一天晚上有人趁我喝了兩杯問道：「so… are you going to be a writer for the rest of life?」我無以應對，只告訴她那個故事，許多年前我第一次到倫敦遠遊，在青年旅館遇到一個叫「二三」的日本女子，旅館的其他人都知道我倆投緣，時常擠著笑…… 有天我們到Greenwich 觀光，走累了來到一個小茶室的後園裡喝茶，漫無邊際的用英語交談，她突然很認真的問到，「將來你想做甚麼？」我不知何故就答了「a writer」、並且好像忙補充道：「a small time writer」。
It is in a house that one is alone. Not outside it, but inside. Outside, in the garden, there are birds and cats. And also, once, a squirrel, and a ferret. One isn’t alone in a garden. But inside the house, one is alone that one can lose one’s bearings. Only now do i realise I’ve been here for ten years. Alone. To write books that have let me know, and other know, that I was the writer I am. How did that happen? And how can one express it? What I can say is that the kind of solitude found in Neauphle was created by me. For me. And that only in this house am I alone. To write. To write, not as I had up until then, but to write books still unknown to me and not yet decided on by me and not decided on by anyone.
(…) People are bad, good, clever, stupid, pleasant and unpleasant; but superfluous… no. That’s to say, if you want to understand me: the universe could get along without such people… of course; but uselessness is not their chief quality, not their distinctive characteristic, and when you talk about them the word “superfluous” is not the first one that springs to one’s tongue. But in my case, nothing else can be said about me: I’m superfluous and that’s all there is to it. Redundant - nothing else. Nature did not count on my appearance and therefore treated me like an unexpected and unbidden guest. One joker has said of me not inappropriately, keen on cards as he was, that I was the throwaway card in my mother’s hand. I talk about myself now calmly, with no bitterness… The game’s long over! During the course of my life I constantly found my place already occupied, perhaps because I looked for it in the wrong place. I was highly strung, pitifully shy, extremely irritable, like all ill people; in addition, perhaps through excessive self-regard or generally through the unsuccessful structure of my personality, there existed between my feelings and my thoughts — and the expression of these feelings and thoughts — some senseless, incomprehensible and impregnable obstacles. And when I tried to overcome this obstacle by force, to smash this barrier, my movements, my facial expression, my whole being acquired a look of intense effort: I not only looked, but I actually became unnatural and over-wrought: I felt this myself and hastened to return to what I was. Then a frightful panic would arise in me. I used to analyse myself down to the last thread, used to compare myself with others, recalled all the smallest glances, smiles and words of those to whom I’d tried to be frank, interpreted everything in a bad light, laughed viciously at my attempts “to be like the rest” — and suddenly, in the midst of my laughing, I’d give way to sadness, fall into ludicrous despondency and once again start the whole process all over again — in short, I went round and round like a squirrel on a wheel. Whole days went by in this tormenting, fruitless activity. Well, now just you tell me, to whom and for what is such a man necessary? Who knows and who will say why this happened to me, what was the cause of this nitpicking concern with myself?
I remember I was once travelling away from Moscow in a diligence. The road was good, but the driver hitched up a fifth horse to the four already in harness. This unfortunate fifth horse, completely useless, tied somehow to the shaft by a short, stout rope which mercilessly cut its haunch, rubbed its tail and forced it to run in the most unnatural fashion, lending its whole body the shape of a comma, always aroused in me profound pity. I remarked to the driver that on this occasion one could get by without a fifth horse… He said nothing, shook his head, lashed the horse ten times with his whip across its thin back and distended stomach — and muttered, not without a grin: “Look, it’s dragged itself along right enough! Devil knows why, eh?“
And I’ve dragged myself along just like that… though, thanks heavens, the post-station’s not far off now.
— Ivan Turgenev.
“The Diary of a Superfluous Man” First Love & Other Stories. Trans. Richard Freeborn. Oxford& NY: Oxford UP, 1989. pp33-34.
我冀願有人把自己被「確診」或「誤診」為抑鬱症、躁鬱症、焦慮症、驚恐症、精神分裂等等名稱的人，言說這個經驗，那無以名況的，到底是一種怎樣的真實、構成怎樣的一個生活。Those who find they’re touched by madness, those who find themselves ridiculous, sit down next to me - in love, in fear, in hate, in tears……
起初，妳以為即使難過，幾個月、一個學期、一兩年、三五年下來就會好了。時光和人生可以用努力追回—— 並且人兒總是在13、14 歲或二十歲左右，coming of age 的人生卡口給斷定為精神病患—— 然後是三年、五年、十年或更長的光景，停學、失業，無法投進打工職業，無法穩續的活出一個身份…… 跌宕不能尋回，只能從憶述中賦予某種意義，但那個「意義」連自己也說服不了自己。而且，同時在忘記，藥物令人潵渙、令人忘記。
你說啊，「電擊治療」，不是Jack Nicolson 那齣「飛越瘋人院」、Bjork 那齣「Dancer in the Dark」和Angelina Jolin 那齣「Girls Interrupted」描述的那個時代裡才有的野蠻麼？但它在我城最先進的研究醫院裡還在做著。「先進」，僅在於病人每次都要全身痲醉，插呼吸機，四肢和頭顱被品質優良的護墊繃帶縛著，免除了肉體痛苦，去「電腦」。一星期兩次，廿多次才算一個「療程」，所有讀數記錄在案。「文明」，更在於病人是自願簽字接受治療，知悉醫療程序可能引致的後果，與人無尤。法律以人身安全為由剝奪你的人身自由，法律同時視你能夠自决判斷。
