Fall Risk - Believer Magazine

Ana Mendieta, CitiMD, D.W.

Ana Mendieta，CitiMD，D.W.

Winnicott, Nordic Literature, A Particularly Feminine Pathology, The Emergency Room at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, “The Cares of Winter,” Sunstroke, Hypotension, Santería, A Firework-Maker, The Smell of Piss, Yoga, Ski Gloves, Italian Workerism, Environmental Failure, What Happens Between the Head and the Heart

温尼科特，北欧文学，一种特别女性化的病理学，西奈山贝斯以色列的急诊室，“冬天的忧虑”，中暑，低血压，Santeria，烟花制造者，小便的气味，瑜伽，滑雪手套，意大利工人主义，环境失败，头与心之间发生的事情

In the cold early morning hours of the second day of 2018, I took myself to the doctor.

2018年第二天寒冷的清晨，我去看了医生。

I had not been able to sleep all night for coughing.

我因咳嗽整夜无法入睡。

I felt breathless, as though I couldn’t get enough air in.

我感到喘不过气来，好像无法吸入足够的空气。

I explained this to the doctor at CitiMD.

我向 CitiMD 的医生解释了这一点。

I had hoped he would give me something to help me breathe.

我原本希望他能给我一些东西来帮助我呼吸。

Instead, he asked if there had been anything else wrong lately.

相反，他询问最近是否有其他问题。

I explained that I had been tired, light-headed, and prone to feeling very cold.

我解释说我很累，头晕，而且容易感觉很冷。

I could never get warm.

我永远无法感到温暖。

I had been fainting.

我已经晕倒了。

He stopped me at “fainting.” How many times had I fainted?

他以“晕倒”来阻止我。我晕倒过多少次？

The answer was, perhaps five times, in a six-week period.

答案是，在六周内可能有五次。

The doctor looked at me like I was mad.

医生看着我，好像我生气了。

“It didn’t occur to you to come to a doctor when you fainted the first time?”

“你第一次晕倒的时候没有想到要去看医生吗？”

“There’s no reason why a young lady such as yourself should be fainting and feeling dizzy all the time,” he said.

“像你这样的年轻女士没有理由一直晕倒和感到头晕，”他说。

Then the tests commenced.

然后测试开始了。

I took off my cardigan and my shirt, and sensors were placed on my chest so that the nurse could perform an EKG.

我脱掉羊毛衫和衬衫，将传感器放在我的胸部，以便护士进行心电图检查。

When the doctor came back into the exam room he looked concerned.

当医生回到检查室时，他看上去很担心。

The EKG had detected some abnormalities.

心电图检查发现有些异常。

He told me to go to the ER immediately.

他告诉我立即去急诊室。

He asked whether he should order me an ambulance, or whether he could trust me to take myself there on my own.

他问他是否应该给我叫一辆救护车，或者他是否可以相信我可以自己送去那里。

I told him that he could, but that I didn’t understand what has going on.

我告诉他他可以，但我不明白发生了什么事。

I asked whether a hospital was really necessary.

我问是否真的有必要去医院。

“They can do blood work and X-rays more quickly there than I can here,” the doctor explained.

“他们在那里做血液检查和 X 光检查比我在这里更快，”医生解释道。

“Hopefully everything is fine.

“希望一切都好。

If they find something they’ll refer you to a cardiologist or a neurologist, to try and find out what’s happening between your head and your heart.” As he spoke he placed one hand to the side of his head, and one on his heart, as though to embody the metaphor of my own disequilibrium.

如果他们发现了什么，他们会把你转介给心脏病专家或神经科医生，试图找出你的头部和心脏之间发生了什么。”当他说话时，他将一只手放在头的一侧，另一只手放在他的心上，仿佛是为了体现我自己的不平衡的隐喻。

I spent the next eight hours in the Emergency Room of Mount Sinai Beth Israel on 3rd Avenue.

接下来的八个小时，我在第三大道西奈山贝斯以色列的急诊室里度过了。

I had been sent to that pale orange Emergency Room before, a year and a half earlier.

一年半前，我曾被送到那个淡橙色的急诊室。

On that occasion I had pulled a muscle in my back and suffered spasms so excruciating I couldn’t walk.

那一次，我背部肌肉拉伤，痉挛剧烈，无法行走。

My husband called 911.

我丈夫拨打了 911。

The paramedics carried me down the three floors of the apartment building strapped into a chair, still barefoot and wearing a nightie, and took me in an ambulance to the hospital so that I could be administered with a heavy dose of muscle relaxants and Percocet.

护理人员把我绑在椅子上，沿着公寓楼的三层楼抬下去，我仍然光着脚，穿着睡衣，然后用救护车把我送到医院，以便给我注射大剂量的肌肉松弛剂和帕可西特。

When the paramedics had wheeled me into the emergency room that last time, a nurse had attached a yellow bracelet to my wrist.

上次医护人员把我推进急诊室时，一名护士在我的手腕上戴了一个黄色手镯。

It read “Fall Risk.”

上面写着“跌倒风险”。

Now I was back in the Emergency Room at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, a “Fall Risk” again.

现在我回到了西奈山贝斯以色列的急诊室，再次面临“跌倒风险”。

Tests were performed.

进行了测试。

My blood was taken.

我的血被抽走了。

An X-ray was done.

做了 X 光检查。

I was given two further EKGs.

我又做了两次心电图。

Between tests I lay on a bed separated from the bed on the other side by a blue curtain.

在测试期间，我躺在一张床上，与另一侧的床用蓝色的窗帘隔开。

My husband brought me a muffin and a bottle of water.

我丈夫给我带来了一块松饼和一瓶水。

We sat there together reading our books and waiting for the diagnosis.

我们坐在一起看书，等待诊断结果。

I put a hand on my heart, every so often, to check that it was beating correctly.

我时常把手放在心脏上，检查它是否正常跳动。

It seemed okay to me.

我觉得还好。

And, in fact, it was.

事实上，确实如此。

When the doctor on call at last came to talk to me, she explained that the abnormalities in the electrical function of my heart were certainly present in the tests they had administered, but didn’t seem worrisome.

当值班医生最后来找我谈话时，她解释说，他们进行的检查中肯定存在我心脏电功能的异常，但似乎并不令人担忧。

“Abnormalities aren’t always abnormalities, that’s to say, they might be entirely normal for you,” she said.

“异常并不总是异常，也就是说，它们对你来说可能完全正常，”她说。

They couldn’t determine why I had been feeling faint or light-headed after all the tests, but she advised that I rest, drink water, try to extricate myself from any stressful situations which might have been causing me distress.

他们无法确定为什么我在所有检查后感到头晕或头晕，但她建议我休息，喝水，尝试摆脱任何可能给我带来痛苦的压力情况。

When I was given my discharge papers, I looked at the official diagnosis the hospital had given me.

当我拿到出院证明时，我查看了医院给我的官方诊断结果。

It read “Weakness, with no known cause.”

上面写着“无力，原因不明”。

The fainting had begun in November.

晕倒是从十一月开始的。

It happened for the first time on a warm afternoon in downtown Phoenix, in a bookstore, on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

这件事第一次发生在感恩节后的周五一个温暖的下午，在凤凰城市中心的一家书店里。

First, my peripheral vision closed in.

首先，我的余光闭合了。

Next, things went quiet, as though the volume knob had been turned down on the world.

接下来，一切变得安静，仿佛世界的音量旋钮被调低了。

Finally, a swooping sensation that started at the back of my skull and located itself just as squarely in my throat.

最后，一种猛扑的感觉从我的头骨后部开始，一直到我的喉咙。

The swooping produced a feeling of dispersal, and darkness.

俯冲产生了一种消散和黑暗的感觉。

It was very much as though somebody had walked through the rooms of my self, gradually turning out the lights.

就好像有人走过我自己的房间，逐渐关掉灯。

I fell, and came to after a few moments by the books on the bottom shelf.

我摔倒了，过了一会儿，我在最底层书架上的书旁醒了过来。

Sunstroke, I thought on the floor.

中暑了，我在地板上想。

My husband and I had been on a hike with his parents to the top of Piestewa Peak earlier that day.

那天早些时候，我和丈夫与他的父母一起徒步前往皮斯特瓦峰顶。

I probably should have worn a hat.

我可能应该戴一顶帽子。

I should have drunk more water.

我应该多喝点水。

My husband helped me up from the floor and out of the bookstore where the shimmery weirdness of the city was resolving into dusk as we walked down wide streets framed by mountains towards the car.

我丈夫把我从地板上扶起来，走出书店，当我们沿着群山环绕的宽阔街道朝汽车走去时，这座城市闪闪发光的怪异正在消散在黄昏中。

We drove back to his parents’ house down freeways bordered by saguaro, all of it taking on a gauzy quality in my newly-loose perception of the world.

我们开车沿着仙人掌接壤的高速公路回到他父母的家，在我刚刚松散的世界观中，所有的一切都呈现出一种薄纱般的质感。

Back at the house my father-in-law, a rheumatologist, brought out a blood pressure monitor from a cupboard and strapped it to my arm while I sat at the dining table.

回到家里，我的岳父，一位风湿病学家，从柜子里拿出一个血压计，当我坐在餐桌旁时，把它绑在我的手臂上。

My blood pressure is always low, but that afternoon I had hypotension.

我的血压一直很低，但那天下午我出现了低血压。

Probably sunstroke, nodded my father-in-law.

可能是中暑了，岳父点点头。

I wandered outside and fell asleep on garden furniture by the swimming pool.

我到外面闲逛，在游泳池边的花园家具上睡着了。

When I woke up the stars were out.

当我醒来时，星星已经出来了。

The night was chilly, but nothing so cold as the coldness that had descended on the east coast.

夜晚很冷，但没有什么比东海岸降临的寒气更冷了。

By the time the fainting started there were any number of worrying situations that might have been causing me distress, revolving in constellation around me.

当我开始晕倒时，有许多令人担忧的情况可能会引起我的痛苦，这些情况在我周围盘旋。

Winter had begun, which I’ve never, since moving from the snowless climate of Sydney, dealt with well.

冬天已经开始了，自从离开悉尼无雪的气候以来，我从来没有好好应对过冬天。

I had finished graduate school at Columbia six months earlier.

六个月前我完成了哥伦比亚大学的研究生学业。

I had completed a novel, and was waiting to find out what would become of it.

我已经完成了一本小说，正在等待了解它的结局。

My father and I had recently stopped speaking.

我和父亲最近不再说话了。

I often had nightmares in the middle of the night.

我经常在半夜做噩梦。

Most of the time, I was alone in our Brooklyn apartment, working while my husband went back to Phoenix for days or weeks at a time, to be with his mother who was dying from pancreatic cancer.

大多数时候，我独自一人在布鲁克林的公寓里工作，而我的丈夫则一次回到凤凰城几天或几周，陪伴他死于胰腺癌的母亲。

An old friend was diagnosed with leukemia, another stopped speaking to me, many others moved away.

一位老朋友被诊断出患有白血病，另一位不再和我说话，还有许多人搬走了。

Holiday parties that year felt quieter than normal, pointedly well-lit, the atmosphere one of rage and grief.

那一年的节日聚会感觉比平时安静，灯光明亮，气氛充满了愤怒和悲伤。

We were at an impasse, my friend Cam observed outside a bar one night.

一天晚上，我的朋友卡姆在一家酒吧外观察到，我们陷入了僵局。

He described this period as “a space of time lived without narrative genre.”

他将这一时期描述为“一段没有叙事类型的时期”。

What underlay everything else was the limbo created by the American immigration system.

其他一切的背后是美国移民制度造成的不稳定状态。

My husband and I were approaching the date set for our green card interview.

我和我丈夫的绿卡面试日期即将到来。

We had been waiting to be interviewed for over a year, since we had married at the beginning of 2017, a time during which I had a tenuous and undefined residency status.

自从我们在 2017 年初结婚以来，我们已经等待面试一年多了，在那段时间我的居住身份很脆弱且不确定。

I longed for stability, to sense that the ground was firm beneath my feet.

我渴望稳定，渴望感觉到脚下的土地是坚实的。

In this period of waiting I was beset by the anxiety that something would go wrong, some policy would change, some calamity befall us, and I wouldn’t be able to stay.

在等待的这段时间里，我很担心会出现问题，有些政策会改变，有些灾难会降临到我们身上，我就不能留下来了。

There were, in short, many worrying situations mingling together at once, but it did not occur to me that I was upset about any of them.

简而言之，许多令人担忧的情况同时交织在一起，但我没有想到我会对其中任何一个感到不安。

What I was, was dizzy.

我是什么，头晕了。

What I was, was tired.

我是什么，很累。

It took me some time to see that the issue might be the relationship between what was going on between my head and my heart.

我花了一些时间才意识到问题可能出在我的头脑和心灵之间的关系上。

During university I enrolled in a course called ‘Metaphor and Meaning.’ The class explored how the human brain understands metaphor by examining various theories of comprehension.

大学期间，我选修了一门名为“隐喻与意义”的课程。该课程通过研究各种理解理论来探讨人脑如何理解隐喻。

The theory I was most taken with was Conceptual Metaphor Theory.

我最感兴趣的理论是概念隐喻理论。

“Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature,” wrote George Lakoff and Mark Turner in Metaphors We Live By, the fundamental text which first outlined the theory in 1980.

乔治·莱考夫（George Lakoff）和马克·特纳（Mark Turner）在《我们赖以生存的隐喻》（Metaphors We Live By）一书中写道：“我们思考和行动所依据的普通概念系统本质上是隐喻性的。”该书是 1980 年首次概述这一理论的基础文本。

Conceptual metaphor theory works on the principal of “embodied cognition.” In other words, the metaphors we use most commonly are rooted in the ways our bodies experience the world.

概念隐喻理论的工作原理是“具身认知”。换句话说，我们最常用的隐喻植根于我们的身体体验世界的方式。

We use physiological terms to describe abstract concepts: argument as war, love as a journey.

我们用生理学术语来描述抽象概念：争论是战争，爱情是旅程。

Our bodies are the containers for our thoughts, the theory suggests, and our metaphors originate in our bodies.

该理论表明，我们的身体是我们思想的容器，我们的隐喻源于我们的身体。

Physicality precedes articulation.

身体先于表达。

Conceptual Metaphor Theory is a flawed concept—for one thing, it has difficulty accounting for the ways in which our cultures, not just our bodies, impact our understanding of metaphor.

概念隐喻理论是一个有缺陷的概念——一方面，它很难解释我们的文化（而不仅仅是我们的身体）如何影响我们对隐喻的理解。

But even though I could see the problems with the theory, I loved it.

但即使我看到了这个理论的问题，我还是喜欢它。

It suggested to me some essential truth about the way we use language, and how we create meaning.

它向我展示了一些关于我们使用语言的方式以及我们如何创造意义的基本真理。

I received a Distinction for the paper I wrote for that class, although my professor wrote me a note explaining that he thought I was letting my partiality for the theory cloud my capacity for reason.

我为那堂课写的论文获得了优异奖，尽管我的教授给我写了一张便条，解释说他认为我对理论的偏爱掩盖了我的理性能力。

I bring this up because it seemed to me then, and seems to me now, that my tendency to faint and fall that winter was a product of embodied cognition.

我之所以提出这个问题，是因为无论是在我当时还是现在看来，那年冬天我容易晕倒和摔倒的倾向都是具身认知的产物。

I was weak with no known cause.

我浑身无力，原因不明。

Something was going on between my head and my heart.

我的头脑和心之间正在发生一些事情。

Fainting is feminine, annoyingly so.

晕倒是女性的行为，令人烦恼。

Medically known as syncope, fainting is the body shutting down, the fight or flight response gone awry.

晕厥在医学上称为晕厥，是指身体停止运转，战斗或逃跑反应出现问题。

The triggers are frequently emotional, but they are sometimes due to pain, or prolonged standing, or crowded rooms.

触发因素通常是情绪性的，但有时是由于疼痛、长时间站立或拥挤的房间。

But in cultural representations of fainting, it’s generally emotional trouble that causes fainting, and it’s typically engaged in by women.

但在晕厥的文化表征中，通常是情绪问题导致晕厥，而且通常是女性造成的。

When women are depicted in the act of fainting, they are often represented as swooning, and swooning is always psychogenic.

当女性被描绘成昏厥的行为时，她们通常被描绘成昏厥，而昏厥总是心因性的。

Its gestural economy is one of weakness, surrender, an inability to cope.

它的姿态经济是一种软弱、投降、无力应对。

The most common image of fainting in art history is of Mary falling at the foot of the Cross.

艺术史上最常见的晕倒形象是玛丽倒在十字架下。

In paintings like Rembrandt’s ‘Descent from the Cross’ Mary’s posture and paleness symbolizes not only emotional agony, but echoes the suffering of Christ.

在伦勃朗的《十字架的后裔》等画作中，玛丽的姿势和苍白不仅象征着情感上的痛苦，而且呼应了基督的痛苦。

Fainting is hard to miss, the opposite of discrete, and reeks of melodrama.

晕倒是很难忽视的，它与离散相反，并且散发着情节剧的味道。

The great eighteenth century novel Clarissa is full of faints and swoons, a habit we are made to understand demonstrates the heroine’s sensitivity as she is drugged and raped, which leads, naturally, to her inevitable decline.

十八世纪伟大的小说《克拉丽莎》充满了昏厥和昏厥，这是我们必须理解的一种习惯，它展示了女主人公在被下药和强奸时的敏感，这自然导致了她不可避免的衰落。

The descriptions of women fainting and swooning in eighteenth century literature popularized the idea that women, who wore corsets and were discouraged from eating in public, were liable to fall when they were emotional.

十八世纪文学中对女性晕倒和晕倒的描述让人们普遍认为，穿着紧身胸衣、不鼓励在公共场合进食的女性在情绪激动时容易摔倒。

Indeed, the melodramas of early cinema and stage were full of women who swooned.

事实上，早期电影和舞台的情节剧中充满了令人着迷的女性。

Unlike fainting, swooning in literature and film is never just medical, it always signifies something about the character swooning.

与昏厥不同，文学和电影中的昏厥不仅仅是医学上的，它总是意味着角色昏厥的某些含义。

It’s often the return of something repressed, or the product of too much feeling.

这通常是某种被压抑的东西的回归，或者是太多感情的产物。

It both reinforces stereotypes around femininity, regardless of gender, and is used to suggest the failure of language to express the extremes of emotion.

它既强化了对女性气质的刻板印象，无论性别如何，也被用来暗示语言无法表达极端的情感。

When I was in London recently I visited Freud’s house in Hampstead.

最近我在伦敦时参观了弗洛伊德位于汉普斯特德的故居。

I had seen photographs of his office before, but I had not known about the lithograph hanging over infamous psychoanalytic couch.

我以前看过他办公室的照片，但我不知道臭名昭著的精神分析沙发上悬挂着石版画。

The lithograph in Freud’s London office is a reproduction of Andre Brouillet’s 1887 painting “A Clinical Lesson at the Salpetriere.” When I was in university, I printed out a copy of the same painting and taped it beside my desk.

弗洛伊德伦敦办公室的石版画是安德烈·布鲁耶 (Andre Brouillet) 1887 年画作《萨尔佩特里埃的临床课程》(A Clinical Lesson at the Salpetriere) 的复制品。当我上大学时，我打印了同一幅画的副本并将其贴在我的桌子旁边。

Brouillet’s painting depicts a demonstration of hypnosis performed by the renowned doctor Charcot.

布鲁耶的画作描绘了著名医生夏科的催眠演示。

The woman pictured in the painting was known as Blanche, and she was the frequent star patient at Charcot’s weekly demonstrations in Paris.

画中的女人名叫布兰奇，她是巴黎夏科每周示威活动中的常客。

In the painting, Blanche is partially undressed, her shoulders revealed.

画中，布兰奇半脱衣服，肩膀裸露。

She has fallen, and is being held by one of the doctors standing behind her.

她摔倒了，被站在她身后的一名医生扶着。

Her face is expressionless and lovely.

她的脸面无表情，可爱极了。

It looks like a lovers’ swoon, except it is not.

这看起来像是恋人的痴迷，但事实并非如此。

Blanche is a hysteric, and Charcot is demonstrating a hypnotically induced lethargy.

布兰奇患有歇斯底里症，而夏科则表现出催眠引起的昏睡。

Twenty-seven male observers look on.

二十七名男性观察员在一旁观看。

The painting was a great success when it was exhibited at the 1887 Paris Salon, and just like the twenty-seven men depicted in the painting, the audience could enjoy the spectacle of the semi-naked falling woman, and admire the power of medical science.

这幅画在1887年的巴黎沙龙展出时获得了巨大成功，就像画中描绘的二十七个男人一样，观众可以欣赏到半裸坠落的女人的奇观，并赞叹医学的力量。

Freud kept the lithograph of the painting hanging in his office, a reminder of his days as a doctor at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, the place where psychoanalysis had first begun to take form in his mind.

弗洛伊德将这幅画的石版画挂在他的办公室里，让人想起他在巴黎萨尔佩特里医院当医生的日子，那里是精神分析首次在他脑海中形成的地方。

Swooning and fainting were acts frequently performed by hysterics at the Salpetriere, and indeed Freud’s study of hysteria led to the popularization of the idea that unconscious conflict might be transformed into bodily complaint.

昏厥和昏厥是萨尔佩特里耶的歇斯底里症患者经常做出的行为，事实上，弗洛伊德对歇斯底里症的研究导致了无意识冲突可能转化为身体抱怨的想法的普及。

Exhibitions like those depicted in Brouillet’s painting were open to the public and occurred weekly.

布鲁耶画作中描绘的展览每周向公众开放。

Everybody saw them.

每个人都看到了他们。

Some of the hysterical patients were the greatest theatrical stars of their era.

一些歇斯底里症患者是他们那个时代最伟大的戏剧明星。

Doctors at the Salpetriere believed they had systematised the symptoms of the hysterical patient, so much so that they even published a kind of alphabet of gesture.

萨尔佩特里埃医院的医生相信他们已经系统化了这位歇斯底里患者的症状，以至于他们甚至出版了一种手势字母表。

Hysterical patients, nearly always women, could be read .

歇斯底里的病人，几乎都是女性，可以被阅读。

And they needed reading, not because they were incapable of communicating, but because their bodies communicated so much more.

他们需要阅读，不是因为他们无法沟通，而是因为他们的身体可以沟通更多的东西。

The women frequently engaged in fits of fainting during Charcot’s demonstrations.

在夏科的示威期间，这些妇女经常出现昏厥。

These hysterical faints found their way onto the stage.

这些歇斯底里的昏厥登上了舞台。

Sarah Bernhardt, the most widely respected actress of her era, attended the demonstrations at the Salpetriere.

莎拉·伯恩哈特 (Sarah Bernhardt) 是她那个时代最受尊敬的女演员，她参加了在萨尔佩特里埃 (Salpetriere) 举行的示威活动。

She learned to mimic the patients, and while she was preparing for her role in the Eugene Scribe play, Adrienne Lecouvreur, she spent time locked in one of the Salpetriere’s cells to prepare for the her role.

她学会了模仿病人，当她准备在尤金·抄写员的戏剧《艾德丽安·勒库弗尔》中扮演角色时，她花了一些时间锁在萨尔佩特里埃的一间牢房里，为她的角色做准备。

Sarah Bernhardt is frequently who we are thinking of when we imagine swooning.

当我们想象昏厥时，我们经常会想到莎拉·伯恩哈特。

Archived images of her performance catch her clutching her limbs, extending her arms, falling into chairs, onto the floor, or into the waiting arms of a strong man.

她的表演的存档图像显示她抓着四肢，伸出双臂，跌倒在椅子上，跌倒在地板上，或者跌倒在一个强壮的男人的怀抱中。

She is a woman who can barely keep herself upright, someone being pulled forever towards the ground.

她是一个几乎无法保持直立的女人，一个被永远拉向地面的女人。

Melodramas like Bernhardt’s became the stuff of parody.

像伯恩哈特这样的情节剧成了模仿的对象。

Now, an emotional faint is a melodramatic faint.

现在，情感上的晕倒是一种戏剧性的晕倒。

Moreover, it suggests a particularly feminine pathology.

此外，它还暗示了一种特别女性化的病理学。

Hysteria was done away with as a diagnostic condition early in the twentieth century, and its symptoms, which cannot be explained by a known neurological disease, were re-categorized under a new diagnosis, conversion disorder.

二十世纪初，歇斯底里症作为一种诊断疾病被废除，其症状无法用已知的神经系统疾病来解释，被重新归类为新的诊断，即转换障碍。

I do not mean to suggest that I was hysterical in the winter of 2017-18.

我并不是说我在 2017-18 年冬天歇斯底里。

I was not.

我不是。

I am a mostly rational woman who has never been seriously ill.

我是一个基本上理性的女人，从未生过重病。

I studied and wrote about hysteria in university, and I have always found hysteria useful as a prism through which to see people’s behavior, because it demonstrates if nothing else that the body sometimes articulates things that the mind cannot.

我在大学里研究并撰写了有关歇斯底里症的文章，我一直发现歇斯底里症作为观察人们行为的棱镜很有用，因为它至少证明了身体有时能够表达出心灵无法表达的东西。

During those moments after I found myself lying on the floor, the image that was always in my head was that of Blanche depicted in Brouillet’s painting.

在我发现自己躺在地板上的那一刻，我脑海中始终浮现出布鲁耶画中布兰奇的形象。

The fainting was amusing, I thought, because it suggested melodrama, something overly-emotional.

我想，这次晕倒很有趣，因为它暗示着一场情节剧，某种过于情绪化的东西。

But then, what, I would ask myself, am I embodying when I faint?

但接下来，我会问自己，当我晕倒时，我体现了什么？

Was I really ill?

我真的病了吗？

If you feel like you’re going to faint, you’re told to put your head between your knees.

如果你感觉自己要晕倒了，你会被告知将头放在膝盖之间。

This is to increase blood flow to your head.

这是为了增加流向头部的血液。

There is, in other words, a disconnect between your head and your heart, as the doctor on call at CitiMD pantomimed for me in the examination room.

换句话说，你的头脑和心脏之间存在脱节，正如 CitiMD 的值班医生在检查室里为我表演的哑剧一样。

After Thanksgiving the fainting took on a kind of regularity.

感恩节过后，晕厥就变得有规律了。

It always followed the same pattern.

它总是遵循相同的模式。

The prodrome consisted of light-headedness, graying vision, the sensation of distance, the volume turned down.

前驱症状包括头晕、视力变灰、距离感、音量调低。

Often, it could all be averted by sitting down, hanging onto things, and sometimes by lying prone on the floor.

通常，通过坐下、抓住东西，有时甚至俯卧在地板上，都可以避免这种情况。

If I didn’t avert it, the actual period of unconsciousness lasted for perhaps thirty seconds, maybe a minute.

如果我不回避的话，实际的昏迷时间可能会持续三十秒，也许一分钟。

I would wake up pale, cold, and exhausted.

我醒来时脸色苍白、寒冷、疲惫。

Christmas was approaching, and the bookstore in SoHo where I work was busier each day.

圣诞节临近，我工作的SoHo区书店一天比一天热闹。

Shelving came to present an occupational hazard.

货架成为一种职业危害。

I crouched low to shelve Rachel Cusk, then stood up high to shelve Dickens, and would find my vision beginning to blacken.

我蹲下来搁置雷切尔·卡斯克，然后站起来搁置狄更斯，然后会发现我的视力开始变暗。

One morning I fainted in the corner between British and Nordic literature while I was alphabetizing Samuel Beckett novels.

一天早上，当我按字母顺序排列塞缪尔·贝克特的小说时，我晕倒在英国和北欧文学之间的角落里。

I slumped against the wall, but nobody noticed, and after I came to and collected the books I’d spilled I told nobody.

我靠在墙上，但没有人注意到，当我醒来并收集我洒落的书后，我告诉了任何人。

Instead I make lifestyle changes.

相反，我改变生活方式。

I drank a lot of water.

我喝了很多水。

I cut down on alcohol.

我减少了饮酒量。

I took the iron supplements I’d meant to take since I stopped eating meat four years ago, and I cooked vats of beans and lentils in the hope that they would make me feel stronger.

我服用了自从四年前停止吃肉以来就打算服用的铁补充剂，我还煮了一大桶豆子和扁豆，希望它们能让我感觉更强壮。

A friend who is vegan recommended a liquid iron drink, which he said was cheaper in Canada.

一位素食主义者朋友推荐了一种液态铁饮料，他说这种饮料在加拿大更便宜。

I bought it, at American retail price.

我买的，是美国零售价。

I did everything I could think of to make myself feel less groundless and breakable, bar going to a doctor.

我做了我能想到的一切，让自己不再感到毫无根据和脆弱，除了去看医生。

On a Friday night shortly after I’d again become a Fall Risk, I finished work and went to a bar with some friends.

在我再次成为“跌倒风险”后不久的一个周五晚上，我完成了工作，和一些朋友去了一家酒吧。

When we left I was drunk, and decided to walk the long way to the L train.

当我们离开时，我喝醉了，决定步行很长的路去L火车。

I headed north up Lafayette Street, and along Astor Place.

我沿着拉斐特街向北行驶，沿着阿斯特广场行驶。

When you emerge from Astor Place onto Broadway and look across the street, the 35-story building in front of you, the tallest thing in sight, is 300 Mercer Street.

当您从阿斯特广场 (Astor Place) 出来进入百老汇并望向街对面时，您面前的 35 层建筑，即视线中最高的建筑，是默瑟街 300 号 (300 Mercer Street)。

On the street level a diner sits next to a liquor store, which sits next to a salad bar on the corner of Waverley Place.

在街道上，一家餐馆坐落在一家酒类商店旁边，而这家酒类商店位于韦弗利广场拐角处的一家沙拉吧旁边。

It was on the roof of the salad bar, which was once Delion’s Deli, that the body of the artist Ana Mendieta was found in the early hours of September 8, 1985.

1985 年 9 月 8 日凌晨，艺术家安娜·门迭塔 (Ana Mendieta) 的尸体在沙拉吧（曾经是 Delion’s Deli）的屋顶上被发现。

That night in January, I stood on the corner outside a Vitamin Shoppe and looked up.

一月份的那个晚上，我站在一家维生素专卖店外的街角上抬起头来。

I looked up for a long time, at the second highest story of the building, contemplating the sheer distance of the fall.

我在大楼第二高的楼层上看了很长一段时间，思考着坠落的距离。

And then I left.

然后我就离开了。

In the next few weeks, I found myself walking up Broadway when I’d finished work, back to where Waverley and Astor Place meet.

在接下来的几周里，当我完成工作时，我发现自己沿着百老汇步行，回到韦弗利和阿斯特广场的交汇处。

I continued circling back to the corner where Ana Mendieta died, because there was something hypnotizing about seeing the great height from which she’d fallen.

我继续绕回安娜·门迭塔（Ana Mendieta）死亡的角落，因为看到她从那么高的地方坠落，有一种令人着迷的感觉。

I suspected that my fascination with the fall was trying to instruct me in something I couldn’t yet name or comprehend.

我怀疑我对秋天的迷恋试图指导我一些我还无法命名或理解的事情。

Mendieta’s body had been found naked but for her underpants on the roof of the deli.

门迭塔的尸体在熟食店的屋顶上被发现，除了内裤外，全身赤裸。

A doorman of a nearby building reported that he had heard a woman’s voice shouting, “No, no, no,” and “don’t” before hearing the explosive sound of her body hitting the deli’s roof.

附近一栋大楼的门卫报告说，他听到一个女人的声音大喊“不，不，不”和“不要”，然后听到她的身体撞到熟食店屋顶的爆炸声。

Her husband, the sculptor Carl Andre, was charged with pushing her to her death from the window of his apartment on the second highest floor of 300 Mercer Street.

她的丈夫、雕塑家卡尔·安德烈 (Carl Andre) 被指控将她从位于默瑟街 300 号二楼的公寓窗户推死。

Four days after her death, Andre wrote a letter to Mendieta’s sister.

她去世四天后，安德烈给门迭塔的妹妹写了一封信。

It read, “Ana fell & I am falling still.”

上面写着：“安娜跌倒了，我还在跌倒。”

Mendieta was less than five feet tall.

门迭塔身高不到五英尺。

The windowsill in the bedroom came up to her chest.

卧室的窗台高到了她的胸口。

If she had accidentally fallen out the window of 300 Mercer Street, she’d have had to have fallen up three feet, and then thrust herself across the radiator cover, the windowsill and the ledge, before gravity took over.

如果她不小心从默瑟街 300 号的窗户掉下来，她就必须从三英尺高的地方掉下来，然后在重力接管之前将自己推到散热器盖、窗台和壁架上。

And if she jumped?

如果她跳下去呢？

People who knew of Mendieta’s fear of heights said she couldn’t possibly have jumped on purpose.

了解门迭塔恐高症的人表示，她不可能是故意跳下的。

When Andre was acquitted it was, the judge concluded, because ”the defendant’s guilt was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” The New York Times reported that, “Mr. Andre, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his spotless blue overalls, stood silently and received the verdict without any sign of emotion.” Whether she was pushed or jumped was never determined.

法官得出的结论是，当安德烈被无罪释放时，因为“被告的有罪没有得到毫无合理怀疑的证明”。 《纽约时报》报道称，“安德烈先生双手深深地插在一尘不染的蓝色工作服口袋里，静静地站着，没有任何感情的表现，接受了判决。”她是被推还是被跳，从来没有确定过。

The one solid fact about Mendieta’s death was the fall.

关于门迭塔之死，唯一一个确凿的事实就是摔倒。

Thirty-five stories in 4.21 seconds.

4.21 秒内讲完 35 个故事。

When Mendieta’s body was found on the roof of the building which is now a salad bar I have never had the stomach to enter, the impact of the fall had dented the roof.

当门迭塔的尸体在建筑物的屋顶上被发现时，我从来没有胃口进入过这座建筑物的屋顶，因为坠落的冲击力使屋顶凹陷了。

Later a physicist would calculate that at the moment of impact, her velocity was 120-miles-per-hour.

后来一位物理学家计算出，在撞击那一刻，她的速度是每小时 120 英里。

Nearly everything in her body was destroyed.

她身体里的一切几乎都被摧毁了。

Her heart was the only organ that remained structurally normal.

她的心脏是唯一结构保持正常的器官。

It weighed 250 grams.

它重250克。

The first image I saw of Ana Mendieta was a photograph still from a piece she made in Mexico, lying naked in a deep field of grass, with flowers seeming to grow straight out of her flesh.

我看到的第一张安娜·门迭塔的照片是她在墨西哥拍摄的一张静态照片，她赤身裸体地躺在一片深深的草地上，花朵似乎是直接从她的肉里长出来的。

The image was on the front cover of a monograph on display at the bookstore where I work.

该图像出现在我工作的书店展出的一本专着的封面上。

I sat the book aside for myself and bought it once I got paid.

我把这本书放在一边，等我付了钱就买了它。

I had not heard of Mendieta before, although I had heard of Carl Andre.

我以前没有听说过门迭塔，虽然我听说过卡尔·安德烈。

When we were first dating, my husband had been interested in conceptual art.

当我们第一次约会时，我丈夫对观念艺术很感兴趣。

We had, during the summer of 2014, taken the train to a gallery two hours north of the city where this kind of art is on display.

2014 年夏天，我们乘火车去了距离城市以北两小时路程的一家画廊，那里展出了此类艺术品。

Down in a basement, my husband had pointed to an installation piece and said, “Jesus Christ.

在地下室里，我丈夫指着一件装置作品说：“耶稣基督。

More Carl Andre.” He told me Andre had been charged with murdering his wife.

更多卡尔·安德烈。”他告诉我安德烈被指控谋杀他的妻子。

It had not occurred to me to ask who Andre’s wife was.

我没有想到要问安德烈的妻子是谁。

When Andre was on trial for the murder of Mendieta, his defense team cited the works that most fascinated me.

当安德烈因谋杀门迭塔而受审时，他的辩护团队引用了最令我着迷的作品。

When questioning witnesses, the defense team asked, among other things, whether they were familiar with Mendieta’s interest in Santería, the use of blood in her works, and whether they had seen Mendieta’s works which used her own body “impacting on the earth.” These included pieces in which she had had a firework-maker in Oaxaca make a firework piece in the shape of the outline of her body, and waited until night to set it alight.

在询问证人时，辩方询问的问题包括是否熟悉门迭塔对桑泰利亚的兴趣、她的作品中对血的使用，以及是否见过门迭塔用自己的身体“冲击地球”的作品。其中包括她让瓦哈卡州的一名烟花制作者按照她身体轮廓制作的烟花，并等到晚上才将其点燃。

It included works where she lay naked in the open tombs of ancient Zapotec sites.

其中包括她赤身裸体躺在古代萨波特克遗址露天坟墓中的作品。

In which she had covered her body with a white sheet, and had an ex-boyfriend pour pig’s blood over her shape until she was entirely soaked.

她用白床单盖住自己的身体，并让前男友将猪血倒在她的身上，直到她完全湿透。

The clear indication, they seemed to be suggesting, was that her death—a fall from a great height—was a work of art.

他们似乎在暗示，明确的迹象是她的死亡——从高处坠落——是一件艺术品。

In the months before I began to faint, I noticed that my mind was often reaching for metaphors of groundlessness to describe the turn of events in my life.

在我开始晕倒之前的几个月里，我注意到我的大脑经常会用一些毫无根据的隐喻来描述我生活中发生的事件。

I was reaching for Blanche, for Sarah Bernhardt, for Ana Mendieta.

我伸手去抓布兰奇、莎拉·伯恩哈特、安娜·门迭塔。

In texts and emails I spoke of needing to feel “grounded.” I started going to yoga in an effort to stop the dizziness.

在短信和电子邮件中，我谈到需要感到“脚踏实地”。我开始练习瑜伽，试图止住头晕。

At the end of classes when we lay on the floor, the instructor would advise us to press our bodies into the ground.

课程结束时，当我们躺在地板上时，老师会建议我们将身体压入地面。

“Impacting on the earth,” I would repeat to myself in my head.

“对地球的影响，”我会在脑海中对自己重复。

I had been reading Robert Katz’s now out-of-print book about Andre’s trial for Mendieta’s death.

我一直在读罗伯特·卡茨（Robert Katz）关于安德烈·门迭塔（Mendieta）死亡审判的书，该书现已绝版。

I commented to a friend that this five-minute period in yoga when I felt my body “impacting on the earth” was the entire reason I was going to yoga classes.

我向一位朋友评论说，在瑜伽的五分钟时间里，我感觉到我的身体“撞击地球”，这就是我去瑜伽课的全部原因。

I knew where the phrase came from.

我知道这句话是从哪里来的。

The artist and essayist Hito Steyerl writes that the experience of living in the world today “is distinguished by a prevailing condition of groundlessness.” In a 2011 essay for e-Flux entitled ‘In Free Fall,’ she argues that “we cannot assume any stable ground on which to base metaphysical claims or foundational political myths.

艺术家兼散文家 Hito Steyerl 写道，当今世界的生活体验“以普遍的无根据状态为特征”。在 2011 年 e-Flux 发表的一篇题为“自由落体”的文章中，她认为“我们不能假设任何稳定的基础来作为形而上学主张或基本政治神话的基础。

At best, we are faced with temporary, contingent, and partial attempts at grounding,” she writes, observing that “the consequence must be a permanent, or at least intermittent state of free fall for subjects and objects alike.” Steyerl’s interest in her essay is in the way that falling creates a shift in perspective.

充其量，我们面临着暂时的、偶然的和部分的接地尝试，”她写道，并观察到“结果必然是主体和客体都处于永久的，或者至少是间歇性的自由落体状态。”斯蒂耶尔对她的文章的兴趣在于跌倒会带来观点的转变。

She points to the stories that pilots sometimes tell, about having been in planes during free fall, when the sudden descent can create a blurring between the boundaries of self and plane.

她提到了飞行员有时会讲的故事，关于在飞机上自由落体时的故事，当突然下降时，自我和飞机的界限会变得模糊。

This kind of blurring of perspective produces what she calls “a new representational freedom.” To assume that we need to be grounded in the first place may very well be a kind of false cognition, the kind of conservative thinking favored by traditionalists.

这种视角的模糊产生了她所说的“新的表现自由”。认为我们首先需要脚踏实地，很可能是一种错误的认知，是传统主义者所偏爱的保守思维。

“Falling means ruin and demise as well as love and abandon, passion and surrender, decline and catastrophe,” she concludes.

“堕落意味着毁灭和死亡，也意味着爱和放弃、激情和投降、衰落和灾难，”她总结道。

“Falling…

“坠落……

takes place in an opening we could endure or enjoy, embrace or suffer, or simply accept as reality.”

发生在一个我们可以忍受或享受、拥抱或受苦、或干脆接受现实的开放中。”

Steyerl’s essay, published in 2011, contains all the optimism of the year that saw both the Arab Spring and the birth of Occupy.

斯特耶尔发表于 2011 年的文章包含了阿拉伯之春和占领运动诞生这一年的所有乐观情绪。

It was a year everything suddenly seemed like it was open to change, like the ground had fallen out but what was to come would be if not good, then at least interesting.

那一年，一切似乎都突然发生了变化，就像地面塌陷一样，但即将发生的事情即使不好，至少也会很有趣。

But at the end of 2017 the groundlessness Steyerl proposed as a new possibility for experiencing freedom seemed to me only awful and anxiety-inducing.

但在 2017 年底，Steyerl 提出的体验自由的新可能性毫无根据，在我看来，这只是可怕的和令人焦虑的。

I longed for the certainty of the ground now that the bottom had fallen out of things.

既然事情的底部已经塌陷，我就渴望地面的确定性。

Nothing in politics, nor the environment, nor in my social sphere, felt grounded any longer.

无论是政治、环境还是我的社交领域，一切都不再让人感到有根有据。

A feeling of falling seemed like a perfectly legitimate response to the world, as it was that winter when 2017 edged into 2018.

坠落的感觉似乎是对世界的一种完全合理的反应，因为那是 2017 年进入 2018 年的那个冬天。

I was so cold, during the winter when I was fainting, that I took to wearing ski gloves.

冬天我很冷，当我晕倒时，我开始戴上滑雪手套。

Even then, my finger tips would feel pinched and painful.

即使这样，我的指尖也会感到挤压和疼痛。

Red and freezing once I removed the gloves indoors.

当我在室内脱下手套时，皮肤又红又冷。

One night, a cashier at the liquor store by my apartment made fun of the gloves when I had taken them off to open my purse and pay.

一天晚上，当我脱下手套打开钱包并付款时，我公寓附近一家酒品店的收银员取笑了我。

“Are those boxing gloves?” he asked.

“那些是拳击手套吗？”他问道。

“Are you going to fight me?” I shook my head and explained that my hands were cold.

“你要和我战斗吗？”我摇摇头，解释说我的手很冷。

He looked delighted.

他看起来很高兴。

“Don’t get into any fights now,” he called as I walked through the door.

“现在不要打架，”当我走进门时他喊道。

Around the same time I ran into an old colleague at a panel on Italian Workerism.

大约在同一时间，我在意大利工人主义小组中遇到了一位老同事。

I hugged him, and he flinched.

我拥抱了他，他退缩了。

I was so cold to the touch that it had shocked him.

我摸起来太冷了，这让他很震惊。

He asked if I needed a sweater, and I explained that I was already wearing two, plus a coat, and a hat.

他问我是否需要一件毛衣，我解释说我已经穿了两件，外加一件外套和一顶帽子。

My husband yelped, “Don’t touch me,” one night when I got into bed and snuck my feet over to his for warmth.

一天晚上，当我上床把脚偷偷放在他身上取暖时，我丈夫大喊：“别碰我。”

It was a long winter.

那是一个漫长的冬天。

The first snow fell in December, the last of it in early April.

十二月下了第一场雪，四月初下了最后一场雪。

New Years Eve, two days before I was sent to Mount Sinai, was the coldest in one hundred years.

新年前夜，也就是我被送往西奈山的前两天，是一百年来最冷的一天。

The cold and the falling seemed one and the same, to me.

对我来说，寒冷和坠落似乎是一回事。

Walking through my front door and onto the street felt, every time, like the strength was being sapped out of me.

每次穿过前门走到街上，我都感觉自己的力量被耗尽。

The hot, close environment of subway cars brought on dizziness.

地铁车厢里又热又密的环境让人头晕。

The northern winds sweeping down the canyons of dark streets flew into my clothes.

北风沿着黑暗街道的峡谷席卷而过，吹进了我的衣服。

I tripped constantly.

我经常绊倒。

I slipped in puddles, on ice, in snowmelt.

我在水坑里、冰面上、雪融水里滑倒。

It is when winter hits New York that I am most inclined to tell people that I hate it.

当冬天降临纽约时，我最想告诉人们我讨厌它。

People talk about New York being ugly, but it’s hard to countenance this when you don’t live here.

人们都说纽约丑陋，但如果你不住在这里，你就很难接受这一点。

I had never believed people when they said the city was ugly, I couldn’t believe a place of such cultural importance could be genuinely ugly.

当人们说这座城市丑陋时，我从来不相信他们，我无法相信一个具有如此重要文化意义的地方真的很丑陋。

Not until I began to live through New York winters, the way the gray sucks the marrow right out of you, the snow which purifies everything until twelve hours later it is covered in the black scum of pollution and yellow patches of dog piss, the smell of piss in general, and garbage, always garbage, frozen in bags on the curb.

直到我开始经历纽约的冬天，灰色从你身上吸走骨髓，雪净化了一切，直到十二小时后，它被黑色的污染浮渣和黄色的狗尿覆盖，一般的尿味，还有垃圾，总是垃圾，装在路边的袋子里冷冻。

The literature of the English language begins in the cold.

英语文学始于寒冷。

Old English possessed words for the winter that we have shrugged off in Modern English: ‘winterbiter,’ ‘winterburna’, ‘winterceald.’ ‘Wintercearig,’ literally ‘the cares of winter,’ was a concept so familiar only one word was needed to express it.

古英语中拥有一些我们在现代英语中已经不屑一顾的冬天词汇：“winterbiter”、“winterburna”、“winterceald”。“Wintercearig”字面意思是“冬天的忧虑”，这是一个非常熟悉的概念，只需要一个词就能表达它。

When we talk about spring and summer now, so many of the ways we have of speaking about it are about the adornment of the earth with greenery.

当我们现在谈论春天和夏天时，我们谈论它的很多方式都是关于用绿色装饰大地。

What we suggest when we do this is that summer is a kind of costume the world wears, beneath which is the body of the earth.

当我们这样做时，我们建议夏天是世界穿着的一种服装，其下面是地球的身体。

In winter, we see the body naked.

在冬天，我们看到的是赤裸的身体。

These are the months when nature is arrested.

这是大自然被抑制的几个月。

It is the period between death and birth, when both the land and the lives we lead on it are halted by the cold.

这是死亡和出生之间的时期，土地和我们在其上的生活都因寒冷而停止。

Anne Carson writes, “To fall after all is our earliest motion.

安妮·卡森写道：“毕竟跌倒是我们最早的动作。

A human is born by falling, as Homer says, from between the knees of its mother.

正如荷马所说，人类是从母亲的膝盖之间跌落而诞生的。

To the ground.

到地面。

We fall again at the end: what starts on the ground will end up soaking into the ground forever.”

最后我们再次跌倒：从地面开始的一切最终都会永远渗入地面。”

My grandmother had a fall in her final year.

我的祖母在最后一年跌倒了。

She was on her patio, gardening, and suddenly she was on the ground.

她正在自家的露台上做园艺，突然间她就倒在了地上。

She was taken to see a doctor.

她被带去看医生。

A healthy, no-nonsense woman, the fall transformed my grandmother.

我的祖母是一个健康、严肃的女人，秋天改变了她。

She became weaker, and more fragile.

她变得更加虚弱，更加脆弱。

Shortly thereafter she was diagnosed with cancer.

此后不久，她被诊断出患有癌症。

It was all through her.

这一切都是她造成的。

The doctors told us she had six months, but she died in six weeks.

医生告诉我们她还有六个月的生命，但六周后她就去世了。

I do not remember when, precisely, we found out about the cancer.

我不记得我们到底是什么时候发现癌症的。

It didn’t seem to matter.

这似乎并不重要。

What mattered was the fall.

重要的是秋天。

This was all in my mind, this string of connections—falling and embodied cognition, swooning and melodrama—when, in February, at the end of the winter, I found a lump in my breast.

这一切都在我的脑海里，这一系列的联系——堕落和具体化的认知、昏厥和情节剧——当二月，冬末，我发现我的胸部有一个肿块。

This is why, I thought as I touched the lump.

这就是为什么，当我触摸肿块时我想。

The fainting really had been an illness, it was not embodied metaphor, it was not bodily articulation.

昏厥确实是一种疾病，它不是隐喻的体现，也不是身体的表达。

This explained it all.

这说明了一切。

Of course.

当然。

I had cancer.

我得了癌症。

I lived in this terror-logic for the next fortnight, through doctors’ appointments, ultrasound, biopsy.

在接下来的两周里，我一直生活在这种恐怖逻辑中，通过医生的预约、超声波检查、活检。

But in the end, I didn’t have cancer.

但最终我没有得癌症。

It was nothing.

没什么。

Just a change in the tissue of my breasts.

只是我的乳房组织发生了变化。

As meaningless as anything else.

和其他事情一样毫无意义。

The child psychoanalyst D.W.

儿童精神分析学家 D.W.

Winnicott once wrote a paper called Fear of Breakdown, A Clinical Example.

温尼科特曾经写过一篇论文，名为《恐惧崩溃，一个临床例子》。

He contended that when a patient expressed a fear of breakdown, it was due to an experience of breakdown earlier in life.

他认为，当患者表达对崩溃的恐惧时，这是由于早年经历过崩溃。

“A previous early breakdown occurred at a time when the ego cannot organize against environmental failure,” he wrote.

“之前的早期崩溃发生在自我无法组织起来应对环境失败的时候，”他写道。

“Environmental failure disrupts the ego defense organization and exposes the individual again to the primitive anxieties which he had, with the help of the facilitating environment, organized himself to deal with.

“环境的失败破坏了自我防御组织，使个人再次暴露于原始的焦虑之中，而他在有利环境的帮助下，组织自己来应对这些焦虑。

This leads to an unthinkable state of affairs.” In other words, everything inside a person defends against breakdown, and fear of breakdown is characterized by particular feelings, or “primitive agonies.” Winnicott described these “primitive agonies” as the fear of having no orientation, having no relation to the body, complete isolation, the feeling of “going to pieces,” and falling forever.

这会导致难以想象的局面。”换句话说，人体内的一切都在抵御崩溃，而对崩溃的恐惧则以特殊的感受或“原始的痛苦”为特征。温尼科特将这些“原始痛苦”描述为对没有方向、与身体没有关系、完全孤立、“支离破碎”和永远坠落的恐惧。

I felt foolish and afraid when I fainted.

当我晕倒时，我感到愚蠢和害怕。

The fainting brought about a lack of orientation, a sense of estrangement from my body.

昏厥让我失去了方向感，一种与身体的疏远感。

I felt, of course, like I was going to pieces.

当然，我感觉自己快要崩溃了。

The dizziness kept on, no matter how much iron I took in, or water I drunk, my only diagnosis “weak with no known cause.” This weakness seemed to imply something about my character.

无论我摄入了多少铁或喝了多少水，头晕感仍然持续存在，我唯一的诊断是“不明原因的虚弱”。这个弱点似乎暗示了我的性格。

I thought of how I was behaving in the same terms people use to deride melodrama: trite, silly, exaggerating.

我想到我的行为就像人们用来嘲笑情节剧的一样：陈词滥调、愚蠢、夸张。

The fear persists even now: that by telling you about this, I am again being melodramatic, that I am trite, and silly, that I am exaggerating.

即使现在，这种恐惧仍然存在：告诉你这件事，我又在夸张了，我是陈词滥调，我是愚蠢的，我是在夸大其词。

In a 1954 paper, Winnicott argued that it was normal and healthy for a person to “defend the self against specific environmental failure by a freezing of the failure situation.” Freezing, he says, as though to stop oneself experiencing the events of ones life by entering a kind of wintertime of the mind.

在 1954 年的一篇论文中，温尼科特认为，一个人“通过冻结失败情境来保护自我免受特定环境失败的影响”是正常和健康的。他说，冻结，仿佛通过进入一种心灵的冬天来阻止自己经历生活中的事件。

It is the slipping away of the self from the life it’s living, into a psychic season where nothing grows, and nothing moves, where everything is an outline, an abstraction.

这是自我从它所生活的生活中滑落，进入一个没有任何生长、没有任何移动、一切都是轮廓、抽象的心灵季节。

Winnicott concluded, “There is no end…

温尼科特总结道：“没有尽头……

unless the bottom of the trough has been reached”.

除非已经到达槽底”。

Or, in another person’s words, the end arrives when you figure out “what’s happening between your head and your heart.”

或者，用另一个人的话来说，当你弄清楚“你的头脑和你的心之间发生了什么”时，终点就到来了。

The falling stopped when winter ended.

冬天结束后，下降就停止了。

It stopped not long after my mother-in-law died, somewhere around the last snowfall of the winter, and a trip, a drive across the desert from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

我婆婆去世后不久，冬天下最后一场雪的时候，它就停止了，然后是一次旅行，从拉斯维加斯开车穿过沙漠到洛杉矶。

During that drive, crossing the San Gabriel Mountains at dusk, I saw eucalyptus trees as the car crested the peak, and was overcome with such a burst of homesickness for Australia that I burst into tears.

那次开车，在黄昏时穿越圣盖博山脉，当车冲上山顶时，我看到了桉树，我对澳大利亚的思念之情溢于言表，泪流满面。

But when I think about it carefully, I can see that when it really stopped was late March 2018, when my husband and I went to an office building downtown, progressed through security, a pat down, took an elevator up, handed over our papers, kept our phones in our bags, and were called into an interview room.

但仔细想想，真正停止的时候是2018年3月下旬，当时我和丈夫来到市中心的一栋办公楼，通过安检，拍身，乘电梯上去，交出证件，把手机放在包里，然后被叫进面试室。

In that interview room we were questioned about when we met, and what our first date had been like, whether my husband had gotten butterflies when he first saw me, on what we thought of one another’s families.

在那个采访室里，我们被问到我们是什么时候认识的，我们第一次约会是什么样的，我丈夫第一次见到我时是否感到紧张，以及我们对彼此家庭的看法。

A day when my husband explained that he loved me, that his mother had died a month earlier, and we had been through so much.

有一天，我的丈夫解释说他爱我，他的母亲一个月前去世了，我们经历了这么多。

When the interview was over, I was granted permanent residency in the United States, for reasons of marriage to an American citizen.

面试结束后，由于与美国公民结婚的原因，我获得了美国永久居留权。

When we got downstairs the weather was dismally cold, but we were giddy.

当我们下楼时，天气寒冷无比，但我们却感到头晕。

We could do anything.

我们可以做任何事情。

We walked across Manhattan, bought an enormous number of snacks, and went to the movies in our fancy interview clothes.

我们穿过曼哈顿，买了很多零食，穿着漂亮的采访服装去看电影。

We spent the night getting drunk on pink gin.

我们喝了粉红杜松子酒喝醉了一晚。

There’s a photograph of me that my husband took that night, in which I look happy.

有一张我丈夫那天晚上给我拍的照片，照片中我看起来很高兴。

Because it has a simple answer, after all.

因为毕竟它有一个简单的答案。

The ground never felt stable, has never solidified, but the falling stopped when I knew I was staying.

地面从未感觉稳定，从未凝固，但当我知道我要留下来时，下落就停止了。

Madeleine Watts grew up in Sydney, Australia and now lives in New York.

马德琳·瓦茨 (Madeleine Watts) 在澳大利亚悉尼长大，现在住在纽约。

Her work has appeared in The White Review , The Lifted Brow , and Los Angeles Review of Books .

她的作品曾发表在《White Review》、《The Lifted Brow》和《洛杉矶书评》上。

Her debut novel The Inland Sea is forthcoming.

她的处女作《内海》即将出版。