到地面上。莎莉與傑森發現了這個令人意外的事實，一件老黑狗從來不會做的事情，即在房屋內裡頭驚慌地尿出來。她們發現他行動有異，判斷他必定是中風。

料想不到的事情有很多。其中也包含了我邁向二十五歲時一個最難以逃避，不是太淒涼但總是孤獨的事實:Homeless。
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原本以為離婚之後會是一場大風暴，但心靈卻有著平靜，儘管是古老的，生命齒輪轉動的聲音推磨著我存在的軌跡。也許是因為要離開美國前往印尼研究必須經過這ｒｅｄ　ｔａｐｅ各式官僚從贊助機構到印尼當地移民局，科學研究單位許可，一路到紐約大使館辦事處等等迷宮般的搜索，總是只有零亂不整難以取得的地圖與導覽，以及求救時收訊不良或溝通不良的冷漠回聲。我想我已經走到了迷宮的盡頭。而等待著我，在迷宮出口的，則是熱帶的叢林與籠罩在清真寺念經廣播的城鎮鄉村。 ...繼續閱讀

...wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

For being a foreigner is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect. -- Jhumpa Lahiri p49-50

But perhaps it only happens to those who are the stragglers in the West. True it could also happen the other way around, when it is cleverly discovered that even, or certainly, that the natives must hold something deft to pity any ignorant newcomers, for whom now the world is turned into an entirely alien settings full of unfamiliar rules and bizarre sorts of logic. ...繼續閱讀

I hopped into the car, or in fact crammed myself into it, just quickly but thoroughly showered, running away at midnight in the summer end, from the most academic city in the world -- with all my possessions and my husband. The backseat area was nicely piled up against the ceiling, let along the up to the forehead trunk. The city was left behind, with all my books in boxes piling up in the basement of Anthropology Department. A space that briefly amused me by its non-moldy smells and its post-modern style of decoration, or non-decoration -- loosely structured by dormant furniture unlocked and archives locked. A space that doesn't seem belong to a pleasant afternoon, but more like a place of night gathering. ...繼續閱讀

That really left a strong and vivid image in my mind about the family and father in law, even if that was perhaps quite representative of that sort of emotion a typical authority figure in a patriarchal family could be allowed to express. Yet since I have never seen him like that, I was also touched by something refreshingly new and deep. ...繼續閱讀

雲南小鎮記



像飛行員生還者常有的抽離經驗，突然間可從駕駛艙外凝望自身。
大腦的錯亂，累積在創傷與服從命令的明快之上，或就是靈魂出竅
也罷；午間欲雨還歇的空氣扶托著身上無法集中思考的那顆腦袋。
該是爽朗地附會，腳步中卻有記憶裡常黏稠的躊躇。

是一種發條式的不可逆反應；如果無法承受自己，就讓佈署生活謀
略來支撐這搖搖欲墜的靈魂。 ...繼續閱讀

最近期末將至，我仍然苦口婆心地在幫美國大學生想辦法拯救她們的成績，於是在我焦頭爛額之餘，仍然找時間快速地打出一篇"寫文化人類學導論期末報告的常見錯誤"一文，希望改善她們的毛病。原本是不想題名的，但是教授叫我把自己的全名寫上去才發放給學生。

以下就是其文。

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越戰並不只是一個單純的意識形態之戰，其基礎更有著越南長期歷史發展中不均衡的族群關係。其中又以南北越區域差異，以及沿海與深山居民的對立為主要軸線。
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