Unit 9 - Look For The Rusty Lining

"Every cloud has a silver lining," says the optimist. It follows naturally, then, that the pessimist must favor "looking for the rusty lining". Just as the optimist can always find reasons for hoping that bad situations can improve, so the best pessimist can always find that in every situation here is something you can worry about. In the essay, the author, a self-proclaimed pessimist, claims to be worried about being swallowed by things from outer space and about much else besides. He certainly seems to be what is known as "a born worrier", though how serious he is about it all you can judge for yourself.

LOOK FOR THE RUSTY LINING

Ralph Schoenstein

My grandfather's hobby was worrying, and although hobbies are not usually thought of as being inheritable, I am a talented worrier, too. My grandfather's glum genes, which skipped my merry father, have reflowered in me as a major, all-purpose anxiety. A few weeks ago, for example, I learned that collapsing stars called black holes may soon such up all the matter in the universe. Because I read this in Vogue, I hoped at first that the black holes were some kind of fad -- a celestial pop event like Kohoutek or UFOs -- but then I saw that the author of the article had been twice a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, and I knew that another crisis was at hand. Ominously, the Institute is just down the street from where I do my worrying.

The end of the universe should have been a splendid challenge for a gifted worrier like me, but mostly it upset me in a new and worrisome way, because it made me realize that I was spread too thin. When I found the black-hole story, I hadn't nearly come to the end of an earlier wonderful worry of mine about the polar ice cap melting and raising the level of the Atlantic Ocean enough to submerge the entire East Coast. I had been thinking of moving my family to Saskatchewan, but now that I was falling behind in my worrying, I had to worry if Saskatchewan might be tastier for a black hole than Princeton. On the other hand, Princeton was closer to those African killer bees that have been inexorably moving north from Brazil -- the ones that made me decide not to visit Central America last winter. The bees are getting very close to Central America, and Panama may be the only place where there is a chance to turn them back. Of course, even if it had only butterflies, Panama would still be a worrisome vacation spot for me, because it is said to be riddled with as much anti-American feeling as Boston.

In these terrible days, I often think of my grandfather, who was a nervous wreck in a simpler and happier time. His worries were transient and nicely manageable: When would Mel Ott start hitting again? When would Eleanor Roosevelt collapse from too much traveling around? When would the Third Avenue "L" rust away? I miss him, but he is lucky not to be alive and worrying today. I don't think he could have handled all the terrors that keep testing my sanity; he might even have surrendered and become an optimist, thus forfeiting the hobby he loved.

He was my inspiration when I was a boy -- a worrier to look up to. He used to visit me in my room, where he would examine my homework and then shake his head and say, "You'll never get through medical school with spelling like this."

"But these are brand-new words," I would tell him in a worried way. "Spelling is harder this year than it was in the second grade."

He would sigh and say, "I don't know. I'm not even sure you should be a doctor at all. I just read that they have the highest rate for dropping dead."

My grandfather's quaint worries about me and Mel Ott and Eleanor Roosevelt are enough to make a contemporary worrier weep with envy. I wonder what he would have done if he had read a recent prediction by Gunnar Myrdal that the American economy could utterly collapse within five years -- just before the Eastern tidal wave but shortly after the arrival of the bees. Probably he would have adopted something like my own advanced worrying posture and learned to make room for each new worry by letting it trump one of the old ones. For example, when I read about the inundation of the East I forgot about my overdue Bloomingdale's bill; when I read Gunnar Myrdal's warning I decided to stop worrying about what would happen if Connecticut ever ran out of antiques. When I heard about the bees I eased off my worry about a root canal of mine and let the Panama Canal replace it on the Top Twenty.

What a list! Something old and something new, something cosmic yet something trivial too, for the creative worrier must forever blend the pedestrian with the immemorial. If the sun burns out, will the Mets be able to play their entire schedule at night? If cryogenically frozen human beings are ever revived, will they have to re-register to vote? And if the little toe disappears, will field goals play a smaller part in the National Football League?

Actually, I've never had a worry as worrisome as the universe-destroying black holes. I mean, the universe is where I do all my worrying, and if it suddenly disappears I may not be able to relocate. My only hope comes from a first principle of worry that I have learned in a lifetime of anxiety; i.e., some of the biggest problems are half of a self-cancelling pair. A nice example is that dreaded polar ice cap, which some scientists say isn't starting to melt at all but instead will shortly begin to enlarge rapidly, giving birth to a new ice age that soon will cover the entire United States. I worried about this ice layer form last February 9th until about Labor Day, by which time my worry about the price of bottom round had reduced it to the size of a rink. Lately, however, I have turned my mind back to the ice again, and I have been worrying about the fact that you cannot have ice that is growing and melting at the same time. One of these terrors is a dud, and the job of the dedicated worrier is to find out which one it is.

Applying this principle to the black holes, I wonder if there may not be some white holes in space as well -- pretty, glowing things that won't digest a universe but may prefer to spit it out again. All I need is a new flash from the Institute about one of these, and then perhaps I will be able to start worrying about chinch bugs and the male menopause and all the other gentle terrors my grandfather could endorse.

Is that the right way to spell "chinch bugs"?

参考译文——寻找阴暗面

“黑暗中总有一线光明”，乐观者说。那么悲观者当然一定会喜欢“寻找阴暗面”。正如乐观者总能找到希望糟糕局面会好转的理由一样，最了不起的悲观者总会发现在每种境况中总有一些可以担忧的事儿。在这篇文章中，自命悲观者的作者声称担心自己会被来自外层空间的东西吞没，此外还为许多别的事儿犯愁。他无疑像是个所谓的“天生的发愁人”，但他所说的话在多大程度上是认真的呢，你就自己去估摸吧。

寻找阴暗面

拉尔夫·舍恩斯坦

我祖父的业余爱好是发愁。虽然人们通常并不认为业余爱好是可以遗传的，但我也是一个颇有才气的发愁人。我祖父的忧愁基因，跳过了我那乐天派的父亲，在我身上重新开花结果，我成为一个动辄犯愁、忧心忡忡的人。举例来说吧，几个星期前，我得知被称为黑洞的行将崩溃的恒星，可能不久将把宇宙的一切物质吸收殆尽。因为这个消息是我在《时装》半月刊上读到的，起先我希望黑洞是某种时髦玩意儿——就像时下天上常发生的科胡特克彗星或飞碟那样的事件——可是我又看到该文的作者曾两度在普林斯顿担任高级研究院的客座研究员，这一下我知道又一个危机即将来临。不祥的是，该研究院就坐落在离我发愁的地方不远的同一条街上。

宇宙的末日对我这样的天才的忧愁者本该是一种极好的挑战，但它以一种新的令人焦虑的方式使我心烦意乱，因为它使我认识到，我的战线拉得太长了。在我看到黑洞文章的时候，我还没有来得及消除更早的一件颇为惊人的心事，这就是极地冰帽融化，引起大西洋水位升高而淹没整个东海岸的问题。我一直思量着把家搬到萨斯喀彻温去，但是既然我的发愁已跟不上形势的发展，我不得不担心萨斯喀彻温会不会比普林斯顿更适合黑洞的口味。可是另一方面，普林斯顿更加靠近那些非洲杀人毒蜂，这些毒蜂一直在无情地从巴西向北推进——就是这些毒蜂促使我决定去年冬天不去中美洲游览。毒蜂已经非常靠近中美洲，唯一的机会是在*将它们赶回去。当然，即使那里有的只是些蝴蝶，对我来说，*依然是一个令人发愁的休假地，因为据说*就像波士顿一样充满了反美情绪。

在这些可怕的日子里，我常常想起我的祖父，他身处一个更单纯更幸福的时代，竟也愁得不成样子。他的忧愁是短暂的，容易对付的：梅尔·奥特何时重新开始击球？埃莉诺·罗斯福什么时候会因旅行过多而垮下来？第三大街上的高架铁路什么时候会锈掉？我真想念他，不过他没有活在今天发愁是他的幸运。我认为他对付不了今天这一切不断考验着我的神智的种种恐怖。如果他活到今天，他甚至有可能缴械投降，变成一个乐天派，从而放弃他所珍视的业余爱好。

当我是一个孩童的时候，祖父是我的灵感之所在——他是一个令人尊敬的生性爱忧愁的人。他惯常到我的房间看我，检查我做的功课，然后摇摇头说，"像你这样的拼写，想读完医学院是绝对不成的。"

"不过这些都是些崭新的词儿"我总是不无忧愁地告诉他。"今年的拼写比二年级的时候难多了。"

他便叹口气说道，"我不清楚。我甚至说不准你该不该当医生。我刚刚读到医生的猝死率最高。"

我祖父对我、梅尔·奥特，以及埃莉诺·罗斯福的那些古怪的担忧，足以使当今的忧愁者羡慕得流下泪来。我不知道，如果他读到冈纳·默德尔新近关于美国经济在五年内——刚好在东部海啸之前、毒蜂到达后不久——完全崩溃的预言时怎么办。很可能他会采取与我本人的先进的发愁姿态相仿的办法，学会用新的忧愁覆盖掉旧的忧愁，从而为新的忧愁腾出位置。譬如，当我读到东海岸将被海水淹没的时候，我就忘了我拖欠的布卢明代尔百货公司的账单；当我读到冈纳·默德尔的警告时，我决定不再为康涅狄格州古董弄光了该怎么办而犯愁；当我听说毒蜂时，我慢慢放松了对我的牙髓管的忧愁，并让*运河取而代之，成为我二十大忧愁之一。

一份多么可观的忧愁单！有旧愁，也有新忧，有事关宇宙者，也有小到不足挂齿者，因为创造性的发愁人必须永远将普通的忧愁与古老的忧愁融为一体。如果太阳烧光了，梅茨棒球队还能在夜里打完全部赛程吗？如果低温冷冻的人体复活了，他们还得重新登记参加选举吗？如果小脚趾消失了，三分球在全国橄榄球联赛中所起的作用会不会减少？

事实上，我还从来没有遇上一件忧愁的事，像可能摧毁宇宙的黑洞这么令人忧心如焚。我的意思是说，宇宙是我发愁的地方，如果它突然消失了，我可能没法重新安家。我唯一的希望，就只有那我忧虑了一辈子而学得的关于发愁的第一准则了，这就是，一些最大的问题往往存在对立面，两者正好形成自相抵消的一对。那个令人生畏的地极冰帽就是一个绝好的例子。一些科学家说，它根本没有开始融化，相反，不久将开始迅速增大，从而造成一个新的冰河时期，且不久将覆盖整个美国。我从2月9日开始，就为这一冰层发愁，直到劳动节。那个时候，我对底部圆腿牛肉价格的担忧已将冰层减缩到只有一个溜冰场那么大。然而，近来我又为冰河期发起愁来，我愁的是，冰层不可能同时既在增大又在融化。两种可怖的情况之中，有一种必定是假的，一个献身忧愁的人的任务是找出来哪一种是假的。

把这一原理应用到黑洞上，我在想，在宇宙空间会不会也存在某种白洞——一些漂亮的发光的东西，它们不会吃掉宇宙，而是宁愿将宇宙吐将出来。我唯一需要的是，高级研究院能就某一白洞发条新的简短报道。然后，说不定我就可以开始为麦长蝽、男性更年期以及其它一切我祖父能够赞同的温和恐怖犯愁了。

"麦长蝽"是这么个写法吗？

参考资料：

1. 大学英语精读第六册 Unit 09_大学教材听力 - 可可英语

2. 大学英语精读(第三版) 第六册: Unit7A Look for the Rusty Lining(1)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语