自从我回到费城，天气极爽。这样美好的夏天一刻值千金，呆在屋子里是一种犯罪。所以，就像监狱里的犯人期待放风并向往自由一般，我不择手段地要出去。
我的老板有四个小孩，也是个很有趣的人，他自然知道暑假哪里有比较好玩的地方。某日大家一起吃左宗鸡中饭的时候，这自然就成了话题。他提到了Demolition Derby。听他的描述，这是一件超无厘头的事，正合我口味。回来一Google，不久以后在70 英里以外的Quarryville就有这样一场撞破车大赛，以庆祝美国的独立日。因为只能买当场票，老板还自告奋勇地打电话帮我们去问至少要提前多久到，才能确保有位子不至于白跑一场。
6月30日星期六下午4点多，韩国同事HA和我就上了路。打出来的Google Map一 路把我们带出了费城，来到了宾州的乡下。天很蓝，阳光很金色，路边的农田和山谷很碧绿，黑白相间的公奶牛和母奶牛们懒散地躺在树荫下打着哈欠小憩，或者三 五成群地聊天，说到激动之处，摇起小尾巴。这样的景象让我想到德彪西的《牧神的午后之序曲》。这支令人陶醉的管弦乐曲子根据象征主义诗人马拉美的同名诗而 作，在悠扬的笛声中，牧神做起了春梦。曲子神秘优美，可望不可及，半梦半醒地暧昧。Amish人住的房子外，高高的竹竿上晾着的布衣服迎风飘扬。我们在田间小路上蜿蜒前进，对面偶尔过来Amish人的马车，在我们放慢车速让他们的时候，里面的人向我们点头致意。
我们的目的地是Buck Motorsports Park，车就停在场外大片的草地上。场内人已经很不少， 绝大多数是附近农民，全家开着SUV就 来了。为了找个好的角度拍照，我们很有侵略性地见缝插针，在看台上找到位子坐下。在等比赛开始的当儿，看周围的人就已经很好玩了。很多人比较粗壮，光着膀 子纹着身。跟他们比，我只有手臂上的那个蜘蛛般的疤可以媲美。也有很多小孩子来看，看来大人不介意暴力成分。看客中居然也有一群Amish人，小男生金色的蘑菇头，脸晒得红红的，穿着松松的白衬衫和背带裤。小女生带着白色的帽子罩着长发，穿着简单而保守的长裙。---- 而我们是全场唯一的亚洲人，而且还很典型地拿着照相机。可能我们比Amish更新奇一点。
我们面前是一块长方形的泥地，水泥护栏上还有网兜着。7点钟，主持人让大家站起来，带头唱国歌。大家向有家人在战场上的人致敬，然后再为战争中伤亡的人默哀一分钟。在安静中，传来若干距离以外老墨哇啦哇啦的西班牙语，也难怪这会招致美国人反感。
终于，6辆废铜烂铁一般但又被漆得五颜六色的破车们在观众的掌声中、在我们的满心期待中，雄赳赳气昂昂地驶进场地，分别停在场地的两头，车屁股都朝着场中间。选手们很骄傲地从车里出来，站到车前盖或车顶上，挥舞着小国旗。
接着，选手各就各位，1-2-3开 始！他们加大油门倒车，往场中央冲去。砰砰砰，车屁股们撞在一起，立即变形。然后他们就自由地斗智斗勇去撞别的车。说是自由，可不是真的自由，因为他们要 受到破车性能的限制。不过，这些破车的性能是比想象的好很多，已经没有什么形状了，居然还可以这样横冲直撞。很快，场上一片混乱，撞的时候，泥土还飞溅到 我们身上。撞得起了火就开始烟雾弥漫，场内裁判员赶紧拿了灭火器去灭火。渐渐的，破车一辆接一辆地瘫痪，裁判冲过去把车上绑着的一个竖着的木棍打倒，以作 标识。撑到最后的那辆就是胜者。胜者好像还有拿到一个奖，似乎是个模拟小金人。
然 后拖拉机进场，把瘫痪的车拖走。下一轮撞车大赛再度开始。当场上只剩下两辆车，他们都聪明地只用自己的车屁股去撞别人，同时又躲来躲去，久战不见结果，观 众就起哄。有的选手比较野蛮，故意去撞人家司机那一侧的车门，遭到场内裁判的警告。有的车比较不幸，比赛一开始居然就开不起来了，被对面冲过来积聚了很多 冲量的对手撞个正着，堵在角落。顿时，该车的长度就缩掉了三分之一。
中场休息后，天色渐暗，探照灯下，骁勇的选手们再接再厉。最后一场小车撞的场面最火爆，燃烧比较严重，弄得漫天白色烟雾，好像电影里一样，看得很爽。
这个比赛应该很危险，奇怪的是，他们唯一的防护措施就是带个头盔，还有若干选手是女的。爬出车来，看上去好像什么事也没有。不过，我好像是看见有一辆救护车开走。
我在写这个blog的时候，查了一下Wikipedia，对之有了进一步的了解。
Demolition Derby是很多乡村活动的主要内容之一，50年代发源于美国。怪不得有一辆破车身上漆着Redneck Racing (乡下人赛车），说得很贴切很生动。主持人则在开场时说，我们是全世界极少数会有这种活动的国家，应该感到很幸福。
比赛用的最多的是60到70年代造的美国车，比较大比较重比较耐撞。据说，1964到1966年Chrysler Imperial的耐撞性到了传奇性的程度，所以不准参加比赛。（我有意买一辆这车，谁有转让？）比赛用车一般从垃圾场等地买来，不到500刀。由于60-70年代的车供应渐渐减少，80年代比较小的车也多起来，车比较灵活，比赛更有看头。一般情况下，破车赛后修修补补还可以再比几场。比较另类的版本还有联合收割机、割草机和校车。（我想看我想看！）
为了降低比赛危险系数，参赛车辆全都没有玻璃，还事先拆掉了一些内部装饰等不必要的东西。车辆外部也有改装，比如把车门焊住，改变电池和油箱的位置，有助于提高撞车性能和耐撞性。比赛场地不大，而且多半是事先浇了水的泥地，这样可以降低车速，减低危险。
这样看来，虽然Demolition Derby这个概念非常无厘头，但还是事先还是有所准备的。
比赛结束后，天空中放起了烟火。我们走回停车场，准备开路回家。这时候大约晚上10点。月亮升起才不久，又大又圆，低低地挂在天上，居然是橘红色。我望着月亮发呆，不敢相信它是月亮。
Google Maps指示回去的local路和来的时候不太一样，我们反正老老实实照着开就行了。巨大的月亮照着田间小路，路上只有我们两个，好像很刺激。我希望看到一座小山，山顶上一只野狼望月嚎叫。不过, 也许我们就是月圆之夜的两个狼。
开了一阵子，就发现要找的路口没有了，里程数也不对。我们停到两条交叉小路口的大树下，研究地图，我则用两条路的路名在blackberry上查我们的位置，可惜都不知道自己在哪个县城。我们怀疑我们大概错过了路口，就又开回去，但还是没有。这就开始了当晚摸索。
我们看到来时经过的路，打算按原路返回，只不过我们的脑子都不是很好，倒推需要狠狠地动一下脑筋才行，动出来也不是很肯定。而且，我还在使劲地动脑筋的时候，HA早就把弯也转好了，我也就放弃了。很快，原路也找不到了。我们来来回回开了一阵，总算开到一个似曾相识的住宅区，路边乘凉有几个老墨，我们就问他们，就问如何到大一点的US-30E。可惜指示复杂了一点，我们开始还记得，后来又忘了。再后来，我们基本上靠直觉决定向左还是向右还是向前。来到一个加油站，我进去问店里的伙计，那个老印一脸傻笑地一问三不知，不要说不知道怎么到费城，加油站出去的东南西北也完全不知道。我就问他这个加油站的地址，在blackberry的上的Google maps上确定了新的回家路线。
可惜，开了一阵子又不对了。HA似乎是一旦看到希望，开始觉得有把握，就不管地图的指示了。而我，因为不够自信，觉得好像不对的时候，也没有及时说，只是看着blackberry，半怀疑半乐观地认为这大概也是一样的。我们其实错过一个路口，开到了US-30 E Business，进入了一个叫Coatsville的地方的downtown，而我们应该在US-30E开，从这个小镇的头顶上经过。我们再原路返回，看见路边人家院子里大牌子上很大的数字，想来这是门牌号，路名就是路名，而这个镇大概就是Coatesville，我们应该还在美国的宾州吧，再一次用blackberry确定了新的回家路线。
终于，这次不再有波折，凌晨一点回到了费城。去的时候，用了1.5小时，回来用了3小时。离开的时候，大橘子一样的红月亮低低地挂着，到达的时候，圆圆的大月亮洁白如玉，很高很高。它虽然颜色变了，却始终沉默地微笑着，看我们寻找回家的路。
回想这一日的经历，本来想再搬出弗洛伊德的死本能理论分析一下Demolition Derby，又觉得没有必要。还是找路比较有意思：
迷路的时候，我一点也不着急，因为我从来没有怀疑过我们会找不到回家的路。（领会精神就好了，我不确定这次多重否定有没有搞错），只是觉得一次又一次的弯路让我们这晚变得更加幽默――况且愈夜愈美丽。每到一个陌生的新地点，我只想找到当地的确切地址，用Blackberry上的Google Map重新计算新的路线，而不太想U -Turn回到原点重来。
昨天走在路上听了Yale 2007年研究生院毕业典礼一位教授Marie Boroff的发言之Podcast。（我毕业那年一定也有个智者给我们临别赠言的，可惜滂沱大雨中，我们什么都没听见没看见。）。这位研究诗歌的老教授引用了叶芝等人的诗句，运用了意像以及一堆生词，给毕业生建议：尽你所能，其它认命。在每日延续的生活中，有三大要素：Attention，Detachment 和Gaiety。集中精力做自己要做的事，同时也关心生活中的别人。要对功名利禄态度宁静淡泊，对生命的沉重(Gravity)和轻逸(Levity)有适当的平衡。世事变换太快，快得令人难以防备，但偏偏就要乐在此过程中，这就好像站在海水里，让浪头打过来没过头顶的时的那种特殊的快乐。经历生命中各种不爽的后，依然保持对生活的热情，这就是Gaiety。
叶芝说：Wisdom is a butterfly and not a gloomy bird of prey。智慧让人看清看轻很多事情，让人可以像蝴蝶一样轻轻松松地飞来飞去。又像一只飞上天的气球，飞得越高，看得越远，东西都变小了，变得无足轻重。
我虽然还会经常迷路，但我想路总是有的，即使我现在不晓得通向哪里。我也发现这个世界对我来说，比较有趣，变化多端，超过我的想象和控制；我不多想，也没什么害怕和担心。尽我所能，其它认命。
P.S. 下面就是这篇八九分钟的演讲：
Marie Boroff, the Sterling Professor Emerita of English:
If I intended to address you today about the long-term trajectories of your careers, I would say what I have said in the past to a number of your predecessors: “Do the work that only you can do, and leave the rest to Fate.” I still consider that good advice. But what I want to talk about today is not the long haul but the continuity of living that unfolds as, day by day and hour by hour, we create the future. It is an uphill slog that I privately call the glass mountain, and I want to commend to your attention three skills, or faculties, or tools, that are helpful as we try to meet our daily quota of ascent. Each has many names; the names I have chosen for this occasion are attention, detachment, and gaiety.
The faculty of attention might be visualized as a searchlight mounted on a swivel. Such a device is in the possession of every one of us. Since we own it, we should be able to control it completely, but in use it proves refractory: the light we train on the chosen object tends to grow feeble, like a flashlight battery wearing out, or, worse, it veers off in unanticipated directions. The poet William Butler Yeats wrote “Hands, do as you’re bid: Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed.” All of us struggle with that balloon as we do the kind of work we do, confronting the written page or, more laborious still, the blank one. But attention matters at least as much in the human interactions that take place away from the desk. The French mystic Simone Weil said that the most important thing of all is the ability simply to ask another person “What are you going through?” To ask, and mean the question fully, and give our full attention to the answer.
If attention bears down, detachment rises up. When we have it, as they say in space travel, we have liftoff. If attention is centripetal -- concentric in that it involves concentration -- detachment operates as a widening circle: the higher our point of vantage, the wider it becomes. From that rising vantage-point we see ourselves, first life size, then gradually growing smaller. With increasing detachment, the heaviness of gravity gives way to levity.
I am reminded that Yeats, the poet I quoted earlier, also said that “Wisdom is a butterfly and not a gloomy bird of prey.” That’s an insight I value greatly, yet I think that the gradient from information to knowledge to understanding to wisdom involves a changing balance between gravity and levity, such that gravity – the bearing down of attention -- prevails at first and levity – detachment from the work of paying attention and the achievement that results from it – becomes more and more important. Eventually we have to drag the balloon of the mind back out the shed and ride upward with it so that we see the world in all its vastness and ourselves in all our insignificance.
My definition of gaiety is perhaps a bit eccentric. I mean by it the capacity to take pleasure in the continuous inundation of the individual human consciousness by change in a world beyond our control -- something like the pleasure of standing in the ocean and laughing as the big waves break over our heads. Thinking about this kind of gaiety, I think not of Yeats but of Wallace Stevens, in particular his indispensable poem “The River of Rivers in Connecticut.” By the river of rivers, Stevens meant the incessant flow of consciousness – what he would have called imagined reality – that accompanies our lives. He begins his poem by invoking “a great river this side of Stygia,” – that is, distant from the realm of the dead adjacent to the river Styx. He goes on to say, “In that river, far this side of Stygia, The mere flowing of the water is a gayety, Flashing and flashing in the sun,” and since the river is local as well as universal, belonging to Connecticut as well as to the cosmos, he adds a touch or two of local color: “The steeple at Farmington Stands glistening and Haddam shines and sways.”
Stevens was in his seventies when he wrote “The River of Rivers in Connecticut.” It is obvious that this third faculty, or gift, that I am talking about has little or nothing to do with the unthinking high spirits of a puppy or a small child. It belongs rather to those old enough to have seen misfortune and endured affliction and yet retained their zest for life. I think of the gaiety of Mozart, writing music for the comically amorous duet of Papageno and Papagena, in The Magic Flute, only months before his death. Or we might contemplate the gaiety of the great Japanese master of painting and drawing, Hokusai, who at seventy-five, having produced literally thousands of sketches, wrote that he had finally “learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plans, trees, birds, fishes, and insects” (quoted in Michener, p. 20), and that he hoped that by the time he became a hundred and ten everything he drew, “be it a dot or a line,” would be alive. He signed this statement “Old Man Mad about Painting.”
Or, lest we become awestruck and stiffen into a solemnity inappropriate to this occasion, let me quote a bit of gaiety from the later poetry of Robert Frost – who knew, if any poet ever did, how to season gravity with levity: “It is nothing to me who runs the Dive. Let’s have a look at another five.”
Gravity, levity, gaiety. I hope the years to come will see you working attentively when you need to, remembering to pay attention to the other people in your lives, viewing your own accomplishments and honors with detachment, combining gravity with levity in due proportions, and contending successfully, at least part of the time, against a world that will do its best to squeeze the gaiety out of you. And, if I may repeat the advice I referred to when I began, I urge you to do the work that only you can do, and leave the rest to fate.
