预约成功
That I am trapped in this particular irrelevancy is never more apparent to me than when I am home. Paralyzed by the neurotic lassitude engendered by meeting one's past at every turn, around every corner, inside every cupboard, I go aimlessly from room to room. I decide to meet it head-on and clean out a drawer, and I spread the contents on the bed. A bathing suit I wore the summer I was seventeen. A letter of rejection from The Nation, an aerial photograph of the site for a shopping center my father did not build in 1954. Three teacups hand-painted with cabbage roses and signed "E.M.," my grandmother's initials. There is no final solution for letters of rejection from The Nation and teacups hand-painted in 1900. Nor is there any answer to snapshots of one's grandfather as a young man on skis, surveying around Donner Pass in the year 1910. I smooth out the snapshot and look into his face, and do and do not see my own. I close the drawer, and have another cup of coffee with my mother. We get along very well, veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood.
【参考译文】这个不相干的问题困扰着我，在我返回老家后尤为明显。走过每个角落，打开每个食橱，转身驻足间，我一次次地面对过去，思绪不宁，及至疲乏不堪，我还是漫无目的地逐个房间走着。我决意正视过去，清理出一个抽屉，把东西摊在床上。一件我十七岁那年夏天穿的泳衣;一封《民族》周刊的退稿信;一张从空中拍摄的选址照片，1954年父亲曾打算在那里建购物中心;还有三只茶杯，上面有手绘的百叶蔷薇，并签有祖母名字的两个首字母E.M.。我不知道该如何处理1900年手绘的茶杯和《民族》周刊的退稿信，也不知道该如何处理祖父1910年的几张快照。照片里的祖父青春年少，踩着滑雪板，在察看唐纳山口。我抚平照片，注视着祖父的脸，依稀看到自己的影子，又似乎没有。我关上抽屉，陪母亲又喝了一杯咖啡。我们现在相处得很好，就像打过游击战的老兵一样，真不明白过去为何有龃龉。
