日落公園

1.
Ellen Brice說他拜訪他妹妹，Ellen抱著他兩個出生兩個月大的雙胞胎姪兒，柔軟的肌膚，臉頰和脖子觸碰他們圓嫩光滑的身子，他手心和手臂感受他們小小的身體，他說他想起這個語詞：the strangeness of being alive。

the strangeness of being alive，某程度來說這根本是今年大半日子的暗喻。我牽起媽媽的手，牽起小孩的手，摸著阿忍的頭，一天又一天朝著看起來什麼都沒有的爛泥盆澆水。

看起來什麼都沒有的爛泥盆在某個夏日冒出了短小的綠色的芽。

是伸出來讓你牽讓你觸碰的那些讓人覺得活。

the human body needs to be touched; the human body has skin


2.
"You listened in silence. No words were available to you anymore. All the years of not knowing, and now this, the sheer benality of it, an adolescent spat between stepbrothers, and all the damage that ensued from that push. So many things became clearer to you after the boy's confession. His savage withdrawal into himself, the escape from his own life, the punishing blue-collar jobs as a form if penance, more than a decade in hell because one moment of anger. Can he be forgiven? You couldn't get the word out of your mouth tonight, but at least you had the sense to take him in your arms and hold him. More to the point: is there anything that needs to be forgiven? Probably not. But still, he must be forgiven."

你說不出原諒，可是他得被原諒。