《模範青年》阿乙

模範青年

他的長相也會輕微灼傷我們。我們會從他細嫩的皮膚、倒三角的肩背想到我們很少涉及的牛肉和牛奶。他有一管高挺的鼻子，燈光在鼻尖和唇角一塊製造出美術般神秘的陰影，使他看起來像古希臘雕塑。他既不抽煙，也不喝酒，無論怎麼撩撥，都保持一種不得罪人的微笑。我們決定以後再不找他了。

閣樓

可是，孩兒一過哺乳期，朱丹又呆滯起來。不但呆滯，還加了驚恐。有時坐著坐著，突然中蠱，摀著胸大口喘氣，額頭出許多汗。“丹丹你怎麼了？“ 朱丹卻是站起，抓過包要走。“你去幹什麼？”母親問。

“回家。”

“這不是你家嗎？”

她猛然站住。

“你這是怎麼了？”

“我快要死了，”她焦躁的說，隨即又補充：“死不了的，你看，只是突然有點不舒服。”

這症狀每隔幾日來一次，有時一日來幾次。母親盤問不出來，失了眠，便幻聽到樓上有男性腳步聲，來回走幾趟消失了。

＊

又過去兩年，風平浪靜。母親吃了往日好用強的虧，在老年生活中落了單，被一個練功團隊召去，每日傍晚大力鼓掌。一日用力過猛，頓悟，這世道原來是吃人世道，從此便難清醒。她又偏偏是無神論出身，因此能在表象上自控，一時使外人不能察覺。只是那瘋癲像肥肉，時常勾引著她心甘情願地走，一不朝前走，便如萬蟻鑽心。

生火

一團火
屋子裡的火
髒了的衣服 舊了的書 寫滿的紙頭
燒了
燉著湯鍋
跳著的兔子 情人的手
碎的剁的香料
燒
鍋裡的 鍋外的
留下的 化灰的
不要丟錯。

《鳥看見我了》阿乙

意外殺人事件

他心裡有個陰險的秘密，就是像搬運工將最後幾件貨物亂拋亂丟，小學生將最後幾個生字亂寫亂畫，他要將剩下的生命在這裡胡亂消耗掉。他拉開閘，讓烈酒燃燒內臟，濕氣像毒針一樣鑽進脊椎，他發明了這個笨拙的自殺辦法，在四十二歲駝背，咳喘，白髮蒼蒼。

巴哈

女人跟蹤到第八次時，興趣索然。她沒有跟上去，她去農業銀行排隊，大約一小時後輪到她了，她把存摺塞進去，說：今天是十五號，我想知道工資打到帳裡沒有？儲蓄員把存摺放進印表機裡，出來後顯示巴禮柯本月的退休工資一分不少地打了進來。生活就這樣了，人會變得不可思議，錢不會。

《酒徒》劉以鬯

銅鑼灣的燈。紅的。綠的。於是想起一則虛構的故事：一個潦倒的文人忽然被一個有錢的姨太太愛上了。他似乎獲得了一切，很快樂。這快樂等於肥皂泡，因為他已失去一切。香港人的快樂都是紙紮的；但是大家都願意將紙紮的愛情當作真實。上帝住在什麼地方，那被人稱作地獄的所在何以會有這麼多的笑聲？

《On the Move》Oliver Sacks

My Mother, a surgeon and anatomist, while accepting that I was too clumsy to follow in her footsteps as a surgeon, expected me at least to excel in anatomy at Oxford.  We dissected bodies and attended lectures and, a couple of years later, had to sit for a final anatomy exam.  When the results were posted, I saw that I was ranked one from bottom in the class.  I dreaded my mother's reaction and decided that, in the circumstances, a few drinks were called for.  I made my way to a favorite pub, the White Horse in Broad Street, where I drank four or five pints of hard cider - stronger than most beer and cheaper too.

Rolling out of the While Horse, liquored up, I was seized by a mad and impudent idea.  I would try to compensate for my abysmal performance in the anatomy finals by having a go at a very prestigious university price - the Theodore Williams Scholarship in Human Anatomy.  The exam had already started, but I lurched in, drunkenly bold, sat down at a vacant desk, and looked at the exam paper.

There were seven questions to be answered; I pounced on one ("Does structural differentiation imply functional differentiation?") and wrote nonstop for two hours on the subject, bringing in whatever zoological and botanical knowledge I could muster to flesh out the discussion.  Then I left, an hour before the exam ended, ignoring the other six questions.

The results were in The Times that weekend; I, Oliver Wolf Sacks, had won the prize.  Everyone was dumbfounded.

-

"Travel now by all means - if you have the time.  But travel the right way, the way I travel.  I am always reading and thinking of the history and geography of a place.  I see its people in terms of these, placed in the social framework of time and space.  Take the prairies, for example; you are wasting your time visiting these unless you know the saga of the homesteaders, the influence of law and religion at different times, the economic problems, the difficulties of communication, and the effects of successive mineral finds."

-

Those early morning rides were about feeling intensely alive, feeling the air on one's face, the wind on one's body, in a way only given to motorcycle riders.  Those morning have an almost intolerable sweetness in memory, and nostalgic images of them are instantly provoked by the smell of eucalyptus.

-

Sunday Migrant

Another patient at the headache clinic was a young mathematician who also had Sunday migraines.  He would start to get nervous and irritable on Wednesday, and this would become worse by Thursday; by Friday, he could not work.  On Saturday he felt tormented, and on Sunday he would have a terrible migraine.  But then, towards the afternoon, the migraine would melt away.  Sometimes as a migraine disappears, the person may break out in a gentle sweat or pass pints of pale urine; it is almost as if there is a catharsis at both physiological and emotional levels.  As the migraine and the tension drained out of this man, he would feel himself refreshed and renewed, calm and creative, and on Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday he did highly original work in mathematics.  Then he would start getting irritable again.

When I gave this man medication and cured him of his migraines, I also cured him of his mathematics, disrupting this strange weekly cycle of illness and misery followed by a transcendent sort of health and creativity.

-

A large group of people have same disease, colour blind, sleeping syndrome.

-

Early in the summer of 1994, I was adopted by a stray cat.  I got back from the city one evening, and there she was, sitting sedately on my porch.  I went into the house and brought out a saucer of milk; she lapped thirstily.  Then she looked at me, a look that said, "Thanks, buddy, but I'm hungry, too."

... it was only when I had settled myself on the sofa by the window that the cat, lying parallel to me, now started to eat her supper as I ate mine.  So we ate together, in synchrony.  I found this ritual, which was to be repeated every evening, remarkable.  I think we both had a feeling of companionship - which one might expect with a dog but rarely with cat.  The cat liked to be with me; she would even, after a few days, walk down to the beach with me and sit next to me on a bench there.

-

However much the actors immerse themselves, identify, they are merely playing the part of a patient; Lillian has to be one for the rest of her life.  They can slip out of their roles, she cannot.  How does she feel about this? (How do I feel about Robin playing me? A temporary role for him, but lifelong for me.)

As Bob is wheeled i and takes up the frozen, dystonic posture of Leonard L., Lillian T., herself frozen, cocks and alert and critical eye.  How does Bob, acting frozen, feel about Lillian, scarcely a yard away, actually so?  And how does she, actually so, feel about him,, acting so?  She has just given me a wink, and a barely perceptible thumbs-up sign, meaning, "He's okay-he's got it! He really knows what it's like."

-

There were families he had treated for several generations, and he sometimes startled a young patient by saying, "Your great-grandfather had a very similar problem in 1919."  He knew the human, the inward side of his patients no less than their bodies and felt he could not treat one without the other.  (Indeed, it was often remarked that he knew the insides of his patients' refrigerators as well as the insides of their bodies.)

-

Mind map.  When brain damage can forget the link between things but the memory might still be there.  They might not answer the question but will make accurate answer when guess. (where was the president killed)

-

I had read proofs of Billy's book The Anatomist and admired it.  I wrote to him and suggested that we might meet if he found himself on the East Coast (which he did, on a visit to New York in September of 2008). I liked his thinking, which was both serious and playful, his sensitivity to the feelings of others, and his combination of forthrightness and delicacy.  It was a new experience for me to lie quietly in someone's arms and talk, or listen to music, or be silent, together.  We learned to cook and eat proper meals together; I had more or less lived on cereal up to this point, or sardines, which I would eat out of the tin, standing up, in thirty seconds.  We started to go out together - sometimes to concerts (which I favored), sometimes to art galleries (which he favored), and often to the New York Botanical Garden, which I had traipsed around, alone, for more than forty years.  And we started to travel together: to my city, London, where I introduced him to friends and family; to his city, San Francisco, where he has many friends; and to Iceland, for which we both have a passion.

We often swim together, at home or aboard.  We sometimes read our works in progress to each other, but mostly, like any other couple, we talk about what we are reading, we watch old movies on television, we watch the sunset together or share sandwich for lunch.  We have a tranquil, many-dimensional sharing of lives - a great an unexpected gift in my old age, after a lifetime of keeping at a distance.