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What nature is telling you? 倾听自然诉说 1 Let's sit down here, all of us, on the open prairie, where we can't see a highway or a fence, free from the debris of the city. Let's have no blankets to sit on, but let our bodies converge with the earth, the surrounding trees and shrubs. Let's have the vegetation for a mattress, experiencing its texture, its sharpness and its softness. Let us become like stones, plants, and trees. Let us be animals, think and feel like animals. 让我们在这儿坐下来吧，我们所有的人，就在这片广阔的草原上。在这里，我们看不见高速公路，看不见围栏，远离城市垃圾。我们不要铺毯子，就让我们的身体和大地、周围的树木及灌木来个亲密接触吧。让我们把草当垫子，感受它或许坚硬或许柔软的质地。让我们想象自己变成了石头、植物和树木，想象自己变成了动物，并像动物那样思考和感觉。 2 This is my plea: Listen to the air. You can hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it. We feel it between us, as a presence presiding over the day. It is a good way to start thinking about nature and talking about it. To go further, we must rather talk to it, talk to the rivers, to the lakes, to the winds as to our relatives. 这就是我的请求：倾听空气。你们可以听见它，感觉它，闻到它，品尝它。我们可以感到它就在我们中间，作为一种实实在在的存在，主宰着每一天。这是一个好方式，我们可以就这样开始思考自然，谈论自然。如果再想好点的话，我们就不如和自然说话，也就是和江河说话，和湖泊说话，和风说话，就像我们和亲人说话一样。 3 You have impaired our ability to experience nature in the good way, as part of it. Even here we are conscious that somewhere beyond the marsh and its cranes, somewhere out in those hills there are radar towers and highway overpasses. This land is so beautiful and strange that now some of you want to make it into a national park. You have not only contaminated the earth, the rocks, the minerals, all of which you call "dead" but which are very much alive; you have even changed the animals, which are part of us, changed them into vulgar zoological mutations, so no one can recognize them. 你们已经损坏了我们人类作为大自然的一部分以一种美好的方式体验大自然的能力。即使在这里，我们也知道，在沼泽地和栖息于此的鹤之外的某个地方，在远处山里的某个地方，就建有雷达塔和高速公路立交桥。这片土地如此美丽与奇特，以至于你们中的某些人想把它变成一座国家公园。你们已经污染了土地、岩石、矿物——这些都是被你们称为已经“死去”但其实是非常有生命活力的东西。不仅如此，就连属于我们一部分的动物，也被你们改造了。你们把它们变成了低级的基因变异动物，以至于没有人能再认识它们。 4 There is power in an antelope, so you let it graze within your fences. But what power do you see in a goat or sheep, prey animals with no defenses, creatures that hold still while you slaughter them? There was great power in a wolf, even in a fox. You have inverted nature and turned these noble animals into miniature lap dogs. Nature is bound by your ropes and whips and is obedient to your commands. You can't do much with a cat, so you fix it, alter it, declaw it, and even cut its vocal cords so that you can experiment on it in a laboratory without being disturbed by its cries. 羚羊是一种有力量的动物，因而你们把它圈养在栅栏里。但是，山羊或绵羊，这些没有自卫能力的猎物、这些悄无声息任凭你们宰杀的动物，你们在它们身上看到了什么力量？狼身上有巨大的力量，狐狸身上也同样有巨大的力量。你们违背自然，把这些高贵的动物变成了小型的可以放在腿上把玩的哈巴狗。自然被你们的绳索和鞭子所束缚，屈服于你们的命令。对猫，你们无能为力，所以你们就设法修理它们、改造它们，剪掉它们锋利的爪子，甚至切断它们的声带，这样你们就可以用猫在实验室做实验，而不会再受它们叫声的干扰。 5 You have also made all types of wild birds into chickens — creatures with wings so impaired that they cannot fly. There are farms where you breed chickens for breast meat. Those birds are kept in low, repressive cages, forced to be hunched over all the time, which makes the breast muscles very big. One loud noise and the chickens go mad, killing themselves by flying against the walls of their cages. Having to spend all their lives stooped over makes an unnatural, crazy, no-good bird. It also makes unnatural, detached, no-good human beings. 所有的野生鸟类都被你们改造成了鸡禽——一种翅膀退化、根本不会飞的生物。你们有许多农场，专门用来饲养鸡以提供鸡胸脯肉。这些鸡被关在狭窄压抑的笼子里，不得不一直弓着身体，这使它们的胸脯肌肉变得很大。如果突发一声巨响，鸡群会吓得发疯般乱跑，撞死在笼子壁上。一辈子都必须佝偻着背使得这些鸡变成了既不天然又不正常、毫无用处的禽类。同时，人类也变得很不自然、冷漠无情、残酷刻薄。 6 That's where you've fooled yourselves. You have not only altered, declawed, and deformed your winged and four-legged cousins; you have done it concurrently to yourselves. You inject Botox, or use plastic surgery, synthetic make-up and countless drugs. You have filtered and remolded humans into executives sitting in boardrooms, into office workers, into time-clock punchers. Your homes are filled with families disconnected from one another but tied to one great entity, television. 在这点上，你们愚弄了自己。你们对自己带翅膀的和长四条腿的近亲兄弟姐妹进行了改造，剪掉了它们的爪子，甚至让它们变得畸形。同时，你们也在对自己做这些事情。你们注射肉毒杆菌毒素，接受整容手术，使用人造化妆品和数不清的药物。你们把人类进行筛选和改造：有的人是坐董事会议室的高级管理人员，有的人是坐办公室的白领，有的人是每日要按考勤钟打卡的工人。在家里，每个家庭成员之间也没有联系，却都沉溺于一个大实体，那就是电视。 7 "Watch the ashes, don't smoke, you'll stain the curtains. Watch the goldfish bowl. Don't lean your head against the wallpaper; your hair may be greasy. Don't spill liquor on that table: You'll peel off its delicate finish. You should have wiped your boots; the floor was just cleaned. Don't, don't, don't …" That is absurd! We weren't made to endure this type of repression. You live in prisons which you have built for yourselves, calling them "homes", offices, factories. “小心烟灰，不要抽烟，否则你会熏脏窗帘。小心金鱼缸。不要把头靠在墙纸上，你的头发也许很油。不要把饮料洒在桌子上，你会把它精美的涂层弄掉。你应该先擦擦靴子，地板刚刚才打扫过。不要做这个，不要做那个，不要……”这太荒谬了！人类生下来不是忍受这种压抑的。你们住在自己亲手打造的监狱里，只不过你们把它们称之为“家”、办公室或工厂而已。 8 Sometimes I think that even our pitiful small houses are better than your luxury mansions. Strolling a hundred feet to the outhouse on a clear wintry night, through mud or snow, that's one small link with nature. Or in the summer, in the back country, taking your time, listening to the humming of the insects or the flapping of birds' wings, the sun warming your bones through the nodding branches of trees; you don't even have that pleasure of coexistence with nature anymore. 有时，我认为我们的寒酸小屋也比你们的奢华大厦要好。在一个晴朗的冬夜，踏着泥土或积雪，漫步一百英尺去上厕所，这是我们与自然之间的一个小小的接触。抑或是在夏天，在一个偏僻的乡村，悠闲地听着昆虫的嗡鸣或鸟儿拍打翅膀的声音，感受太阳透过随风摇摆的树枝暖暖地照在身上的感觉。可是你们却连体会那种与自然共处的快乐的机会都不再有。 9 You subscribe to the belief that everything must be germ free. No smells! Not even the good, natural man and woman odors. Eradicate the smell from under your armpits, from your skin. Rub it out, and then spray some botanical odor on yourself, stuff you can spend a lot of money on, ten dollars an ounce, so you know this has to smell good. Why do you keep such a distance from your bodies' functions, cavities and smells that you've alienated yourselves from the natural world, of which you are an integral part? 你们坚信任何东西都必须是无菌的。任何气味都不能有！包括男人、女人身上所散发的那些好闻的自然的体香。你们就是要除去腋窝下散发的气味，除去皮肤里散发的气味。味道去掉后，你们还要在身上洒上某种植物香水。这东西造价昂贵，一盎司十美元，所以你们相信它的气味肯定好。你们为什么要刻意远离自己身体的功能、体腔和气味，把自己从原本所属的自然世界疏离出去呢？ 10 I think you are so afraid and intolerant of the world around you. You deplore the natural world; you don't want to see, feel, smell, or hear it. The feelings of rain and snow on your face, being numbed by an icy wind and warmed back up by a smoking fire, coming out of a hot sweat bath and plunging into a cold stream, these things are the spice of life, but you don't want them anymore. 我认为你们既十分害怕又不能容忍自己周围的世界。你们痛斥自然界，不愿看到、触到、闻到或听到关于它的任何点滴。雨或雪落在脸上的感觉，被刺骨的寒风冻僵后又在冒烟的火堆旁烤火暖和过来，洗一个热水澡后又跳入一条寒冷的小溪，所有这些都能给生活增添乐趣，但是你们却不再想要这些了。 11 You're cage dwellers, living in boxes which shut out the hot humidity of the summer and the chill of winter, living inside a body that no longer has a scent. You're hearing the noise from the hi-fi instead of listening to the sounds of nature. You're watching actors on TV having a make-believe experience when you no longer experience anything for yourself. That's your way. It's no good. 你们把自己困在牢笼中，生活在封闭的盒子里，隔绝了夏天的酷热与潮湿、冬天的寒冷与战栗，只活在一个不再有任何自然气息的躯壳里；你们听着音响中播放的噪音而不是自然的声音；你们看着电视上演员上演编造的经历，而自己却不去做任何亲身体验。这就是你们的方式。实在太糟糕了。 |
