Suzanne B. Levine -- My Secret Predawn

Time was in my life when the dawn happened to other people. I was definitely not a morning person; I associated the sunrise with long plane flights across many time zones and groggy strolls around strange cities waiting for my hotel room to become available. Then I had children, and the first light took on new meaning. Sometimes it was the sigh at the end of a fretful night up with a feverish baby; or the opposite, the joyous cry of an exuberant 3-year-old eager to get the day going. It was only later, when mornings were taken over by the getting-to-school frenzy, that I discovered the serenity of the surprisingly fast transition from night to day. For the small price of 15 minutes of sleep I could buy 15 minutes of solitary peace—with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Given the tidbit of time at my disposal, I developed the habit of skimming the paper, which quickly came down to a surreptitious and almost superstitious ritual of checking out obituaries.

At first I attributed this new habit to advancing age—I had recently turned 40—and glumly concluded that I was becoming morbid. But why, then, was I finding my secret rite so uplifting? Finally, after many years of starting the day this way, I have figured out that I am doing it not to obsess about death but to find out about life. Real life. Obituaries capture the benchmarks of life span without passing judgment or making order out of the events. The high points are easy—Pulitzer Prize winners joke that as soon as they are named they know what the headline is going to be on their obituary—but I read most attentively for clues to the defeats and the flatline periods, the inexplicable changes of heart and the twists of fate, the gambles and the unexpected consequences, the loose ends…

The message that comes through over and over is that although there are times in any life when things seem to be preceding step by logical step, the whole is mostly random and askew. Life, as every biography and obit I have ever read confirms, is what happens when you are making other plans.

叶子南 译：

拂晓前的秘密仪式

苏珊娜B.莱文

我生命中有一段时间，黎明与我无缘。我那时根本不愿早起。一提到日出，就令我想起远程飞行的经历，常常是在跨越几个时区后，抵达了目的地，客房却却偏偏尚未腾出，于是只好拖着疲倦的步伐，在陌生的城市内漫无目的地游逛。后来，我有了孩子，第一道曙光便有了新的意义。有时孩子生病，整晚不得安宁，于是黎明是在我的一声叹息中迎来的。有时恰恰相反，精力充沛的三岁孩子迫不及待地要开始一天的生活，黎明于是在孩子欢快的叫喊声中到来。后来，孩子上学了，于是清晨就是在送孩子上学的忙乱中度过的。正是在这忙乱的时刻，我突然发现从夜晚过渡到白昼竟何其短促，那一瞬间却又无比宁静。那么，不妨少睡十五分钟，就可以喝咖啡，看报纸，享受十五分钟独处的宁静。由于可以支配的时间有限，我便养成了利用这片刻随便翻阅报纸的习惯，这一习惯马上又演变成一种查看讣告的仪式，每日总是定时偷偷地、近乎迷信般地查阅报纸上的讣告。

起初，我以为这是因为年岁渐增地缘故（当时我刚四十岁），于是我不无悲哀地认为这是一种病态心理。可令我不解的是，为什么我竟对这个秘密的仪式感到如此振奋？我就是以这种方式年复一年地度过清晨那片刻的时光，直到有一天我突然明白过来，我如此喜欢读讣告并非迷恋死亡，而意在探索生命，真正的生命。讣告捕捉一生中的重要时刻，却不对事件进行评判。人生中突出的事件当然容易在讣告中发现，普利策奖得主不无诙谐地说，一得奖他们就知道自己讣告的标题是什么。然而我读讣告，却专心在字里行间捕捉生命中的失败，人生中百无聊赖的时刻，莫可名状的心意改变和命运的曲折逆转，人生的赌博和事与愿违的结局，还有那未了的心愿……

反复阅读讣告得到的感悟是，虽然有时人一生的发展一步接一步符合逻辑，但总体来说，人生却是曲折、难料的。每一本传记，每一则讣告都毫无例外地印证，人生就是在你制定计划时意外发生的事情。