Inglish_30/03/10

neck of the woods: 地带，地段附近的地区； A local neighbourhood or region
In my neck of the woods, by contrast, residents tend to come and go;

crop up: 突然出现，突然发生；
If something crops up, it appears or happens, usually unexpectedly.
Rational behavior is much more widespread than you would expect and crops up in the most unexpected place.

off-the-wall: 异乎寻常的；非凡的；
If you describe something as off-the-wall, you mean that it is unusual and rather strange but in an amusing or interesting way.
Readers have told me that they enjoy my off-the-wall book lists.

愚人的决策误区 —— 《别做正常的傻瓜》

传统经济学的理论大厦是建立在经济人是绝对理性自利的假设之上的，但生活中的很多现象却是它难以做出解释的。当心理学研究与经济学研究从平行到交叉，行为 经济学则为这些现象提供了令人信服的解释，经济学也因而纡尊降贵，从象牙塔尖走下来，走出来，走近我的身边，借我一双雾里可看花、水中能望月的慧眼，看懂 做为有限理性人曾经遭遇、正在遭遇、将会遭遇的很多决策误区以及背后的心理推手。

《别做正常的傻瓜》就是这一学科的流行读物之一，初时以 为是西文中译，几乎要弃之不读（这类书籍还是该读原汁原味的，否则翻译的谬误会带来理解的偏差），后来发现，著者奚恺元，原来是东人西渐，修学于常 青藤学府，又在著名的芝加哥经济学派的大本营安营扎寨，成就颇丰。既是原著，自然不愿擦肩。可惜它是我读过的类似书籍的后来者，少了初识时眼前一亮、茅塞 顿开的兴奋感，但也因此多了一点点感悟和体会，再结合不同学者的不同论述视角，看问题能更客观全面。

此书结构设计合理，每一章节开篇总是先扔出一些“考 题”，让你独立思考后，再详加解释正常人是怎么选的，以及为什么会这么选的理论依据和实验数据。当然，知道自己和正常人一样非理性，这样的 benchmark提供了一种情绪的缓冲罢，就象独乐乐不如众乐乐一样，独愚当然也不如众愚更有心理安慰。此外，它也为散落在我近期阅读的同类流行书籍中 的结论提供了一个阶段性总结，并且提供了中英术语的映射。

做愚人，很容易，而且不知不觉；承认自己是个愚人，并且明了自己愚在何处，则很 难。还好，认识到自己是愚蠢的，总算是迈向聪慧的第一步，又或者，经过自己的选择，择“愚”而固执，也未尝不可。

以下是笔记：

1. 心理帐户 （Psychological account)
心理帐户的存在，使人把实际上客观等价的支出或者收益在心理上划分到不同的帐户中 去。心理帐户分类很细，譬如，人们常根据收入的不同来源、不同时间、不同数量而分置于不同的心理帐户。
收入来源：人们将辛苦所得、意外之财归入不 同的心理帐户。如赌场赢利效应 (House Money Effect)，即对赌博或馈赠得来的钱往往敢于冒风险，消费起来也大手大脚。
收入数 量：对同一种来源的收入，人们对于一次性大笔收入更倾向于储蓄，对多次性的小笔收入则容易消费掉，即大钱小花，小钱大花。

2. 交易效用（transaction utility）：
所谓交易效用，是指商品的参考价格和实际价格之间差额的效用。
合算交易偏见：人们 在决定是否购买一样东西是，不仅仅衡量该产品的效用和价格，还受交易效用影响。
比例偏见：由价格差额与原售价的相对比例所引起的。比例偏见会引发 人们在小处斤斤计较，对大事却麻木不仁，更容易关注相对收益而忽视绝对收益。

3. 沉没成本误区（sunk cost fallacy)
沉 没成本（时间、金钱、精力）会左右人们决定是否去做一件事。
造成人们陷入沉没成本误区的原因：

• 不愿认输，不愿承认自己犯 错
• 人们常常根据不同的结果为同样的东西打上不同的标签（譬如同样的投入，成功了称为投资，中途放弃了则视为浪费）

4. 适应性偏见
人对外界环境刺激的反应随时间推移逐渐减弱，但人常常高估这些刺激对我们心情的影响，也会低估自己适应不利环境的能力。不过，人也有 三种难以适应的：

• 极端的东西
• 人际比较
• 变化：与物质的相比，精神方面的常以变化的形式出现， 所以也比较不容易被消磨掉。

5. 前景理论(prospect theory)的四大规律：

• 面对收 益，人们倾向于风险规避。
• 面对损失，人们倾向于风险喜好。
• 损失和获得，是相对于参照点而言的。
• 损 失厌恶：损失带来的痛苦远大于等值的收益所带来的兴奋，因而人更倾向于规避损失。它会引发几种心理表现
• 得失不对称性 (gain/loss asymmetry)
  
• 赋予效应 (endowment effect)
  
• 安于 现状 (status quo bias)
  
• 语义效应 (framing effect)
  

6. 被忽视的概率：

• 基本的概率集合论：两个集的交集不可能大于其中任何一个集。（Again, Linda's problem)
• 先 验概率(base rate)：群体中某类人数的客观分布。
• 赌徒谬误：先前的事件结果不会影响后续事件出现的概率
• 中 值回归：极端的事物随着时间的推移都有往中值回归的趋势。这一个概念要比中值发散更具备实用价值，因为中值回归告诉人们回归的方向，帮组人们对事物进行更 准确的预测，而中值发散却不能告诉我们发散的方向。
• 可获得性谬误：越明显、突出、容易搜寻、容易想象的事件，发生概率的估计总是偏大。

7. 单独评估与联合评估：
单独评估时往往被容易评价但不是特别重要的特征所影响。
人比较容易受到极端个别案例的影响，而忽视基于大样本的更 科学可靠的统计数据。

• 敌强我弱 - 争取单独评估
• 敌弱我强 - 争取联合评估
• 敌强我强 - 争取单独评估
• 敌弱我弱 - 争取联合评估
• 在难以评价的特征上敌弱我强，在易评价的特征上敌强我弱 - 争取联合评估
• 在难以评价的特征上敌强我弱，在易评价的特征上敌弱我强 - 争取单独评估。

8. 结果偏见：
好的领导不应以成败论英雄，而应该利用机制去监督和控制过程，并具备看得懂过程的能力和耐性。
后视偏见的三个坏处：

• 使 人们难以从经验中学习
• 难以用公平的眼光评价他人
• 会更多的以结果论英雄。

New Land of Rationality —— 《Gut Feelings》

《Gut Feelings》provides a new angle towards 2 concepts proved by Nobel laureat Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:

1. Human beings are fundamentally illogical;
2. Framing effect;

If you have ever read some popular psychological books, I'm quite sure you must have heard the famous Linda problem. From Amos and Daniel's perspective, it proves we human beings are easily committed logical fallacy, and in this case it is conjunction fallacy. However, Gerd Gigerenzer interprets it as intuitive understanding of language violating the conjunction rule. That is, People make intelligent unconscious inferences about what meanings of "probable" to make the description of Linda relevant, which indicate that natural language is more sophisticated than logic.

Further, Gerd gives some examples to show different meanings of "And" in different context:

• chronological relationship: Peggy and Paul married and Peggy became pregnant.
  
• casual relationship: Peggy became pregnant and Peggy and Paul married.
  
• logical "AND": Verona is in Italy and Valencia is in Spain.
  
• logical "OR": We invited friends and colleagues.
  

When I first encountered "Framing effect", I was amazed by human's irrationality, of course I was also convinced. It never occurs to me it can be challenged like that: "Framing can communicate information that is overlooked by mere logic. The framing of a request helps people extract surplus info concerning the dynamics or history of the situation and helps them to guess what it means. That doesn't necessarily mean that attending to framing is irrational."

Naturally, Gerd infers:"Logical norms are blind to content and culture, ignoring evolved capacities and environmental structure. Often what looks like a reasoning error from a purely logical perspective turns out to be a highly intelligence social judgment in the real world. Good intuitions go beyond the info given, and beyond logic." Agree or not, it's up to you, but you have to admit, such inferences are eye-opener.

Overall, this book is talking about unconscious intelligence, in other words, gut feeling, hunch, intuition, you name it. Gerd believes we human beings know more than we can tell, the real question we should ask is not if but when we can trust our guts. In order to explain how intuition works, he uses a analogy-the adaptive toolbox- to describe the mind:

• evolved capacities
• building blocks that make use of capacities
• rules of thumbs: composed of building blocks

He also provides a scheme:

• Gut feelings are what we experience. They appear quickly in consciousness, we do not fully understand why we have them, but we are prepared to act on them.
  
• Rules of thumb are responsible for producing gut feelings.
• Evolved capacities are the construction material for rules of thumb, including language, recognition memory, object tracking, imitation and emotions etc.
• Environmental structures are the key to how well or poorly a rule of thumb works. A gut feeling is not good or bad, rational or irrational per se. Its value is dependent on the context in which the rule of thumb is used.
  

Another interesting point he makes is the beneficial degree of ignorance or forgetting: The more information you have, the more time you need to reflect and decide, the less correct decision you might make. To some extent, it explains the odd situation that "more (time, thought, attention) is better" normally apply to inexperienced people, but not to experts with mastered skills. Just as Malcolm Gladwell pointed in his book: for experts, they can make a snap decision in a blink. Rules of thumb will help.

Well, welcome to new land of rationality!

The Flip Side of Same Coin —— 《The Paradox of Choice》

I used to be an extremist, I used not to ruminate the options I passed up, I used to reject to imagine how the alternative would have turned out and regret what I chose. But, something happened, and I was changed, and a real world paled in comparison to an imaginary world.

Since then, I have been plagued by grief. Since then, I have had to live with the sting what I could have...if only.... Since then, I have been spinning far down a vicious spiral - negative emotions trigger regrets and countfactual thinking, regrets and countfactual thinking trigger more negative emotions. Sometimes I feel like being stuck in the deep state of misery which couldn't have been worse any more. It turns out even worse later on. Sometimes I feel paralysed by the acute pain and emptiness, not because of too much choices but because of the consequences of past choices. Sometimes I even wonder whether I am able to arrest the strong downward pull and make a amendment. Silver lining is such a mess-the total failure of my life-trigger my curiosity about the mechanism of human's decision-making.

I had listened Schwartz's engaging TED talk before, I had searched his book for quite some time, finally I got it. Reading this book is to provide me an insightful study of choice, how we make decisions, what the flip sides of the coin of choice are, what's the price we must pay for abundant choices and what the tricks play in our satisfactions with the outcome of choices we made. It is persuasive and well-reasoned, it is thought-provoking. Inside it, there are some theories and research findings which I have also bumped into here and there. It is interesting to see how popular they are cross disciplines, and how ecomomics, behaviorism, psychology and sociology interconnect to each other.

Beginning with his shopping experience, Schwartz raised one question: "Choice is essential to our autonomy, freedom and well-being, but, is it true that the more choices people have, the better off they are?" His answer is not necessarily. Throughout this book, He convincingly lays out the following arguments:

1. We would be better off if we embraced certain voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against them.
2. We would be better off seeking what was “good enough” instead of seeking the best.
3. We would be better off if we lowered our expectations about the results of decisions.
4. We would be better off if the decisions we made were nonreversible.
5. We would be better off if we paid less attention to what others around us were doing.

We may all know well about the value of choice:

• Instrumental value: It enables people to get what they need and want in life.
• Expressive value: It enables us to tell the world who we are and what we care about.(Choices have expressive functions only to the extent that we can make them freely.)
• Psychological value: It enables people to be actively and effectively engaged in the world

However, we might not be aware that we are tyrannized by the bountiful choices in mordern society, that is, we are paying for the growth of options and opportunities at cost of:

• Time
• Effort
• Psychological consequences

So he coins the term "The tyranny of Choice". To make it understandable, he explains:

• More choices means more trade-offs;
• More choices means making mistakes more likely;
• More choices make the psychological consequences of mistakes more severe;
• More choices can entail more complications than it's worth.
• More choices can occupy our attention and fuel our anxieties.
• More choices subtly shift the responsibility from choices provider to decision makers. (This point is very insightful and I can't agree any more.)
  

He reasons that choices are govern by memories and expectations, unfortunately, people is lacking of self-knowledge, neither our predictions about how we feel after an experience nor our memories of how we did feel during the experience are very accurate reflections of how we actually do feel while the experience is occurring. This is affected by:

• Peak-End rule: what we remember about our past experiences is almost entirely determineded by two factors:
• how the experiences felt when they were at their peak (best or worst)
• how they felt when they ended.
• e.x. intense pain + mild pain <>
• Availability heuristic: assume that the more available some piece of imformation is to memory, the more frequently we must have encountered it in the past.The factors affect availability to memory:
• frequency
• salience/vividness

• Adaptation: we get used to things, and then we start to take them for granted.
• perceptual adaptation: decreased responsiveness to sights, sounds, odors, any given environmental event as the event persists.
• hedonic adaptation: decreased “hedonic” or pleasure extent to an experience as it is experienced more and more

Besides, people's decision-making is also influenced by:

• The effect of framing(Prospect theory):
• We prefer a small, sure gain to a larger uncertain one.
• We will risk a large loss to avoid a smaller one. (Loss aversion)
• Endowment Effect: Once something becomes part of your endowment, even after a very few minutes, giving it up will entail a loss.

Then Schwartz talks about why and how we suffered from the problem of regret:

• Two types of regret:
1. Anticipated regret will make decisions harder to make
2. postdecision regret will make them harder to enjoy
• Factors affect the regret:
• omission bias: a bias to downplay omissions (failures to act) when we evaluate the consequences of our decisions.
• in short run: we regret actions that don’t turn out well more than we regret failures to take actions that would have turned out well.
• in long run: The omission bias undergoes a reversal with respect to decisions made in the more distant past. That is, as time passes, what we’ve failed to do looms larger and larger than what we did.
• “Nearness” effect: How close we come to achieving our desired result.
• Responsibility: bad results make people regretful only if they bear responsibility.
• Counterfactual thinking: thinking about the world as it isn’t, but might be or might have been, which will provide a never ending supply of raw material for experiencing regret. It establishs a contrast between a person’s actual experience and an imagined alternative.
  
• Upward counterfactuals:
  
• imagined states that are better than what actually happened
• it may inspire us to do better next time, but the flipside of it will diminish a sense of achievement.
• people easily produce upward counterfactuals when negative emotions triggered.
  
• Downward counterfactuals:
  
• imagined states that are worse.
• will engender not only a sense of satisfaction, but a sense of gratitude that things didn’t turn out worse.
• people rarely produce downward counterfactuals unless asked specifically to do so.
  

He also identifies several other psychological processes that explain why added options do not make people better off: adaptation, missed opportunities, raised expectations, and comparison with others. In the end, he gives some recommendations, which I think a bit repetitive, but it can be viewed as a summary of his points.

Among all his arguments, what I mostly agree with him is: The choice of when to be a chooser may be the most important choice we have to make.

Inglish_28/02/10

gung ho : 卖力地，起劲地
If you say that someone is gung ho, you mean that they are very enthusiastic or eager to do something, for example to fight in a battle.
General George S. Patton was so concerned about his men being gung ho on the front lines that he admonished them that no soldier ever won a war by dying for his country;

do a double take: to look at someone or something and then look again because you suddenly recognize them or notice that something unusual is happening;
Seeing me, she did a double take, and I realized her eyes were focused on my clerical collar.

rabble rouser: 煽动暴民者，蛊惑人心的政客; A rabble-rouser is a clever speaker who can persuade a group of people to behave violently or aggressively, often for the speaker's own political advantage.
That is why I'm in the office of a rabble-rouser like you.

jilted lover: a jilted person has been suddenly left by someone they were having a romantic relationship with; 被人抛弃的情人In the 1990s, the hit series The Nanny, starring Fran Drescher as the jilted lover/cosmetic saleswoman who ends up caring for the children of a wealthy British Broadway producer, was wildly successful, ultimately playing on four continents.

well-heeled: rich
there is an intense desire on the part of well-heeled parents for nannies with a college degree.

Believing is Seeing

因为犯过错，因为还在错误中煎熬，因为将来不可避免得还会犯错，所以我会对人类行差踏错的根源以及犯错后又会如何应对比较好奇。

近来陆续读了两本与错误有关的书，一本是普利策新闻奖得主Joseph T. Hallinan的《Why We Make Mistakes》, 用丰富的事例举证了人类怎样思考，怎样看，怎样记忆，怎样忘怀，又是什么引诱我们的人生抉择变得非理性。另一本则是由两位社会心理学家Carol Travis 和 Elliot Aronson连袂写就的《Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me》。顾名思义，就可知是关于出错后人类如何自我欺骗、诿过卸责的、自我辩解的。对照着读，比较有趣。

串读后的笔记如下：

为何视而不见：The brain is designed with blind spots, optical & psychological.

1. 生理因素：
• 眼睛能够清晰看到的范围只有2度。
• 在正常的观察距离内，清晰的视觉区域，实际上不超过1/4的象限，眼睛每秒钟大约有三次的转动和停止。
2. 心理因素：
   
• 我们能够注意到的细节，在一定程度上取决于我们如何定义自己。
  
• 我们到底看到什么，还与我们想要寻找什么有关系。
• Confirmation bias: accompany with "naive realism"
  
• what you see confirms what you believe, what you believe shapes what you see.
  
3. 认知因素：
   
• 人类的认知是节约导向的：注意到一些事情的同时会忽略掉其他一些事情。
• 我们越擅长一件事情，就越倾向于在此事上走马观花。
  

为何转身就忘：

1. 在大脑中，意义才是王者，而细节并不重要。
2. 情感特性（如诚实、可靠）比面孔的外部特征更容易被人记住。

判断力的影响因素：

1. 第一印象：倾向于坚持自己最初的选择, 哪怕改变会更好。
   
2. 价格：价格越高，效果越强
3. 颜色：黑色常与力量、权势等同起来
4. 悔恨：人们对“作为”比“不作为”所致的错误，感觉要负有更大的责任。

偏见：

1. 记忆的偏颇：
• 人的记忆充满对事实的系统性修正。
• 人们总是反复不断地用一种更积极、自我吹捧的方式来重构有关自己过去的回忆。
• Memory can be our personal, live-in, self-justifying historian.
  
• Source confusion -- Confabulation;
• False memory: by distorting it, people can turn their present lives, no matter how bleak or mundane, into a dazzling victory over adversity.
2. Hindsight:
   
• “事后之明”的存在，很难接近客观公正，因为知道事情最终的结果会影响到我们如何看待或者回忆过去的方式。
3. 大脑偏爱简洁: 曲线变直线，不规则变规则，无意义变有意义。
   
4. 印象管理：
   
• 谈话不仅仅是为了传递和交换信息，有时也为了让别人形成对自己的一种印象。因此，准确性有时就会让位于“印象管理”的需求。
• Prejudice serve as self-justifying, allow people to justify and defend their most important social identities (race, religion, sexuality) while reduing the dissonance.
  
5. 利益冲突：
• 披露偏见并不能消除偏见.
• 披露利益冲突会赋予当事者一种“道德豁免权”，结果适得其反。

认知失调：The engine of self-justification

Self-justification can

• cover up our mistakes
• protect our desires to do thing just the way we want to
• minimize the hurts we inflict on those we love
• prevent us from left standing emotionally naked, unprotected, in a pool of regrets and losses.
• minimize the bad feelings we might have as doers of harm
• maximize any righteous feeling we might have as victims.

读的过程，我的记忆闪回到那年夏天：巨变之后的短信，竟然会被我错读一个词，由此带来了天壤之别的意义，幸亏在其后的交流中，误解被澄清了，否则，难以想象这样令我痛切的误读会怎样在我的心中发酵腐烂。

另外，我问自己，知道了"Believing is seeing，seeing is confirming what we believe"，我还会再重复以前那样会错情悟错意的错误吗？我还会坚持己见，视而不见、听而不闻其它的证据和事实，只看自己想看的，只寻找自己想要去证实的吗？我还会不断得兜圈子，耗得你精疲力尽吗？我还会那么相信当初的心有灵犀吗？

此外，我再问自己，我的记忆有没有做出有利于我的系统性修正甚至重构？行差踏错后，我的self-justification引擎有没有轰隆作响呢？我可曾勇于承认错误并咬牙背负那不可承受的重荷呢？

最后，我问自己，明知是错，为何我还是如此飞蛾扑火、义无反顾？一个人，可不可以”发乎情，止乎理“，将心中的感情与形诸于外的言行分隔开呢？

教寻梦也回廊

真想你。
想看看你，想和你说说话。
很倦。用尽了所有的力气来克制想念、维持理智，怕极了自己一失控就会不顾一切地拿起电话。f仿佛站在悬崖边上的人，意志在与恐惧竭力争夺对躯体的控制权。
真想你，可你总是鲜少入我梦来，老天，竟连这一点点安慰也吝啬着。

近来，倒是心想事成了数次，尽管不尽如人意。
第一次梦见你，你好整以暇，等我问你别后况景。我清楚地意识到自己是在梦中，一方面我兴奋慌乱，一方面我又紧张得告诫自己，不要醒来，不要醒来。越怕越醒，睁眼在午夜，块垒横梗胸中。
第二次梦见你，你寄来照片，算是诀别，照片中的你，半低着头，安静忧郁地看着我。有附件，解开是乱码。我没头苍蝇般乱窜瞎捣鼓，终于解开，是你的心情表格。数着日期，心里的涩从梦里一直泛溢到梦外。
第三次梦见你，我回到了暗怀心曲的年代，你眉飞色舞，滔滔不绝得讲述自己的故事，我听得愈发沉默黯然，怕你察觉，强以应答。

寻梦已难，魂更无所依矣。



鞭炮声声，不合时宜地想起纳兰的悼亡词：

青衫湿遍，凭伊慰我，忍便相忘。
半月前头扶病，剪刀声、犹在银釭。
忆生来、小胆怯空房。
到而今、独伴梨花影，冷冥冥、尽意凄凉。
愿指魂兮识路，教寻梦也回廊。
咫尺玉钩斜路，一般消受，蔓草残阳。
判把长眠滴醒，和清泪、搅入椒浆。
怕幽泉、还为我神伤。
道书生、薄命宜将息，再休耽、怨粉愁香。
料得重圆密誓，难禁寸裂柔肠。

所悼者谁？我更信是他的宫中表妹。

The Letter

...
I am tired, beloved,
of chafing my heart against the want of you;
of squeezing it into little ink drops,
and posting it.
And I scald alone, here,
under the fire of the great moon
...



Happy Valentine,my beloved!

芦纸残片 —— 《萨福：一个欧美文学传统的生成》

升级了我的借书证，可选择的书范围一下子宽广了许多，久觅 不得的，也陆续见识了庐山真面。田晓菲编译的这本书，如雷贯耳已久，却总是缘悭一见，如今得缘，等不及回家就在路上翻了起来。

坦白讲，第一遍读，有点迷失。萨福的断章残简，隔了几千年，又隔了中西文化的鸿沟，令我难以品尝她的好。反而引言部分的五篇文章要比正文精彩，更对我的胃口。

夜深，人静。第二遍读，慢慢得品咂出若有似无的幽香来，象极了冬夜花园里隐约飘香的梅，撩拨着灵魂深处的思念和渴求。



最爱的，还是萨福遗诗的Fragment 31，田晓菲的译文，很见功底：

在我看来，他的享受好似天神
无论他是何人，
坐在 你的对面，
听你娓娓而谈
你言语温柔，笑声甜蜜 　　

啊那是让我心飘摇不定
当我看到你，
哪怕只有 一刹那，
我已经 不能言语 　　

舌头断裂，血管里奔流着
细小的火焰
黑暗蒙住了我的双眼，
耳鼓狂敲 　　

冷汗涔涔而下 我颤栗，
脸色比春草惨绿 我虽生犹死，
至少在我看来——
死亡正在步步紧逼 　　

但我必须忍受
因为□□□
既然贫无所有□□□

要真正爱过，才能懂得，这些，竟是真的。面对爱人时，激情点燃的各种感官，被刻画得入木三分。为此，特地在网上找了英文译本比较着读：

The Face Behind The Mask

That man seems to me equal to the gods
Who sits opposite to thee,
And hears thy sweet speech
And watchs thy charming smile.

But Oh, It shakes the heart in my breast,
For when I look at thee,
My tongue ceases to utter;

My voice is broken,
A subtle fire glides through my veins,
My eyes grow dim,
And a rushing sound fills my ears.

A cold sweat pours down me,
And trembling seizes all
I am paler than grass and seem almost to be dying...

But anything is endurable,
Since...
Impoverished...

只可惜，无缘听见你会如何读它译它...

新年快乐，我爱！

不思量，自难忘 ——《巴别塔之犬》

故事立意新，讲起来却有欠水准，未能满足我的期望。

妻子坠树而亡，丈夫陷溺于悲伤中难以自拔，忽忽起意，试图逾越语言障碍，从她的爱犬处探寻真相。其间，追忆与追寻交替呈现，他在过去与现在中穿梭，终了却发现，这座未竟的巴别塔，不是建在他与狗之间，而是筑在他与妻之间。

一句“忆起我穿白纱的妻子”，初初唤起的，不是悲伤，而是黄碧云写在我记忆深处的一句“突然我记起她的脸，这样，我就老了”，若换做苏轼来吟，就是“十年生死两茫茫，不思量，自难忘”。化不开，遣不散的伤逝之情，都要比前者浓郁得多。

私心以为，书中最有力量的一段文字出现在最后：

“我记得我的妻子身穿白纱的样子。
我记得她在婚礼上走向我，双手抱着一束鲜红色的花。
我记得她生气不理我的时候，身体僵硬得如同一块石头。
我记得她睡觉时的呼吸声。
我记得双手抱住她的感觉。
我记得，我永远记得，她为我的生命带来了慰藉，带来了悲伤。
我记得两人共享的每一个阴暗时刻，至于那些光明的日子，我几乎无法直接正面凝视。
我努力记住她原本的样子，而不是那个为了安抚我的悲伤而被我建构出来的形象。 我发现，随着日子一天天过去，当宽恕的慰藉渐渐冲刷掉我心上的裂痕和焦躁后，我越来越有这样的体会——
记住她原本的样子，就是我能送给我们彼此的最佳礼物。”

不 可否认，人的记忆是有可塑性的。每一天，每一时，每一刻，我们一遍又一遍地描摹勾勒爱人的影像，咀嚼着曾经的甜蜜，又被曾经的悲伤冲刷，重复得太久，重复 太多遍， 她原本的样子也会渐渐模糊在时间的灰烬中，难以辨别真与假。也许，正如作者所言：记住她原本的样子，记住她的真实，记住她的好与不好，记住她带来的悲伤与 慰藉，而依旧心怀感激，庆幸曾经爱过，被爱过，就是我能送给彼此最好的礼物。

跌宕在无情的命运中，你是否也有不肯放开又不得不放开的手？你会以怎样的方式去忆念？你又会怎样走过与她离散后的荒漠？