旅行的艺术:回归 Ⅸ 习惯-5

5

5

我试图绕着我的卧室旅行，但是它这么小，几乎连一张床也容纳不下，以至于我得出结论，如果德·梅伊斯特的理论应用于我居住的小区，或许会更有价值。

I attempted to travel around my bedroom, but it was so small, with barely enough space for a bed, that I concluded that the De Maistrean message might prove more rewarding if it was applied to the neighbourhood as a whole.

因此，在3月间一个晴朗的下午，大约3点左右，在我从巴巴多斯回家几周后，我开始以德·梅伊斯特式的旅行方式环游哈默史密斯。在正午外出，而脑子里没有特定的目的，使我感到有些奇怪。一个妇女和两个金发小孩正沿着主干道往前走，道路两旁是各式各样的商店和饭馆。一辆双层巴士停在一座小公园的对面搭载乘客。一块巨大的广告板上刷着肉汁的广告。我几乎每天都行走在这条通往地铁站的道路上，并且只习惯于把它想成是到达我的目的地的必经之途。可以帮助我实现目标的信息吸引着我的注意力，无法吸引我的是那些被判断为不相干的事物。于是我留心观察人行道上行人的数量，因为他们可能挡住我的去路，反之我无视于他们的脸和表情，就如同无视于建筑物的形状或是商店里的活动一样。

So on a clear March day, at around three in the afternoon, several weeks after my return home from Barbados, I set out on a de Maistrean journey around Hammersmith. It felt peculiar to be outside in the middle of the day with no particular goal in mind. A woman and two small blond children were walking along the main road, which was lined with a variety of shops and restaurants. A double-decker bus had stopped to pick up passengers opposite a small park. A giant billboard was advertising gravy. I walked along this particular road almost every day to reach my Underground station and was unused to considering it as anything other than a means to my end. Information that assisted me in my goal attracted my attention, what did not was judged irrelevant. I was therefore sensitive to the number of people on the pavement, for they might interrupt my path, whereas their faces and expressions were invisible to me, as invisible as the shapes of the buildings or the activity in the shops.

情形也并不总是这样。刚搬到这一地区的时候，我关注的事物并不只限于这几点上。那时候，我还不会一心只想赶快到我要去的地方，而对周围场景视而不见。

It had not always been thus. When I had first moved to the area, my attention had been less jealously focused. I had at that time not settled so firmly on the goal of reaching the Underground quickly.

刚进入一个新的地方的时候，我们的敏感性会引领我们注意很多东西，等到确认这个地方对我们而言有何功能之后，我们注意的东西就会越来越少。比方说，在一条街上或许有4000种事物可以看到和想到，我们最后积极关注的却只有其中的3到4件：在我们所走的路上的行人的数量、交通车辆的数量和下雨的可能性。我们最初对一辆公共汽车也许会从审美或机械构成的角度看待它，或许它会引发我们对城市内社区的思考，但久而久之，它在我们眼中变成了可以移动的盒子，它可以快速地把我们送到目的地，而路过的区域仿佛是不存在的，因为它们跟目的地无关。车窗外，一切都归于黑暗，什么都无法进入我们的视野。

On entering a new space, our sensitivity is directed towards a number of elements, which we gradually reduce in line with the function we find for the space. Of the 4,000 things there might be to see and reflect on in a street, we end up actively aware of only a few: the number of humans in our path, the amount of traffic and the likelihood of rain. A bus, which we might at first have viewed aesthetically or mechanically or as a springboard to thoughts about communities within cities, becomes simply a box to move us as rapidly as possible across an area which might as well not exist, so unconnected is it to our primary goal, outside of which all is darkness, all is invisible.

我已经为街道限定了一系列可被称为有趣的东西的范围，其中没有金发的小孩、肉汁广告、铺就人行道的石子、店面的色调以及店员和领养老金的人们的表情。我只关注于自己的首要目标，而不会去考虑公园的布局，也不会注意到同一条街上竟然杂陈着乔治亚式、维多利亚式和爱德华式的建筑。我行走在这条道路上，不会感受到任何美的吸引，不会产生任何联想，没有什么东西能让我感到惊异或感动，我也无从萌发哲思。而代之，只有一个强烈的呼唤，那就是尽可能快地到达地铁站。

I had imposed a grid of interests on the street, which left no space for blond children and gravy adverts and paving stones and the colours of shop fronts and the expressions of businesspeople and pensioners. The power of my primary goal had drained me of the will to reflect on the layout of the park or on the unusual mixture of Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian architecture along a single block. My walks along the street had been excised of any attentiveness to beauty, of any associative thoughts, any sense of wonder or gratitude, any philosophical digressions sparked by visual elements. And in its place, there was simply an insistent call to reach the Underground posthaste.

然而，追随着德·梅伊斯特，我尝试颠倒习惯的过程，并在抵达目的地前，尝试分离我周围的环境和我以往为这些地方所设定的用途。我强迫自己遵循一种特殊的精神命令：环顾我的四周，仿佛我从前从未来过这里。慢慢地，我的旅行开始有了收获。

However, following De Maistre, I tried to reverse the process of habituation, to disassociate my surroundings from the uses I had found for them until then. I forced myself to obey a peculiar kind of mental command: to look around me as though I had never been in this place before. And slowly, my travels began to bear fruit.

我告诉自己，这里的每件东西都可能是有趣的，眼前的事物于是开始显现出潜在的价值。在原有的看法中，一长排商店不过是一片没有特色的红色建筑，但细看之下，我对这种建筑风格产生了认同。一家花店的两旁有乔治亚风格的柱子，肉店的顶部是维多利亚时代后期哥特式风格的怪兽状喷水口。饭馆里满是用餐的人，而不是各种只会动的形状。在一座装有玻璃门的办公楼里，我注意到一些人在一楼的会议室里做着手势。有人在使用投影仪，投影图上显出一张饼状图。与此同时，就在办公室对面的道路上，一个男人正在为人行道铺设新的水泥板，并仔细地固定它们的边角。我上了一辆公共汽车，这回我没有过多地考虑自己的事情，而是尝试着富有想象力地把自己同其他乘客联系起来。我能听到我前面一排的乘客交谈。在某个办公室里的某个人——很显然级别相当高的一个人，不曾尝试理解他人。这些级别相当高的人们抱怨别人效率多么地低，但从来不反省他们做了些什么使问题更加严重。我想到了在同一座城市同一时间里处于不同生活水平上的人的多样性。我想到人们相类似的抱怨，他们抱怨别人自私，有眼无珠，但实质上，我们对别人的抱怨也就是别人对我们的抱怨。

Under the command to consider everything as of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value. A row of shops which I had known as one large, undifferentiated reddish block acquired an architectural identity. There were Georgian pillars around one flower shop, and late Victorian Gothic-style gargoyles on top of the butcher's. A restaurant became filled with diners rather than shapes. In a glass-fronted office block, I noticed some people gesticulating in a boardroom on the first floor. Someone was drawing a pie chart on an overhead projector. At the same time, just across the road from the office, a man was pouring out new slabs of concrete for the pavement and carefully shaping their corners. I got on a bus and, rather than slipping at once into private concerns, tried to connect imaginatively with other passengers. I could hear a conversation in the row ahead of me. Someone in an office somewhere, a person quite high up in the hierarchy apparently, didn't understand. They complained of how inefficient others were, but never reflected on what they might have been doing to increase that inefficiency. I thought of the multiplicity of lives going on at the same time at different levels in a city. I thought of the similarities of complaints-always selfishness, always blindness-and the old psychological truth that what we complain of in others, others will complain of in us.

周遭的一切不仅包括人和风格鲜明的建筑，而且开始聚集理念。我思考涌入这个区域的新财富。我试图判断出我为什么如此喜欢铁路的拱门以及为什么要修建切过地平线的高速公路。

The neighbourhood did not just acquire people and defined buildings, it also began to collect ideas. I reflected on the new wealth that was spreading into the area. I tried to think why I liked railway arches so much, and why the motorway that cut across the skyline.

独自旅行似乎有一个优点。我们对世界的看法通常在极大程度上受到我们周围人们的影响，我们调和自己的求知欲去满足别人的期待。他们或许已认定我们是怎样的人，因此我们不得不有意识地隐藏自己身上的某些东西。“我没想到你是那种对公路路桥感兴趣的人，”他们也许会以一种让你不自在的口吻说出他们的看法。被一个同伴近距离地观察会阻止我们观察别人，我们忙于调整自己以满足同伴的疑问和评价，我们不得不让自己看上去更正常，这样一来便影响了我们的求知欲。但是独自一人行走在哈默史密斯的正午，我却没有这样的顾虑。我可以无拘无束地做出些奇怪的举动。我描下了一家五金店的窗户的草图，并用生动的语言描绘了公路路桥。

It seemed an advantage to be travelling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by whom we are with, we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others. They may have a particular vision of who we are and hence subtly prevent certain sides of us from emerging: 'I hadn't thought of you as someone who was interested in flyovers,' they might intimidatingly suggest. Being closely observed by a companion can inhibit us from observing others, we become taken up with adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, we have to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity. But I had no such concerns, alone in Hammersmith in mid-afternoon. I had the freedom to act a little weirdly. I sketched the window of a hardware shop and word-painted the flyover.