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琼·狄迪恩（Joan Didion，1934—），美国女作家，个性独立，在美国当代文学中地位显赫，以小说、杂文及剧本写作见长，杂文与小说多次获奖，由其担任编剧的电影还获得了戛纳电影奖、奥斯卡奖、金球奖和格莱美奖等奖项。
狄迪恩一直过着令人羡慕的生活：事业有成、家庭美满，幸福得几乎忘记了人生还有阴阳相隔、生离死别。2003年，上天开玩笑似地一下子将种种不幸降临到她头上——女儿突然患病昏迷，而丈夫也毫无预兆地离世。双重打击之下，狄迪恩差点精神崩溃，但她却没有号啕大哭，也没有失魂落魄，而是平静地把极度的悲痛压在心底。几个星期，乃至几个月间，她哀悼，她思索，心中原有的关于死亡、疾病、运气、婚姻和悲伤的理解统统动摇。在陷入长达一年多的哀恸与奇想后，她拿起笔写出此书，把与丈夫四十年共同生活的片断回忆，以及许多关于生命的困惑与思考如镜头般地记录了下来。
回忆，是因为延绵不尽的思念；叨念，是因为一颗因挚爱而破碎的心。
本书获2005年美国国家图书奖。
Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.
Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file （“Notes on changes.doc”） reads “May 20， 2004， 11：11 p.m.，” but that would have been a case of my opening the file and 1）reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file in May. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words， in January 2004， a day or two or three after the fact.
For a long time I wrote nothing else.
Life changes in the instant.
The ordinary instant.
At some point， in the interest of remembering what seemed most striking about what had happened， I considered adding those words， “the ordinary instant.”I saw immediately that there would be no need to add the word “ordinary，” because there would be no forgetting it： the word never left my mind. It was， in fact， the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened， absorbing it， incorporating it， getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this： 2）confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred， the clear blue sky from which the plane fell， the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames， the swings where the children were playing as usual when the 3）rattlesnake struck from the ivy. “He was on his way home from work— happy， successful， healthy — and then， gone，” I read in the account of a 4）psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in 5）Honolulu on the morning of December 7， 1941； without exception， these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an “ordinary Sunday morning”it had been. “It was just an ordinary beautiful September day，” people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently 6）premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note：“Tuesday， September 11， 2001， dawned 7）temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.” “And then — gone.” In the midst of life we are in death， 8）Episcopalians say at the graveside. Later， I realized that I must have repeated the details of what happened to everyone who came to the house in those first weeks， all those friends and relatives who brought food and made drinks and laid out plates on the dining room table for however many people were around at lunch or dinner time， all those who picked up the plates and froze the leftovers and ran the dishwasher and filled our（I could not yet think my） otherwise empty house， even after I had gone into the bedroom （our bedroom， the one in which there still lay on a sofa a faded terrycloth XL robe bought in the 1970s at 9）Richard Carroll in Beverly Hills）and shut the door. Those moments when I was abruptly overtaken by exhaustion， are what I remember most clearly about the first days and weeks. I have no memory of telling anyone the details， but I must have done so， because everyone seemed to know them. At one point I considered the possibility that they had picked up the details of the story from one another， but immediately rejected it： the story they had was in each instance too accurate to have been passed from hand to hand. It had come from me.
Another reason I knew that the story had come from me was that no version I heard included the details I could not yet face， for example the blood on the living room floor that stayed there until Jose came in the next morning and cleaned it up.
Jose. Who was part of our household. Who was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas later that day， December 31， but never went. Jose was crying that morning as he cleaned up the blood. When I first told him what had happened he had not understood. Clearly I was not the ideal teller of this story， something about my version had been at once too 10）offhand and too 11）elliptical， something in my tone had failed to convey the central fact in the situation （I would encounter the same failure later when I had to tell Quintana）， but by the time Jose saw the blood he understood.
I had picked up the abandoned 12）syringes and 13）ECG 14）electrodes before he came in that morning， but I could not face the blood.
In outline.
It is now， as I begin to write this， the afternoon of October 4， 2004.
Nine months and five days ago， at 15）approximately nine o’clock on the evening of December 30， 2003， my husband， John Gregory Dunne， appeared to （or did） experience， at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York， a sudden massive 16）coronary event that caused his death. Our only child， Quintana， had been for the previous five nights unconscious in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center’s Singer Division， at that time a hospital on East End Avenue （it closed in August 2004） more commonly known as “Beth Israel North” or “the old Doctors’ Hospital，” where what had seemed a case of December flu， sufficiently severe enough to take her to an emergency room on Christmas morning had exploded into pneumonia and 17）septic shock. This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed， weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death， about illness， about probability and luck， about good fortune and bad， about marriage and children and memory， about grief， about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends， about the shallowness of 18）sanity， about life itself. I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer， even as a child， long before what I wrote began to be published， I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs， a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly 19）impenetrable polish. The way I write is who I am， or have become， yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room， equipped with an 20）Avid， a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time， show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now， let you pick the takes， the marginally different expressions， the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable， if only for myself.
生活变化得很快。
生活瞬间发生变化。
你坐下来吃晚饭，你所熟知的生活就结束了。
自怜的问题。
那些都是我在事情发生后写下的最初几句话。电脑上的文字文档（关于变化的笔记.doc）显示的修改日期是“2004年5月20日23∶11”，但这是因为我当时打开了这个文档，然后在关闭时条件反射按了保存。5月期间我没有修改过这个文档。2004年1月，我在事情发生一两天或者三天后写下了这些话。自那时起我就没有修改过这个文档。
有很长一段时间，我没有写下别的字句。
生活瞬间发生变化。
寻常的瞬间。
有时候，在回忆起事件中最吓人的一面时，我考虑过加上这几个字：“寻常的瞬间”。我立即明白没有必要加上“寻常”这个词，因为它不会被遗忘：这个词从没离开过我的脑子。事实上，正是因为事情发生前一切如常，这才令我无法真正相信已经发生的事实，无法接受它，无法适应它，无法忘却它。现在我意识到这种情况并非异常：当灾难突然降临，我们都会强调那些难以想象的事件所发生的环境是多么的寻常无奇，飞机坠落时碧空晴天，例行的跑腿工作因为车子着火而告终，孩子们和往常一样荡秋千时被藤蔓中窜出的响尾蛇咬伤。“他就在下班回家的路上——幸福、成功、健康——然后，走了。”这是我在一个精神病科护士写下的文字中读到的，她的丈夫死于一次交通事故。1966年，我有机会访问了很多在1941年12月7日早上生活在檀香山的人，这些人向我描述珍珠港事件时，总是毫无例外地这样开始：那是一个“寻常的星期天早晨”。“那天只是美丽九月中的一个普通日子，”当问及纽约那天早上，美洲航空公司11号班机和联合航空公司175号班机撞上世贸大楼时的情况，人们仍会这么说。甚至连“9·11”事件调查委员会的报告也以这种充满预兆却仍然震惊不已的语气开头：“2001年9月11日，星期二，美国东部早上气候温煦，天空几乎万里无云。”
“然后——走了。”圣公会教徒站在墓边说，我们尚在生命途中却要面对死亡。接着，我意识到我一定已经把事情的各种细节都向在最初几个星期前来探访的每个人一一复述过了。这些亲朋好友带来食物，调好饮品，在午餐或晚餐时分，在餐厅的桌子上为或多或少的客人摆好碗碟；他们收拾餐桌，把吃剩的东西放进冰箱，开动洗碗机；等我走进卧房（我们的卧房，里面的一张沙发上依然摆着一件褪色的加大号针织外套，那是上世纪70年代在比弗利山的理查德·卡罗尔男装店买来的），把门关上后，他们填满我们的（我依然不认为是“我的”）公寓，使其不再空荡荡。关于最初那几天、那几个星期，我记得最清楚的就是那些突然感到精疲力竭的时候。我不记得跟谁说起过细节，但我肯定说了，因为大家似乎都了解。有一次，我想过事情的细节可能是他们相互交流得知的，但立刻又否定了：他们每个人对事情的了解都太过精确，不可能是经过口口相传的。肯定是由我说出来的。 我知道这件事出自我之口，还有一个原因，那就是在我听过的版本中，没有任何我仍旧无法面对的细节，比如客厅地板上的血迹。血迹一直在那儿，直到第二天早上荷西过来清洗干净之后才消失。
荷西。他是我们家的一员。那天——12月31日，他本来是要在晚些时候飞往拉斯维加斯的，但没有去成。那天早晨，荷西清洗血迹时一直在哭。当我第一次告诉他事情的经过时，他并不明白。显然，这个故事并不适合由我来讲述；我的版本一下子说得太过语无伦次，也太过简略；我的语调有些地方无法传达整件事的关键部分（后来我告诉金塔娜时也碰到这种情况）；但当荷西看见血迹的时候，他就明白了。
那天早上，他进门之前，我已经把散落不用的注射器和心电图仪的电极板捡了起来，但我无法面对那滩血迹。
大抵如此。
现在，我开始写下这些的时间是：2004年10月4日的下午。
九个月又五天之前，也就是2003年12月30日晚上大约9点，我和丈夫约翰·格雷戈里·邓恩在纽约公寓的客厅中刚坐下来吃晚饭。他看上去（或者真的）经历了一次严重的心脏病突发，并因此而死亡。而此前五个晚上，我们的独生女金塔娜一直人事不省地躺在贝斯·以色列医疗中心辛格分院的重症监护病房；那里当时是东边大道的一所医院（已于2004年8月关闭），更常用的名称是“贝斯·以色列北院”或“老大夫医院”。她似乎感染了12月的流感，病情非常严重，在圣诞节早上被送进了急诊室，流感后来发展成肺炎和败血病性休克。
随后的那个时期——几个星期，接着是几个月，我原有的所有观念，那些关于死亡、关于疾病、关于概率和运气、关于幸运与霉运、关于婚姻、孩子和记忆、关于哀痛、关于人们如何应付和逃避死亡的方式、关于神志清晰的肤浅定义、关于生命本身的观念，统统都动摇了。现在我正尝试去理清那一段日子的意义。我毕生都在写作。身为作家，甚至早在我未发表作品，还是个小孩之前，我就养成了一种观念，认为意义本身就存在于字句和段落的韵律之间；我还炼成了一种技巧，能够将我的想法或信念隐藏在越来越隐晦的文笔之后。我写故我在，或者说，我写作的方式已经与我浑然一体；然而这一次，我宁愿我拥有的不是词语和它们的韵律，而是一间电影剪辑室，配备了一个叫做“爱维德”的数码编辑系统。通过它，我能够按一下按键，打乱时间的先后，将如今在我脑海涌现的所有记忆同时呈现给你们看，由你们来选取镜头，选取大同小异的表情，选取对相同台词的不同解读。这一次，为了找到意义，我需要的不只是词语。这一次，我需要将我所有的想法或信念坦诚相告，只要是为了我自己。
狄迪恩一直过着令人羡慕的生活：事业有成、家庭美满，幸福得几乎忘记了人生还有阴阳相隔、生离死别。2003年，上天开玩笑似地一下子将种种不幸降临到她头上——女儿突然患病昏迷，而丈夫也毫无预兆地离世。双重打击之下，狄迪恩差点精神崩溃，但她却没有号啕大哭，也没有失魂落魄，而是平静地把极度的悲痛压在心底。几个星期，乃至几个月间，她哀悼，她思索，心中原有的关于死亡、疾病、运气、婚姻和悲伤的理解统统动摇。在陷入长达一年多的哀恸与奇想后，她拿起笔写出此书，把与丈夫四十年共同生活的片断回忆，以及许多关于生命的困惑与思考如镜头般地记录了下来。
回忆，是因为延绵不尽的思念；叨念，是因为一颗因挚爱而破碎的心。
本书获2005年美国国家图书奖。
Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.
Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file （“Notes on changes.doc”） reads “May 20， 2004， 11：11 p.m.，” but that would have been a case of my opening the file and 1）reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file in May. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words， in January 2004， a day or two or three after the fact.
For a long time I wrote nothing else.
Life changes in the instant.
The ordinary instant.
At some point， in the interest of remembering what seemed most striking about what had happened， I considered adding those words， “the ordinary instant.”I saw immediately that there would be no need to add the word “ordinary，” because there would be no forgetting it： the word never left my mind. It was， in fact， the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened， absorbing it， incorporating it， getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this： 2）confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred， the clear blue sky from which the plane fell， the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames， the swings where the children were playing as usual when the 3）rattlesnake struck from the ivy. “He was on his way home from work— happy， successful， healthy — and then， gone，” I read in the account of a 4）psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in 5）Honolulu on the morning of December 7， 1941； without exception， these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an “ordinary Sunday morning”it had been. “It was just an ordinary beautiful September day，” people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently 6）premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note：“Tuesday， September 11， 2001， dawned 7）temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.” “And then — gone.” In the midst of life we are in death， 8）Episcopalians say at the graveside. Later， I realized that I must have repeated the details of what happened to everyone who came to the house in those first weeks， all those friends and relatives who brought food and made drinks and laid out plates on the dining room table for however many people were around at lunch or dinner time， all those who picked up the plates and froze the leftovers and ran the dishwasher and filled our（I could not yet think my） otherwise empty house， even after I had gone into the bedroom （our bedroom， the one in which there still lay on a sofa a faded terrycloth XL robe bought in the 1970s at 9）Richard Carroll in Beverly Hills）and shut the door. Those moments when I was abruptly overtaken by exhaustion， are what I remember most clearly about the first days and weeks. I have no memory of telling anyone the details， but I must have done so， because everyone seemed to know them. At one point I considered the possibility that they had picked up the details of the story from one another， but immediately rejected it： the story they had was in each instance too accurate to have been passed from hand to hand. It had come from me.
Another reason I knew that the story had come from me was that no version I heard included the details I could not yet face， for example the blood on the living room floor that stayed there until Jose came in the next morning and cleaned it up.
Jose. Who was part of our household. Who was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas later that day， December 31， but never went. Jose was crying that morning as he cleaned up the blood. When I first told him what had happened he had not understood. Clearly I was not the ideal teller of this story， something about my version had been at once too 10）offhand and too 11）elliptical， something in my tone had failed to convey the central fact in the situation （I would encounter the same failure later when I had to tell Quintana）， but by the time Jose saw the blood he understood.
I had picked up the abandoned 12）syringes and 13）ECG 14）electrodes before he came in that morning， but I could not face the blood.
In outline.
It is now， as I begin to write this， the afternoon of October 4， 2004.
Nine months and five days ago， at 15）approximately nine o’clock on the evening of December 30， 2003， my husband， John Gregory Dunne， appeared to （or did） experience， at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York， a sudden massive 16）coronary event that caused his death. Our only child， Quintana， had been for the previous five nights unconscious in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center’s Singer Division， at that time a hospital on East End Avenue （it closed in August 2004） more commonly known as “Beth Israel North” or “the old Doctors’ Hospital，” where what had seemed a case of December flu， sufficiently severe enough to take her to an emergency room on Christmas morning had exploded into pneumonia and 17）septic shock. This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed， weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death， about illness， about probability and luck， about good fortune and bad， about marriage and children and memory， about grief， about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends， about the shallowness of 18）sanity， about life itself. I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer， even as a child， long before what I wrote began to be published， I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs， a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly 19）impenetrable polish. The way I write is who I am， or have become， yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room， equipped with an 20）Avid， a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time， show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now， let you pick the takes， the marginally different expressions， the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable， if only for myself.
生活变化得很快。
生活瞬间发生变化。
你坐下来吃晚饭，你所熟知的生活就结束了。
自怜的问题。
那些都是我在事情发生后写下的最初几句话。电脑上的文字文档（关于变化的笔记.doc）显示的修改日期是“2004年5月20日23∶11”，但这是因为我当时打开了这个文档，然后在关闭时条件反射按了保存。5月期间我没有修改过这个文档。2004年1月，我在事情发生一两天或者三天后写下了这些话。自那时起我就没有修改过这个文档。
有很长一段时间，我没有写下别的字句。
生活瞬间发生变化。
寻常的瞬间。
有时候，在回忆起事件中最吓人的一面时，我考虑过加上这几个字：“寻常的瞬间”。我立即明白没有必要加上“寻常”这个词，因为它不会被遗忘：这个词从没离开过我的脑子。事实上，正是因为事情发生前一切如常，这才令我无法真正相信已经发生的事实，无法接受它，无法适应它，无法忘却它。现在我意识到这种情况并非异常：当灾难突然降临，我们都会强调那些难以想象的事件所发生的环境是多么的寻常无奇，飞机坠落时碧空晴天，例行的跑腿工作因为车子着火而告终，孩子们和往常一样荡秋千时被藤蔓中窜出的响尾蛇咬伤。“他就在下班回家的路上——幸福、成功、健康——然后，走了。”这是我在一个精神病科护士写下的文字中读到的，她的丈夫死于一次交通事故。1966年，我有机会访问了很多在1941年12月7日早上生活在檀香山的人，这些人向我描述珍珠港事件时，总是毫无例外地这样开始：那是一个“寻常的星期天早晨”。“那天只是美丽九月中的一个普通日子，”当问及纽约那天早上，美洲航空公司11号班机和联合航空公司175号班机撞上世贸大楼时的情况，人们仍会这么说。甚至连“9·11”事件调查委员会的报告也以这种充满预兆却仍然震惊不已的语气开头：“2001年9月11日，星期二，美国东部早上气候温煦，天空几乎万里无云。”
“然后——走了。”圣公会教徒站在墓边说，我们尚在生命途中却要面对死亡。接着，我意识到我一定已经把事情的各种细节都向在最初几个星期前来探访的每个人一一复述过了。这些亲朋好友带来食物，调好饮品，在午餐或晚餐时分，在餐厅的桌子上为或多或少的客人摆好碗碟；他们收拾餐桌，把吃剩的东西放进冰箱，开动洗碗机；等我走进卧房（我们的卧房，里面的一张沙发上依然摆着一件褪色的加大号针织外套，那是上世纪70年代在比弗利山的理查德·卡罗尔男装店买来的），把门关上后，他们填满我们的（我依然不认为是“我的”）公寓，使其不再空荡荡。关于最初那几天、那几个星期，我记得最清楚的就是那些突然感到精疲力竭的时候。我不记得跟谁说起过细节，但我肯定说了，因为大家似乎都了解。有一次，我想过事情的细节可能是他们相互交流得知的，但立刻又否定了：他们每个人对事情的了解都太过精确，不可能是经过口口相传的。肯定是由我说出来的。 我知道这件事出自我之口，还有一个原因，那就是在我听过的版本中，没有任何我仍旧无法面对的细节，比如客厅地板上的血迹。血迹一直在那儿，直到第二天早上荷西过来清洗干净之后才消失。
荷西。他是我们家的一员。那天——12月31日，他本来是要在晚些时候飞往拉斯维加斯的，但没有去成。那天早晨，荷西清洗血迹时一直在哭。当我第一次告诉他事情的经过时，他并不明白。显然，这个故事并不适合由我来讲述；我的版本一下子说得太过语无伦次，也太过简略；我的语调有些地方无法传达整件事的关键部分（后来我告诉金塔娜时也碰到这种情况）；但当荷西看见血迹的时候，他就明白了。
那天早上，他进门之前，我已经把散落不用的注射器和心电图仪的电极板捡了起来，但我无法面对那滩血迹。
大抵如此。
现在，我开始写下这些的时间是：2004年10月4日的下午。
九个月又五天之前，也就是2003年12月30日晚上大约9点，我和丈夫约翰·格雷戈里·邓恩在纽约公寓的客厅中刚坐下来吃晚饭。他看上去（或者真的）经历了一次严重的心脏病突发，并因此而死亡。而此前五个晚上，我们的独生女金塔娜一直人事不省地躺在贝斯·以色列医疗中心辛格分院的重症监护病房；那里当时是东边大道的一所医院（已于2004年8月关闭），更常用的名称是“贝斯·以色列北院”或“老大夫医院”。她似乎感染了12月的流感，病情非常严重，在圣诞节早上被送进了急诊室，流感后来发展成肺炎和败血病性休克。
随后的那个时期——几个星期，接着是几个月，我原有的所有观念，那些关于死亡、关于疾病、关于概率和运气、关于幸运与霉运、关于婚姻、孩子和记忆、关于哀痛、关于人们如何应付和逃避死亡的方式、关于神志清晰的肤浅定义、关于生命本身的观念，统统都动摇了。现在我正尝试去理清那一段日子的意义。我毕生都在写作。身为作家，甚至早在我未发表作品，还是个小孩之前，我就养成了一种观念，认为意义本身就存在于字句和段落的韵律之间；我还炼成了一种技巧，能够将我的想法或信念隐藏在越来越隐晦的文笔之后。我写故我在，或者说，我写作的方式已经与我浑然一体；然而这一次，我宁愿我拥有的不是词语和它们的韵律，而是一间电影剪辑室，配备了一个叫做“爱维德”的数码编辑系统。通过它，我能够按一下按键，打乱时间的先后，将如今在我脑海涌现的所有记忆同时呈现给你们看，由你们来选取镜头，选取大同小异的表情，选取对相同台词的不同解读。这一次，为了找到意义，我需要的不只是词语。这一次，我需要将我所有的想法或信念坦诚相告，只要是为了我自己。