711: How to Be Alone - This American Life

711：如何独处

711 · This American Life · 原文

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00:00 00:00 Transcript Share This American Life Life Partners How to Listen Episodes Recommended About Overview Staff Announcements Fellowships Jobs Music Make Radio On The Road FAQ Submissions Merch Contact Us Our Other Shows Merch Follow Us Life Partners Subscribe to our newsletter Full episode Toggle Audio and Transcript Sync Transcript | Episode #711 | July 17, 2020 711: How to Be Alone Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard.

00:00 00:00 文字记录分享此美国生活生活伙伴如何收听剧集推荐关于概述员工公告奖学金工作音乐在路上制作电台常见问题解答提交商品联系我们我们的其他节目商品关注我们生活伙伴订阅我们的时事通讯整集切换音频和文字记录同步文字记录 | 内容第 711 集 | 2020 年 7 月 17 日 711：如何独处注意：《美国生活》是为耳朵而制作的，旨在让人们听到。

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Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.

文字记录是使用语音识别软件和人工转录员结合生成的，可能包含错误。

Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

请在印刷版引用前检查相应的音频。

Prologue: Prologue Announcer

序言：序言播音员

It's This American Life.

这就是美国生活。

I'm Bim Adewunmi, in for Ira Glass this week.

我是 Bim Adewunmi，本周代表 Ira Glass。

So, back in early April, when we were still only a few weeks into lockdown in New York, a friend of mine asked me what things were like on Planet Bim.

所以，早在四月初，当我们在纽约实施封锁仅几周时，我的一个朋友问我比姆星球上的情况如何。

It was a joke, but it was one of those accurate jokes.

这是一个笑话，但它是那些准确的笑话之一。

Because living alone right now is probably not that dissimilar to being a far away, solitary planet.

因为现在独自生活可能与在一个遥远、孤独的星球上生活没有什么不同。

New York was one of the first places to lock down.

纽约是最早实行封锁的地方之一。

And in a way, I'm still living like it's March.

在某种程度上，我仍然像三月一样生活。

I work from home.

我在家工作。

I leave for groceries.

我去买杂货。

I attend almost no social functions.

我几乎不参加任何社交活动。

And it's not that I don't know how to be alone.

这并不是说我不知道如何独处。

Being alone, even in a crowd, is not new to me.

即使在人群中，独自一人对我来说也不是什么新鲜事。

We moved continents when I was very young, living between the UK and Nigeria.

我很小的时候我们就搬过大陆，住在英国和尼日利亚之间。

I went off to boarding school when I was 10 years old.

我十岁时就去寄宿学校读书。

I left home for university when I was 19, and I never really moved back home again.

我19岁时离开家去上大学，之后就再也没有真正搬回过家。

I've lived in London, Lagos, Berlin, and now New York.

我曾住在伦敦、拉各斯、柏林，现在又住在纽约。

I chose to live in those last two places, to move far away from family and home.

我选择住在最后两个地方，远离家人和家乡。

But there's something different about the aloneness of right now.

但现在的孤独却有些不同。

COVID-19 has taken away that element of choice.

COVID-19 夺走了这个选择要素。

Like a 9-year-old being sent up to her room as punishment, versus sitting in her room, quietly reading anyway.

就像一个 9 岁的孩子被送到她的房间作为惩罚，而不是坐在她的房间里安静地读书。

The activities are the same, but the issue is control.

活动是相同的，但问题是控制。

So many of us have been dealing with this enforced aloneness a lot more since the pandemic began.

自从大流行开始以来，我们很多人都在更多地应对这种被迫的孤独。

Sometimes I feel like I'm floating through space, a sort of dwarf planet in a galaxy that seems to be populated by planets with people attached-- children, a partner, other family members, maybe even housemates or a pet.

有时我感觉自己漂浮在太空中，就像银河系中的一颗矮行星，行星上似乎居住着人们——孩子、伴侣、其他家庭成员，甚至可能还有室友或宠物。

I have none of those things at the moment.

我目前没有这些东西。

My family, my parents, my siblings, their partners, they're all in London, about three and a half thousand miles and a full ocean away.

我的家人、我的父母、我的兄弟姐妹、他们的伴侣，他们都在伦敦，相距大约三千英里和一整片海洋。

I'm basically a caricature of the elder millennial.

我基本上是千禧一代的讽刺漫画。

It's just me and an ever-growing collection of house plants and candles.

只有我和不断增加的室内植物和蜡烛。

And as I kept thinking about space and about distance, I realized, oh, I'm not a planet.

当我不断思考空间和距离时，我意识到，哦，我不是一颗行星。

I'm an astronaut.

我是一名宇航员。

It feels like no one is psychically, if not physically, further away from their loved ones than an astronaut in orbit.

感觉上，没有人在精神上（如果不是身体上）比轨道上的宇航员更远离他们所爱的人。

So I found an astronaut, just to compare notes with-- Leroy Chiao.

所以我找到了一位宇航员，只是为了和他切磋——焦乐华。

He's retired now from NASA.

他现已从 NASA 退休。

But altogether, he spent more than 7 and 1/2 months in space.

但总的来说，他在太空中度过了超过 7 又 1/2 个月的时间。

Sure.

当然。

Bim Adewunmi Can you be bored in space?

Bim Adewunmi 你在太空会感到无聊吗？

Like, is it different to Earth boredom?

就像，这和地球上的无聊有什么不同吗？

You know, I think you-- well, put it this way.

你知道，我认为你——好吧，这么说吧。

We do have a lot to do.

我们确实有很多事情要做。

Even if a lot of the work is tedious work, it's still work that has to be done, and it has to be done per the schedule.

即使很多工作很繁琐，但它仍然是必须要做的工作，而且必须按照时间表完成。

And if we didn't have that, it would be a lot more difficult.

如果我们没有这个，事情就会困难得多。

Because even though you've got the spectacular view of the Earth and you're taking photographs of all these great places, after a while, if you didn't have enough to do, it'd be pretty tough, you know?

因为即使你已经看到了地球的壮丽景色，并且正在拍摄所有这些伟大地方的照片，但过了一段时间，如果你没有足够的事情可做，那就会很困难，你知道吗？

So the answer is yes.

所以答案是肯定的。

I think he was saying yes, you can absolutely get bored in space, even though they keep them quite busy.

我想他的意思是，是的，在太空中你绝对会感到无聊，尽管他们让他们很忙。

Leroy told me something I hadn't known.

勒罗伊告诉了我一些我不知道的事情。

At the end of every day, all the activities on the International Space Station had to be logged.

每天结束时，国际空间站上的所有活动都必须记录下来。

And every single day, based on that log, the plan changed.

每一天，根据该日志，计划都会改变。

Before you even launch aboard a six-month space mission, every minute of your mission has been planned out and taking into account all the requirements, constraints, priorities, things like that.

在你执行为期六个月的太空任务之前，你的任务的每一分钟都已经计划好了，并考虑了所有的要求、限制、优先事项等。

And then you get up there, and you start the first day with day one.

然后你站起来，从第一天开始第一天。

And at the end of your day, you've got logged on the computer the things that you finished, things that you got ahead on, things you maybe got behind on.

在一天结束时，您会在计算机上记录已完成的事情、已完成的事情以及可能落后的事情。

And then while you sleep, the entire planning team on the ground in the mission control center is replanning the entire mission based on what happened that day and then ripple it all the way through to the end.

然后当你睡觉的时候，任务控制中心地面上的整个规划团队正在根据当天发生的事情重新规划整个任务，然后将其一直影响到最后。

And then they send up a new flight plan.

然后他们发送了一个新的飞行计划。

And the next morning, when you get up, you've got a new flight plan on your computer because of this replanning team that has to do this every night.

第二天早上，当您起床时，您的计算机上就会有一个新的飞行计划，因为这个重新计划团队每晚都必须执行此操作。

I love that it fell to a whole crew of people at an entirely different location to plan, minute by minute, everything that a person should be doing with their hours.

我喜欢由一群人在完全不同的地点，一分钟一分钟地计划一个人在工作时间内应该做的一切事情。

Eat breakfast and clean up between 0615 and 0645 hours.

0615 至 0645 之间吃早餐并打扫卫生。

A 15-minute conference with mission control after experiments.

实验结束后与任务控制中心举行 15 分钟的会议。

Sleep for eight hours.

睡八个小时。

Someone to check in, make sure you're on task.

有人来检查，确保你在执行任务。

Unfortunately, unlike Leroy, I have no mission control.

不幸的是，与勒罗伊不同，我没有任务控制中心。

The usual order of my day has been disrupted since March.

自三月份以来，我日常生活的秩序被打乱了。

With no commute, my desk is now only a few feet away from my bed.

由于没有通勤，我的办公桌现在离我的床只有几英尺了。

My sleep schedule is messed up.

我的睡眠时间表一团糟。

A friend of mine said, we should stop calling it "working from home," but rather, "living at work."

我的一个朋友说，我们不应该再称之为“在家工作”，而应该称之为“工作中生活”。

Everything feels like it's drifting-- and not just in my apartment.

一切都感觉像是在漂流——而且不仅仅是在我的公寓里。

It'd be nice if someone seemed to have a bit of a plan, globally speaking.

从全球角度来看，如果有人似乎有一些计划，那就太好了。

When Leroy and I first spoke, it was April.

勒罗伊和我第一次说话是在四月。

And at that point, I'd been alone indoors for about six weeks.

那时，我已经独自待在室内大约六个星期了。

I remember it as a slightly feral time.

我记得那是一段有点野性的时光。

I joked that I wished I'd thought to trap a boyfriend before the pandemic hit, some kind of human space junk to occasionally bump into in my apartment.

我开玩笑说，我希望在大流行爆发之前能想到把男朋友困住，某种人类太空垃圾，偶尔会在我的公寓里碰到。

But then Leroy told me about the perils of cohabiting in space.

但后来勒罗伊告诉我在太空同居的危险。

I talked to some of the cosmonauts who had been around for a long time.

我与一些已经存在很长时间的宇航员进行了交谈。

And they said, some crews came back, and they said, if I had had a weapon, if I had had a gun, I would have killed my crewmate.

他们说，一些船员回来了，他们说，如果我有武器，如果我有枪，我就会杀死我的船员。

I mean, that's how bad it can get.

我的意思是，事情可能会变得如此糟糕。

I have no tension with my houseplants.

我对室内植物没有紧张感。

My candles burn, but not with any malice.

我的蜡烛在燃烧，但没有任何恶意。

And I actually really like living alone.

而且我其实很喜欢一个人住。

It's not that I want to fight with anyone.

并不是我想和任何人打架。

I just wish I had the option sometimes-- you know, break glass in case of boredom.

我只是希望有时我可以选择——你知道，在无聊的时候打碎玻璃。

Leroy's longest stint in space came when he lived on the International Space Station with only one other person-- Salizhan Sharipov, a Kyrgyzstani cosmonaut-- for 192 days.

勒罗伊在太空停留时间最长的一次是在国际空间站，当时他只和另外一个人——吉尔吉斯斯坦宇航员萨利詹·沙里波夫一起生活了 192 天。

For context, my personal expedition is currently around 130 days.

就背景而言，我个人的探险目前约为 130 天。

Part of the terror of being alone right now is that this pandemic feels endless.

现在独自一人感到恐惧的部分原因是这种流行病让人感觉永无休止。

I asked Leroy when things began to feel really impossible for him.

我问勒罗伊什么时候开始觉得事情对他来说真的不可能。

Was there a time in space when the itch to be home became unbearable?

在太空中是否有一段时间，回家的渴望变得难以忍受？

I would say right around the four-month point.

我想说的是大约四个月的时间点。

Three, four months seems to be kind of the right amount of time, if you ask most astronauts.

如果你问大多数宇航员，三四个月似乎是合适的时间。

And that's when you're saying, well, this is great.

那时你会说，嗯，这太棒了。

This is interesting.

这很有趣。

It's fulfilling, but I sure wouldn't mind going home either.

这很令人满意，但我当然也不介意回家。

[LAUGHTER] And when you start getting eager to go home is actually after the next crew arrives.

[笑声]当你开始渴望回家时，实际上是在下一批工作人员到达之后。

You have generally about a week or a week and a half together before you go home.

在回家之前，你们通常有大约一周或一周半的时间在一起。

And so the next crew arrives, and you start getting really excited about going home.

然后下一批船员到达，你开始对回家感到非常兴奋。

And that's when the time seems to slow to a crawl, [LAUGHS] that last week or so.

就在那时，时间似乎变得缓慢起来，[笑]上周左右。

That makes sense to me.

这对我来说很有意义。

Even in the majesty of space, four months is still four months.

即使在浩瀚的太空中，四个月仍然是四个月。

Four months of being alone, of being so far away-- it's hard.

四个月的孤独和远离——真的很艰难。

And four months is where we're at in this new reality.

四个月就是我们面临这个新现实的时间。

We're ready to come back to Earth, but we don't know when we'll be allowed to go home.

我们已经准备好返回地球，但我们不知道什么时候才能回家。

There's still no cure, no vaccine, and a steady increase in new cases.

仍然没有治愈方法，没有疫苗，并且新病例持续增加。

So what do we do?

那么我们该怎么办呢？

Today, we're going to hear from people who've had time to think about their aloneness, or their loneliness, even when they're in a crowd.

今天，我们将听到那些有时间思考自己的孤独或孤独的人的声音，即使他们在人群中。

How to be an astronaut or a solitary planet when there's a whole galaxy just around the corner.

当整个星系即将来临时，如何成为一名宇航员或一颗孤独的星球。

How to be alone.

如何独处。

That's the feeling of today's program.

这就是今天节目的感受。

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life.

来自芝加哥 WBEZ 的《This American Life》。

I'm Bim Adewunmi.

我是比姆·阿德温米。

Stay with me.

留在我身边。

Act One, The Unbearable Part.

第一幕，难以忍受的部分。

When isolation and social distancing was still new, I read a letter, and it felt like pages from a diary I hadn't even known I was writing.

当隔离和社交距离仍然是新鲜事时，我读了一封信，感觉就像一本我什至不知道自己在写的日记中的几页。

It was published in The Sewanee Review back in April.

它于四月份发表在《Sewanee Review》上。

The writer, Danielle Evans, alone in Baltimore, seemed to synthesize the feeling of aloneness and loss and fear that I hadn't yet been able to even articulate.

作者丹妮尔·埃文斯（Danielle Evans）独自一人在巴尔的摩，似乎综合了我还无法表达的孤独、失落和恐惧的感觉。

Here's Danielle reading a version of that letter.

这是丹妮尔正在读的那封信的一个版本。

"Who was everyone's last real human touch?" a friend asked at a Zoom birthday party in late March.

“谁是每个人最后一次真正的人情味？”一位朋友在 3 月底的 Zoom 生日聚会上问道。

I said a name, but once everyone hung up, I thought again, not sure if I remembered correctly.

我说了一个名字，但等大家都挂断电话后，我又想了想，不知道自己是否记错了。

I walked myself through that last real day of human contact-- the first week of March on the last day of AWP, an annual writer's conference.

我亲自经历了人类接触的最后一天——三月的第一周，年度作家会议 AWP 的最后一天。

I had planned to fly to San Antonio a day and a half early to treat a friend who'd had a difficult year to a pre-conference spa day, but in the days leading up to the conference, fear of the virus spread.

我原计划提前一天半飞往圣安东尼奥，为一位度过了艰难一年的朋友提供会前水疗日，但在会议前几天，对病毒的恐惧蔓延开来。

Thousands of people, including my friend, canceled their travel plans.

包括我朋友在内的数千人取消了旅行计划。

I canceled the spa day out of prudence, but my flight was departing as scheduled, and I wouldn't get reimbursed if I didn't get on it.

出于谨慎考虑，我取消了水疗日，但我的航班正按计划起飞，如果我没有登机，我将无法获得报销。

I decided to travel, anxiously, but I am anxious as a general condition.

我决定去旅行，焦急地，但我的总体状况是焦虑的。

One way to live in the world when you have anxiety is to get used to pushing it aside when it gets in the way of being alive.

当你感到焦虑时，生活在这个世界上的一种方法就是习惯于当它妨碍你的生活时将其推到一边。

This is my best explanation for why I trusted the city and the airlines and the institutions who said it was still safe to travel, and ignored the warnings of friends who said what was coming.

这是我最好的解释，为什么我信任这座城市、航空公司和机构，他们说旅行仍然安全，而忽略了朋友们所说的即将发生的警告。

I thought quarantine was still an if, and weeks away if so.

我认为隔离仍然是一种假设，如果是的话，还需要几周的时间。

And I thought if loneliness was coming soon, I did not want to be alone any longer than necessary.

我想，如果孤独即将到来，我不想一个人呆太久。

The conference was part hectic work trip, part carnival.

这次会议一半是忙碌的工作旅行，一半是嘉年华。

On its final day, tired after two days packed with events and panels, I slept in and stayed in bed for hours after I woke.

在最后一天，经过两天的活动和小组讨论，我感到很累，我睡了个懒觉，醒来后在床上待了几个小时。

I finally made it as far as the hotel lobby, intending to grab lunch, but instead spotted a friend at the bar.

我终于到达酒店大堂，打算吃午饭，却在酒吧里看到了一位朋友。

We spent a few hours day drinking, having a meandering conversation about our novels and major life decisions.

我们每天花几个小时喝酒，闲聊我们的小说和重大的人生决定。

"I feel so settled," I said, believing it.

“我感觉很安定，”我相信这一点。

The serendipity of the afternoon bled into the evening.

下午的机缘巧合一直延续到了晚上。

I spent the day moving from crowded space to crowded space, running into friends, making plans for later in the night, or the month, or the year.

我花了一天的时间从一个拥挤的空间搬到另一个拥挤的空间，遇到朋友，为晚上、本月或今年的晚些时候制定计划。

Late in the evening, a group of us headed to the conference's dance party.

深夜，我们一群人前往参加会议的舞会。

But when we all went upstairs, the dance floor was hilariously, heartbreakingly empty.

但当我们都上楼时，舞池里空荡荡的，令人欢笑、令人心碎。

It already felt like a metaphor.

这已经感觉像是一个隐喻。

Downstairs, people began to peel off.

楼下，人们开始散去。

We were tired.

我们很累。

Flights were early.

航班很早。

It was starting to be unavoidably clear that we were in the before of something terrible and on the wrong side of caution.

我们开始不可避免地意识到，我们正面临着可怕的事情，而且我们的谨慎态度是错误的。

I remember who was there.

我记得谁在那里。

I remember that some people were already conscientiously not hugging or touching, that some people were there who I didn't know well enough to hug.

我记得有些人已经很自觉地不拥抱或触摸，有些人在那里我不太熟悉，无法拥抱。

Who was the last person who leaned into me to say goodbye?

最后一个向我倾身告别的人是谁？

Who was the last person, besides me, to realize the party was over?

除了我之外，谁是最后一个意识到聚会结束的人？

Two days after I returned to Baltimore, the campus where I teach was closed immediately and indefinitely.

我回到巴尔的摩两天后，我任教的校园立即无限期关闭。

I prepared myself for the city to shut down for about a month.

我为这座城市关闭大约一个月做好了准备。

I walked a block to buy extra cat food, and then a block more to stock up on canned and dried goods and, for reasons unclear to me, essential oils, at my tiny and mysterious neighborhood health food store.

我走了一个街区去购买额外的猫粮，然后又走了一个街区去购买罐头和干货，以及（出于我不清楚的原因）在我家附近的小而神秘的健康食品店购买精油。

I reinstated the service that mailed me a box of fresh vegetables weekly.

我恢复了每周给我邮寄一盒新鲜蔬菜的服务。

A month passed.

一个月过去了。

The virus hadn't peaked yet.

病毒还没有达到顶峰。

April and May passed.

四月、五月过去了。

I kept waiting for a clear sign that the worst was over, but instead felt like we were all trapped in the opening half of a horror movie.

我一直在等待一个明确的迹象，表明最糟糕的情况已经过去，但相反，我感觉我们都被困在恐怖电影的前半部分。

By the time the city's stay-at-home order lifted in early June, little seemed to have changed to make me feel better about being in crowds, or riding the city bus, or sharing indoor space with people.

当六月初该市的居家令解除时，似乎没有什么变化能让我在人群中、乘坐城市公交车或与人共享室内空间时感觉更好。

It's July now, and most weeks, I only go as far as my apartment building's front entryway to collect mail and occasional groceries and bring them inside to disinfect.

现在是七月，大多数星期，我只走到公寓楼的前门入口处收集邮件和偶尔的杂货，然后将它们带入室内进行消毒。

In more exciting weeks, I venture down the fire escape to take out the recycling and walk around the block to come back in through my front door.

在更令人兴奋的几周里，我冒险沿着消防梯取出回收品，然后绕着街区走，从前门回来。

Though, for three weeks, our recycling was on hold because of an outbreak at the Bureau of Solid Waste, and I stopped making even that small trip.

不过，由于固体废物局爆发疫情，我们的回收工作被搁置了三个星期，我什至停止了那次小旅行。

In over three months, I have seen six delivery people, two neighbors in the hallway, one friend making a masked front door grocery drop-off, one repairman, one stranger who needed to tour the property, and my landlord.

在三个多月的时间里，我见过六名送货员、走廊里的两名邻居、一名蒙面前门杂货送货的朋友、一名修理工、一名需要参观房屋的陌生人，以及我的房东。

As time passes, there are fewer unbearable days, but they are worse when they come.

随着时间的推移，难以忍受的日子越来越少，但来的时候却更加糟糕。

I had a running joke for years about how none of my survival skills would be useful in an apocalypse.

多年来我一直有一个笑话，说我的生存技能在世界末日中毫无用处。

But it turns out, being anxious and alone in my apartment, weighing which things I love are worth the possibility that they might hurt me, is the one scenario I was somewhat prepared for.

但事实证明，在我的公寓里感到焦虑和孤独，权衡我所爱的事物是否值得它们可能伤害我，这是我有所准备的一种情况。

At the start of the year, I had been looking forward to spending some time alone.

今年年初，我一直期待着能独处一段时间。

I was on teaching leave for the spring semester and I thought it would be a luxury to be mostly at home for a while.

春季学期我正在休假，我认为大部分时间待在家里是一种奢侈。

I love my apartment.

我爱我的公寓。

I bought myself a smart bike and taught myself to like it, anticipating a season when I would become a creature of odd habits and hours, and wouldn't want to walk to the gym after dark or in the spring rain.

我给自己买了一辆智能自行车，并教会自己喜欢它，预计在某个季节，我会成为一个习惯和时间都奇怪的人，不想在天黑后或春雨中步行去健身房。

I was preparing to hibernate and not miss much.

我正准备冬眠，不会错过太多。

Now I miss so many things.

现在我想念很多东西。

I take vitamin D pills and sometimes hover over the fire escape ledge, standing beside the trash can, to try to get some sunlight, and imagine the luxury of having a backyard.

我服用维生素 D 药片，有时会悬停在消防逃生壁架上，站在垃圾桶旁边，试图获得一些阳光，想象拥有一个后院的奢华。

I miss my father, who is a 40-minute train ride away.

我想念我的父亲，他距离我有 40 分钟的火车车程。

The train feels out of the question.

感觉火车是不可能的。

And I can't ask my father, working full time from home and recovering from minor surgery, to drive an hour each way just to visit.

我不能要求我的父亲，全职在家工作，并从小手术中恢复过来，单程开车一个小时去探望。

I never learned to drive, something I sometimes considered a badge of city-dwelling honor.

我从未学过开车，有时我认为这是居住在城市的荣誉徽章。

Earlier in the year, I told a relative I didn't need to learn to drive in Baltimore, when I live a short walk from Penn Station, and at least a dozen city buses stop within a block of my apartment.

今年早些时候，我告诉一位亲戚，我不需要在巴尔的摩学习开车，因为我住的地方距离宾夕法尼亚车站仅几步之遥，而且至少有十几辆城市公交车停在我公寓的一个街区内。

If I had a car and a license, I think now, I could drive to wave at my father from a safe distance.

我想，如果我现在有车和驾照，我就可以在安全距离外开车向父亲挥手。

When the casual relationship I had drifted into early in the year just as casually evaporated, I told a friend, I guess we weren't that serious about it, so it's for the best.

当我今年年初随意建立的随意关系消失时，我告诉一位朋友，我想我们对此并没有那么认真，所以这是最好的。

Now the scolding voice in my head tells me that a person who believed in chasing after things, who didn't think it was as clear as people either want to be around you or they don't, and if you didn't know which, there was your answer-- well, that person might not be alone in her apartment for months.

现在，我脑海中的责骂声音告诉我，一个相信追逐事物的人，他不认为人们想和你在一起或不想在你身边那么清楚，如果你不知道哪个，那就是你的答案——好吧，那个人可能不会在她的公寓里独自待上几个月。

When I turned 35 a few years ago, I promised myself I'd let go of the idea that someday I was going to become a different kind of adult.

几年前，当我 35 岁的时候，我向自己保证，我会放弃“有一天我会成为一个不同的成年人”的想法。

I let myself accept that there would be no house or a husband or a baby or sudden mature renunciation of glitter.

我让自己接受这样的事实：不会有房子，不会有丈夫，不会有孩子，也不会突然成熟地放弃闪光。

It was only the baby I really grieved, but I let myself have that grief and move on.

我真正悲伤的只是孩子，但我让自己承受悲伤并继续前进。

I gave myself permission to live a life that wasn't waiting for my real life to start, to free all of my intimate relationships from the emotional tyranny of a ticking biological clock, to claim as a choice what would otherwise feel like it had happened to me.

我允许自己过一种不等待现实生活开始的生活，把我所有的亲密关系从滴答作响的生物钟的情感暴政中解放出来，把那些否则感觉就像发生在我身上的事情当作一种选择。

I thought it worked.

我认为它有效。

But the loneliness of isolation some days mocks all of that, makes all of my possible joys feel ephemeral.

但有时，与世隔绝的孤独感嘲笑了这一切，让我所有可能的快乐都感觉转瞬即逝。

I asked which of the things I promised myself I could still have-- casual flings, travel, community in the form of classrooms and bookstores and coffee shops and bars-- will survive this or exist in recognizable form when we emerge.

我问自己，我向自己许诺的哪些东西我仍然可以拥有——休闲娱乐、旅行、以教室、书店、咖啡店和酒吧为形式的社区——能够在这次危机中幸存下来，或者在我们出现时以可识别的形式存在。

It is possible to feel stuck with your choices even without wishing you'd made any differently.

即使不希望自己做出任何不同的选择，也可能会感到自己的选择被困住了。

When I hear that this could go on for a year, I think it is lack of human touch, human contact, that will break me.

当我听说这种情况可能会持续一年时，我认为缺乏人情味、人际接触会让我崩溃。

And then I think it might actually be grief.

然后我想这实际上可能是悲伤。

Without the constant, busy buzz of my normal life, it's harder not to dwell on what is absent-- the lives I might have had, the life I would have if my mother was still alive.

如果没有了我正常生活中持续忙碌的喧嚣，我就很难不去想那些缺失的东西——我可能拥有的生活，如果我母亲还活着的话我会拥有的生活。

I keep waiting for the first feeling I have that is wholly untouched by grief, or that is at least its own fresh grief, not marked by her death three years ago.

我一直在等待我的第一个感觉，完全没有受到悲伤的影响，或者至少是它自己的新鲜悲伤，而不是三年前她的去世所带来的标记。

But it hasn't come yet.

但它还没有到来。

When I heard the early descriptions of the virus, of what it does to people's breathing, I thought of my mother at the beginning of her illness, when she went to the ER with undiagnosed stage four cancer and a liter and a half of fluid in her lungs, and the doctor was planning to send her home with a laxative, until my mother's friend, a cardiologist at the same hospital, insisted they give her a CAT scan.

当我听到对这种病毒以及它对人们呼吸的影响的早期描述时，我想起了我的母亲在患病之初，当时她因未确诊的第四期癌症而去急诊室，肺部有一升半的液体，医生本来打算让她服用泻药回家，直到我母亲的朋友，同一家医院的心脏病专家坚持要求他们给她做 CAT 扫描。

I thought of my mother at the end, when everything they had given her to keep the pain at bay, to keep her unnaturally calm while her body's every instinct told her to panic, also meant she couldn't hold her head up to cough or vomit.

最后我想起了我的母亲，他们为她提供了一切来控制疼痛，让她保持不自然的平静，而她身体的每一个本能都告诉她要惊慌，但也意味着她无法抬起头来咳嗽或呕吐。

How many times she'd said she didn't want to die hooked up to tubes, so when they first asked to intubate her, her partner said no.

她说过多少次她不想死于插管，所以当他们第一次要求给她插管时，她的伴侣拒绝了。

How when I was alone with her later that day, she began to choke, suddenly awake and terrified.

那天晚些时候，当我单独和她在一起时，她开始窒息，突然醒来并感到害怕。

And I held her hand and I pushed the call button and knew we didn't have that much time, so I ran into the hallway screaming for help, and the nurse came running.

我握住她的手，按下呼叫按钮，知道我们没有那么多时间，所以我跑进走廊尖叫着求救，护士跑了过来。

I stood in that hallway, terrified my mother was going to die, while I was, in fact, at the hospital by her bedside, waiting for my mother to die, just not like that.

我站在走廊里，害怕我的母亲会死，而事实上，我在医院里，在她的床边，等待着我母亲的死，但不是那样的。

How I didn't know for certain, until after they'd put the tube in, that I'd heard her voice for the last time.

直到他们把管子插进去后，我才确定这是我最后一次听到她的声音。

In the first months of quarantine, sometimes in the middle of the day, I would find myself sobbing and only realize later why, which bit of news triggered which memory-- the descriptions of what the virus does to the body, how many of the early faces of the dead were Black women my mother's age, or the infuriating financial politics of our health care system.

在隔离的头几个月里，有时在中午，我会发现自己在哭泣，直到后来才意识到为什么，哪条新闻触发了哪条记忆——病毒对身体的影响的描述，死者的早期面孔中有多少是我母亲这个年纪的黑人女性，或者我们医疗保健系统令人恼火的金融政治。

It was hard for me to untangle on a personal or national level the difference between a health crisis and the financial crisis.

我很难在个人或国家层面上理清健康危机和金融危机之间的区别。

When my mother's CAT scan came back indicating a problem, before I could comfort her, I had to ask her for her insurance card and step out in the hallway to call in a payment, because I knew if she got any further behind, she would be uninsured.

当我母亲的 CAT 扫描显示有问题时，在我安慰她之前，我不得不向她索要保险卡，然后走到走廊上要求付款，因为我知道如果她再落后，她就会没有保险。

I knew that because we'd fought the week before when she told me she had stopped paying her insurance.

我知道这一点，因为一周前我们就吵架了，当时她告诉我她已经停止支付保险费了。

She said, "The only thing wrong with me is high blood pressure, and the only reason for that is stress.

她说：“我唯一的问题是高血压，而唯一的原因就是压力。

And the main reason I'm stressed is money." I said, "If there's something else wrong, by the time you know it, it will be too late." It was already too late.

我感到压力的主要原因是钱。”我说：“如果还有什么问题，等你知道的时候就太晚了。”已经太晚了。

When the virus first hit, I thought of what hell it would have been for my sick mother, after years of chemo and complications, to have to add a pandemic to her list of dangers.

当病毒第一次袭来时，我想到，在经历了多年的化疗和并发症之后，我生病的母亲不得不将流行病添加到她的危险清单中，那将是多么糟糕的事情。

I had the unbearable thought that it was a good thing she didn't have to live through this.

我有一种难以忍受的想法，她不用经历这一切是件好事。

As time passed, I thought more of my mother when she was well-- my mother, who would have made it maybe two weeks before calling to tell me she was coming to get me or she was coming to stay, but she wasn't letting me stay in my apartment alone for months.

随着时间的推移，我越来越想念我的母亲，当她康复时——我的母亲，她可能会在两周前打电话告诉我她要来接我或者她要留下来，但她不让我独自在我的公寓呆上几个月。

"But it's my apartment," I would have said.

“但这是我的公寓，”我会说。

And she would have scoffed at my boundaries and come anyway.

她会嘲笑我的界限，但无论如何都会来。

What I've been feeling acutely is the particular absence of the only person in the world who would have refused to leave me alone, even when I absolutely wanted to be.

我强烈的感受是，世界上唯一一个拒绝让我独自一人的人特别缺席，即使我绝对想这样做。

When I can step out of my personal grief for long enough, I summon my mother's tenacity in the face of the more collective grief.

当我能够足够长时间地摆脱个人悲伤时，我会召唤母亲的坚韧来面对更大的集体悲伤。

When the data on race began to come in, it was not a surprise, but it was devastating, and also terrifying.

当有关种族的数据开始出现时，这并不令人惊讶，但它是毁灭性的，而且也令人恐惧。

When I saw who was dying and I heard the narrative shift to personal responsibility, I lost all faith that we would take this seriously enough for long enough.

当我看到谁正在死去，我听到叙述转向个人责任时，我失去了所有信心，相信我们会足够长时间地认真对待这件事。

I knew my country, I thought.

我想，我了解我的国家。

And I was afraid that once it thought this was a Black and brown problem, it would not blink at sacrificing gig workers and shipping plant workers and service workers and food workers and city employees to have back the world of money and parties.

我担心，一旦它认为这是一个黑人和棕色人种的问题，它就会毫不犹豫地牺牲零工工人、航运工厂工人、服务工人、食品工人和城市雇员来夺回金钱和派对的世界。

It would kill them and replace them for as long as it needed to, even once the color of the faces started to change.

只要需要，它就会杀死他们并取代他们，即使他们的脸色开始发生变化。

For months, I felt like my fear that Black life wasn't worth much in this country was another form of aloneness, which is why the shock of June's protests and the deaths that made them necessary felt like horror and hope at once, like we could say what had clearly been true all along, even if we couldn't yet say for certain that it would change.

几个月来，我觉得我对黑人生命在这个国家不值钱的恐惧是另一种形式的孤独，这就是为什么六月抗议活动的震惊和使抗议变得必要的死亡让人感觉既恐怖又希望，就像我们可以说出一直以来显然是正确的事情，即使我们还不能肯定地说它会改变。

Still, I'm terrified of getting sick.

尽管如此，我还是害怕生病。

Because being sick alone means it may be too late when I realize how sick I am.

因为独自生病意味着当我意识到自己病得有多严重时可能为时已晚。

I am terrified of having to go to the hospital alone because everything I know says there is no point in going to the hospital if I'm not well enough to credential myself.

我害怕必须独自去医院，因为我所知道的一切都表明，如果我的健康状况不足以证明自己，那么去医院就没有意义。

I do not have any particular health risk factors for this virus, except that I find doctors stressful, and my blood pressure spikes at the beginning of any doctor's visit.

对于这种病毒，我没有任何特定的健康风险因素，除了我发现医生压力很大，而且我的血压在每次就诊开始时都会飙升。

If the doctor is willing to humor me and take it again, my blood pressure is almost always normal and the file says I have anxiety.

如果医生愿意迁就我并再次服用，我的血压几乎总是正常的，并且档案显示我有焦虑症。

If the doctor is not or the visit was upsetting, then the file says my blood pressure is elevated, mild hypertension.

如果医生不同意或者就诊令人不安，那么文件上会说我的血压升高，轻度高血压。

If I got sick, no one would say she is a professor who just achieved a Peloton milestone and has a refrigerator full of almond milk and fresh vegetables and a book out soon.

如果我生病了，没有人会说她是一位教授，刚刚实现了 Peloton 里程碑，并且有一个装满杏仁奶和新鲜蔬菜的冰箱，还有一本书即将出版。

And she Clorox-wiped the apartment's front doors every time she went to get the mail.

每次她去取邮件时，她都会用高乐氏擦拭公寓的前门。

Someone would say hypertension.

有人会说高血压。

Someone would say comorbidity.

有人会说合并症。

Someone would read the summarized statistics and say, that one doesn't count.

有人会阅读汇总的统计数据并说，这个不算数。

She was basically dead anyway.

反正她基本上已经死了。

Because this is the game we are playing with language, one where I and most of the people in my family cannot count as dying of this because we are already not alive.

因为这是我们正在玩的语言游戏，我和我家里的大多数人都不能算作死于这种游戏，因为我们已经不活着了。

When I think this, it is not especially good for my blood pressure.

一想到这里，这对我的血压就不是特别好。

I add spite to my reasons to stay alive and well.

我为自己活得好好的理由增添了怨恨。

I greet my anxiety like an old friend, one who wants me to live a long life and forgives me when I doubt her.

我像一位老朋友一样迎接我的焦虑，她希望我长寿，并在我怀疑她时原谅我。

I alternate between my peppy smart bike and the despair of Twitter.

我在充满活力的智能自行车和绝望的推特之间交替。

I order new books from local bookstores before I've finished the last batch.

我在完成最后一批书之前就从当地书店订购了新书。

I donate what I can where I can, work my way through the local tip jar Venmo, looking for my bartenders and baristas and my hairdresser.

我尽我所能地捐款，通过当地的小费罐 Venmo 寻找我的调酒师、咖啡师和美发师。

I talk to my father several times a week.

我每周和父亲交谈几次。

In recent years, he has taken to beekeeping in a county park near his house.

近年来，他开始在自家附近的一个县公园养蜂。

And he is pleased that he can tend to his hives without violating social distancing guidelines.

他很高兴自己可以在不违反社交距离准则的情况下照顾蜂巢。

I am anxious to find a safe way to visit him.

我急于找到一种安全的方式去探望他。

I confess I am indifferent to visiting the bees.

我承认我对拜访蜜蜂漠不关心。

I congratulate my students on their accomplishments.

我祝贺我的学生所取得的成就。

I read a friend's daughter books via Zoom and come away with a critical thesis on reforms needed in pixie society.

我通过 Zoom 阅读了一位朋友女儿的书，并得出了一篇关于精灵社会所需改革的批判论文。

My most cautious friends in the city haven't socialized in person in months either.

我在城里最谨慎的朋友也已经几个月没有亲自社交了。

I regard with affection and suspicion the invitations I do get for masked socially distanced gatherings as our restrictions relax.

随着我们的限制放松，我怀着喜爱和怀疑的心情对待我确实收到的蒙面社交距离聚会的邀请。

I am a lot of people's good friend and no one's singular person.

我是很多人的好朋友，但没有一个人是独一无二的。

And so every time someone reaches out, I think, yes, I would love to see you.

所以每次有人伸出援手时，我想，是的，我很想见到你。

And no, I cannot risk it if your social circle is already wide enough that I am included.

不，如果你的社交圈已经足够广泛，我也被包括在内，我就不能冒险。

I'm trying to imagine the first day I will say yes.

我试着想象我会答应的第一天。

I'm trying to imagine when I can hug someone again, and beyond that, to the first day I will take touch for granted, to the next time I will go someplace and spend the day among friends again and leave not remembering which of the people I adore I said goodbye to last, not conscious of the significance, not conscious of the danger.

我试着想象什么时候我可以再次拥抱某人，除此之外，到第一天我会把接触视为理所当然，到下一次我会去某个地方，再次和朋友们一起度过这一天，然后离开时不记得我最后向哪些我崇拜的人道别，没有意识到其中的意义，没有意识到危险。

Danielle Evans is the author of a short story collection called Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.

丹妮尔·埃文斯是短篇小说集《在你窒息你愚蠢的自我之前》的作者。

Act Two, A Notion Apart.

第二幕，一个概念。

There's a way that loneliness calls to loneliness.

有一种方式是孤独召唤孤独。

The more you know it, the more likely you are to see it in the world.

你对它了解得越多，你就越有可能在世界上看到它。

Lonely people can see things that other non-lonely people might have missed.

孤独的人可以看到其他非孤独的人可能错过的事情。

Lilly Sullivan has a story about that.

莉莉·沙利文有一个关于这个的故事。

It takes place in a vast non-human setting-- literally, no humans.

它发生在一个广阔的非人类环境中——确切地说，没有人类。

Here's Lilly.

这是莉莉。

So, seven years ago, when I was just starting out in radio, I did a story about this scientific discovery, because there was something about it that I wanted to understand.

所以，七年前，当我刚开始从事广播工作时，我做了一个关于这一科学发现的故事，因为我想了解其中的一些内容。

The guy who first noticed this thing was named Joe George, on an island off the coast of Washington State.

第一个注意到这个东西的人名叫乔·乔治，他住在华盛顿州海岸附近的一个岛上。

Yeah, so I was in the Navy.

是的，所以我在海军。

And we looked for submarines and that in the open ocean.

我们在公海寻找潜艇。

And by looking, they were really listening.

通过观察，他们确实在倾听。

This was the '80s, by the way.

顺便说一句，那是 80 年代。

And the Navy had these devices called hydrophones that would listen to sounds in the ocean, anything that might be a Soviet sub.

海军拥有这些称为水听器的设备，可以监听海洋中的声音，任何可能是苏联潜艇的声音。

Joe had been doing it for decades-- could basically identify any ocean sound by its wiggles on the chart.

乔已经这样做了几十年——基本上可以通过海图上的摆动来识别任何海洋声音。

But one day, he saw something he'd never seen before.

但有一天，他看到了一些他以前从未见过的东西。

A marine biologist looked at the signal, said that it might be a whale.

一位海洋生物学家看了这个信号，说这可能是鲸鱼。

It seemed like it was huge, like a blue whale or a fin whale, judging by the characteristics of its call.

从它叫声的特点来看，它的体型似乎很大，就像蓝鲸或者长须鲸一样。

But the song this whale was singing was totally off.

但这条鲸鱼唱的歌完全不对劲。

Because the whales we were looking at-- where it would be the loudest was down at 20 Hertz.

因为我们观察到的鲸鱼——声音最大的地方是 20 赫兹。

And this one, he was at-- he started out at 52 Hertz.

而这一次，他以 52 赫兹开始。

Meaning the sound was over an octave higher than it should be.

这意味着声音比应有的高八度以上。

And they could never detect any other whales with him.

他们永远无法发现有其他鲸鱼和他在一起。

These kinds of whales are really social animals.

这些鲸鱼确实是群居动物。

They often traveled together in groups called pods.

他们经常结伴旅行，称为“豆荚”。

And usually, when one whale calls out, other whales respond, calling back and forth to each other from miles away.

通常，当一只鲸鱼发出叫声时，其他鲸鱼就会做出回应，在数英里之外互相呼唤。

Without that, they'd never be able to find each other in a huge space like the ocean.

如果没有它，他们永远无法在海洋这样广阔的空间中找到彼此。

But this whale, when he called out, no whale ever seemed to respond.

但这头鲸鱼，当他喊叫时，似乎没有鲸鱼做出回应。

I'd always be looking for something else to see if there was anything out there like that.

我总是在寻找其他东西，看看是否有类似的东西。

And through the years, it was the only vocalization like that in, I'll say, the North Pacific Ocean.

多年来，这是北太平洋中唯一类似的声音。

Hm.

嗯。

Joe George There was nobody else like it.

乔·乔治没有人能像他这样。

I can actually play you a recording of the call they picked up back then.

我实际上可以给你播放他们当时接听电话的录音。

Huge whales like that, like fin whales or blue whales, they're among the loudest creatures on Earth.

像长须鲸或蓝鲸这样的巨大鲸鱼是地球上声音最大的生物之一。

Their songs to each other rumble across the ocean.

他们彼此的歌声在大洋彼岸隆隆作响。

They can hear each other from 1,000 miles away.

他们可以在 1,000 英里之外听到对方的声音。

But those same songs, they're at frequencies too low for most humans to hear.

但同样的歌曲，它们的频率太低，大多数人都听不到。

But this whale's call is high enough that most humans can actually hear it.

但这种鲸鱼的叫声足够高，大多数人都能听到。

Lots of speakers don't play sounds at such low frequencies, but see if you can hear him.

很多扬声器不会播放如此低频率的声音，但看看你是否能听到他的声音。

[WHALE CALL] And if you couldn't hear that, here it is shifted up a bit to make it easier.

[鲸鱼叫声] 如果您听不到，这里将其调高一点以使其更容易听到。

[WHALE CALL] For scientists, they thought, this is so useful.

[鲸鱼叫声] 对于科学家来说，他们认为这非常有用。

Usually, it was almost impossible to track an individual whale because you pick up on their entire pods.

通常情况下，追踪一头鲸鱼几乎是不可能的，因为你会看到它们的整个鲸群。

But now they could follow a single whale's migration precisely.

但现在他们可以精确地跟踪单个鲸鱼的迁徙。

And as they tracked the whale like this, Joe realized the whale was in the wrong place, roaming miles away from where other whales were migrating, calling out all the time, never seeming to get a response.

当他们这样追踪鲸鱼时，乔意识到鲸鱼来到了错误的地方，它在距离其他鲸鱼迁徙的地方数英里之外的地方漫游，一直在呼唤，似乎从未得到回应。

Word of this eventually made it out into the public.

这件事最终传到了公众的耳中。

A science writer for The New York Times wrote a small story about it, "Song of the Sea, a Capella and Unanswered." When people heard about this, they thought, oh, my God, poor whale.

《纽约时报》的一位科普作家写了一篇关于它的小故事，“海洋之歌、无伴奏合唱和未答复”。当人们听到这个消息时，他们想，哦，天啊，可怜的鲸鱼。

People wondered, maybe other whales couldn't hear him because of his song's high frequency.

人们想知道，也许其他鲸鱼听不到他的声音，因为他的歌声频率很高。

Or maybe he couldn't hear other whales.

或者也许他听不到其他鲸鱼的声音。

Or maybe he's a hybrid, maybe a cross between a fin and a blue.

或者也许他是混血儿，也许是鳍鱼和蓝鱼的杂交体。

And because he sounds so strange, other whales are afraid of him, so they don't respond.

而且因为他的声音很奇怪，其他鲸鱼都害怕他，所以他们没有回应。

When whales keep silent, that's how whales hide.

当鲸鱼保持沉默时，这就是鲸鱼隐藏的方式。

There was just something about the idea of a creature moving through life constantly calling out to others and never getting a response.

生物在一生中不断地呼唤他人却从未得到回应，这确实是一种想法。

He seemed fundamentally out of sync in a way that got to people.

他在某种程度上似乎与人们根本不同步。

I felt this way, too.

我也有这样的感觉。

I first heard about the whale five years before I talked to Joe.

我第一次听说鲸鱼是在我和乔交谈的五年前。

Back then, I spent a lot of time alone.

那时，我花了很多时间独自一人。

I actually had a job where I traveled 24/7 for two years, barely seeing friends or family or anyone I knew.

事实上，我有一份工作，需要我 24/7 出差两年，几乎见不到朋友、家人或任何我认识的人。

I would email myself passages I liked from books so I could read them over and over.

我会通过电子邮件给自己发送书中我喜欢的段落，这样我就可以一遍又一遍地阅读它们。

Here's one of them.

这是其中之一。

It's from a book by James Salter.

这是詹姆斯·索尔特（James Salter）所著的一本书中的内容。

He wrote, "In solitude, one must penetrate.

他写道：“在孤独中，一个人必须洞察。

One must endure.

一个人必须忍受。

The icy beginning is where it is worst.

冰冷的开始是最糟糕的地方。

One must pass all that.

一个人必须通过这一切。

One must go forward all the way, through bitterness, through righteous feelings, advancing upon it like a holy city, sensing the true joy."

必须一路走下去，带着苦涩，带着正气，像一座圣城一样前进，感受真正的喜乐。”

I still like that idea.

我仍然喜欢这个主意。

Loneliness is a thing you can get better at, and that getting better at it would take you somewhere more true.

孤独是一件你可以变得更好的事情，而变得更好会带你到更真实的地方。

I started to think of solitude as a project I wanted to master.

我开始将孤独视为我想要掌握的一个项目。

Over time, more and more people heard about this whale.

随着时间的推移，越来越多的人听说了这条鲸鱼。

I remember seeing someone post about it on Facebook.

我记得在 Facebook 上看到有人发过相关帖子。

And within a day, 20,000 people wrote comments.

一天之内，就有 20,000 人发表评论。

There were the people who wanted to try to fix the whale.

有人想尝试修复鲸鱼。

One person asked, "Why can't we help it?" Another wrote, "Why can't it be tagged with something to rebroadcast the calls at a lower frequency?" The answer-- you just can't.

有人问：“为什么我们不能帮助它呢？”另一位网友写道：“为什么不能用一些标签来以较低的频率重播通话呢？”答案是——你不能。

People wrote music inspired by him, like this song.

人们受他的启发创作音乐，就像这首歌一样。

[PIANO OF "THE LONELIEST CREATURE ON EARTH"]

【《地球上最孤独的生物》钢琴曲】

I talked to a guy in Ireland who was going through a divorce.

我和一个正在离婚的爱尔兰人交谈过。

His wife saw the story online and emailed him a link from where she was sitting in the next room.

他的妻子在网上看到了这个故事，并从她坐在隔壁房间的地方通过电子邮件给他发送了一个链接。

Another guy I talked to made mixtapes of the whale's song and would mail those tapes, actual cassettes, to strangers who asked him for it.

与我交谈的另一个人制作了鲸鱼歌曲的混音带，并将这些磁带（真正的录音带）邮寄给向他索要的陌生人。

Someone in Germany wrote a children's book.

德国有人写了一本儿童读物。

People imagined his life in the icy depths, swimming 100 years alone.

人们想象着他在冰冷的深处孤独地游了100年的生活。

There we were, all of us walking around, dizzy in our own isolations, connecting to this whale, rather than to other people.

我们所有人都在那里走来走去，因自己的孤立而头晕目眩，与这头鲸鱼而不是其他人建立了联系。

Scientists called him 52 Hertz.

科学家称他为52赫兹。

The rest of us called him "the loneliest creature on Earth."

我们其他人称他为“地球上最孤独的生物”。

When I talked to Joe, he raised this issue that all those blogs kept overlooking and that I had overlooked, too.

当我和乔交谈时，他提出了这个问题，所有这些博客都一直忽视这个问题，而我也忽视了这个问题。

We have no idea if this whale's alone at all.

我们不知道这头鲸鱼是否孤身一人。

Just because we can't hear other animals with him doesn't mean they're not there.

仅仅因为我们听不到其他动物和他在一起并不意味着它们不在那里。

He could be swimming with another group of whales or with a group of females, whose vocalizations don't travel as far.

他可能正在与另一群鲸鱼或一群雌性鲸鱼一起游泳，而雌性鲸鱼的声音传播得不会那么远。

There is, of course, one thing that could answer whether or not he's actually alone.

当然，有一件事可以回答他是否真的孤独一人。

We could go look at him.

我们可以去看他。

But actually, all these years, no one has ever seen him.

但事实上，这么多年，没有人见过他。

All we have is an idea of him.

我们所拥有的只是他的一个想法。

He's just a sound in the ocean.

他只是大海中的一个声音。

Even Joe hasn't seen him.

就连乔也没有见过他。

He's only heard his calls.

他只听到他的电话。

Joe told me back then it'd be next to impossible to find him physically.

乔当时告诉我，要找到他几乎是不可能的。

Right, no, we have no idea what he looks like.

是的，不，我们不知道他长什么样。

It'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack out there.

这就像大海捞针一样。

Why?

为什么？

Joe George Because the ocean is big.

乔·乔治因为海洋很大。

And you're looking for one whale.

你正在寻找一只鲸鱼。

You know, how big?

你知道有多大吗？

Out in the ocean, it's not that big.

外面的海，没那么大。

Even in a square mile, it's hard to find stuff.

即使在一平方英里内，也很难找到东西。

Listening back to this interview now, seven years after I recorded it, I can hear myself fishing, trying to see if there was any part of Joe that thought about him the way I did.

现在，在我录制这段采访七年之后，我可以听到自己钓鱼的声音，试图看看乔是否有像我一样思考他的部分。

Has this-- I guess, this story for you, is it mostly pure science for you?

我想，这个故事对你来说，对你来说主要是纯科学吗？

Or do you think of this as personal as well?

或者你也认为这是个人的吗？

For me, I look at it more science, discovery of a different whale.

对我来说，我更看重科学，发现不同的鲸鱼。

More scientific.

更科学。

I can hear myself being disappointed here.

我能听到自己在这里感到失望。

I keep trying.

我继续努力。

Well, know it?

嗯，知道吗？

Yeah, I know it a bit, but not fully.

是的，我知道一点，但不完全。

So have you ever been just mowing your lawn, and all of a sudden, maybe after you saw the blogs, did you ever have a thought, like, oh, maybe that is a little sad.

那么，您是否曾经在修剪草坪时突然之间，也许在您看到博客之后，您是否曾经有过这样的想法，例如，哦，也许这有点悲伤。

Did you ever have a moment where you did think that it was-- the story was romantic in some way?

你是否曾经有过这样的时刻：你确实认为这个故事在某种程度上是浪漫的？

Hm.

嗯。

Hm.

嗯。

No?

不？

[LAUGHS] No. I'd have to say no.

[笑]不，我不得不说不。

Joe told me, we have no idea if he's lonely.

乔告诉我，我们不知道他是否孤独。

We don't even know if whales get lonely.

我们甚至不知道鲸鱼是否感到孤独。

We're all guessing here.

我们都在这里猜测。

And since all we can do is guess, here's another possibility.

由于我们所能做的就是猜测，所以还有另一种可能性。

Maybe he's hearing other whales and avoiding them.

也许他听到了其他鲸鱼的声音并避开了它们。

Maybe he wants to be alone.

也许他想一个人呆着。

Or maybe he doesn't mind.

或者也许他不介意。

I hope that's true.

我希望这是真的。

Me, I don't think about it much anymore.

我呢，已经不去想太多了。

I stopped thinking about him after I got a dog.

自从有了狗之后我就不再想他了。

Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show.

莉莉·沙利文是我们节目的制片人之一。

She did her earlier story about the whale as part of the Transom Story Workshop.

作为横梁故事研讨会的一部分，她之前写了关于鲸鱼的故事。

Coming up, a kid in Texas in isolation with his mom.

接下来是德克萨斯州的一个孩子与他的妈妈隔离。

He invents a game that's not exactly a game, that's a lot like real life.

他发明了一款不完全是游戏的游戏，它很像现实生活。

That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

稍后，芝加哥公共广播电台将继续我们的节目。

It's This American Life.

这就是美国生活。

I'm Bim Adewunmi, in for Ira Glass.

我是 Bim Adewunmi，代表 Ira Glass。

Our program today, How to Be Alone.

我们今天的节目是《如何独处》。

Act Three, The Parent Trap.

第三幕，父母陷阱。

So lots of people have been spending time isolated with just the few people in their family.

因此，很多人都与家人中的少数人一起度过了与世隔绝的时光。

This next story is about a more extreme version of that.

下一个故事是关于这个故事的一个更极端的版本。

It's about a mother and her son who really had no choice about it.

这是关于一位母亲和她的儿子的故事，他们真的别无选择。

They were at a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.

他们被关押在德克萨斯州迪利的一个家庭拘留中心。

You probably remember, a couple of years ago, parents and children were being separated at the border.

您可能还记得，几年前，父母和孩子在边境被分开。

They also sometimes end up at places like this.

他们有时也会出现在这样的地方。

There's three of them in the country.

国内一共有三个。

It's a particular kind of aloneness.

这是一种特殊的孤独。

You're in a group, but at the same time, being kept away from the rest of the world.

你在一个群体中，但同时又与世界其他地方隔绝。

A little while ago, this mom and her son were offered a way out, but there was a catch.

不久前，这位母亲和她的儿子得到了一条出路，但有一个问题。

One of our producers, Nadia Reiman, explains.

我们的一位制作人 Nadia Reiman 解释道。

When I asked the mom, who I'm calling Yiret, to describe the detention center to me, she said, "Can't you all just secretly fly a drone or something so you can see it?" She's a get-things-done kind of person.

当我问这位妈妈（我叫她伊雷特）向我描述一下拘留中心时，她说：“你们就不能偷偷地驾驶无人机或其他东西，这样你们就可以看到它吗？”她是一个把事情做好的人。

"You could attach a wire to a psychologist who comes in here and make recordings." She says she has ideas like this all the time.

“你可以给心理学家接一根电线，让他来这里录音。”她说她一直有这样的想法。

The Dilley family detention center is the biggest of its kind.

迪利家庭拘留中心是同类拘留中心中最大的。

It's a bunch of trailers, like the temporary housing kind arranged in clusters, surrounded by a chain-linked fence.

这是一堆拖车，就像临时住房那样，成群排列，周围环绕着铁链围栏。

There's a cafeteria and a gym area with arts and crafts supplies.

酒店设有自助餐厅和提供艺术和手工艺品的健身区。

It's all moms and kids.

都是妈妈和孩子。

When Yiret and her son first got there, she talked constantly with the other moms, about which guards were nice and which were jerks, about the many ways the food could be better, about all the people they'd left behind.

当伊雷特和她的儿子第一次到达那里时，她不断地与其他妈妈谈论哪些警卫是好人，哪些是混蛋，关于食物可以做得更好的许多方法，关于他们留下的所有人。

Her son, who I'm calling Alejandro, he's eight.

她的儿子，我叫他亚历杭德罗，他八岁了。

He made up this game that he'd play all the time.

他发明了这个他一直玩的游戏。

He would play pretend as if he was the judge.

他会假装自己是法官。

My goodness, he would come out with all the other kids, and he would sit down.

天哪，他会和其他孩子一起出来，然后坐下来。

And he would say, "I'm the judge."

他会说：“我是法官。”

It was immigration court, of course.

当然是移民法庭。

He'd never actually been there, but he pieced all of this together from stuff he'd heard.

他从未真正去过那里，但他根据自己听到的东西将所有这些拼凑起来。

[SPANISH] Interpreter And then he'd tell one of the other kids that he was the officer and the other kid that he was the attorney.

[西班牙语] 翻译然后他会告诉其他一个孩子他是警官，另一个孩子他是律师。

And he would ask the psychologist for lots of pieces of paper and for folders.

他会向心理学家要很多纸和文件夹。

I mean, I even participated.

我是说，我什至参与了。

I would join in to prepare a written paper so that we could have the kids sign.

我会一起准备一份书面文件，以便我们可以让孩子们签名。

He was a pretty lenient judge.

他是一位相当宽容的法官。

He'd give all the kids asylum most of the time.

大多数时候他都会给所有的孩子提供庇护。

[SPANISH] Interpreter Sometimes when he would get mad, he'd tell them, I'm denying you asylum.

[西班牙语] 翻译有时，当他生气时，他会告诉他们，我拒绝给你庇护。

That was the only time where they would be like that.

那是他们唯一一次这样的时候。

They would be laughing.

他们会笑的。

And it made me feel, like, a nostalgia, because of how my son was with how he was doing mentally.

这让我感到一种怀旧之情，因为我儿子的精神状态如何。

Which was not great, especially after coronavirus got going.

这不太好，尤其是在冠状病毒爆发之后。

Alejandro wasn't allowed to roam around as much.

亚历杭德罗不被允许到处闲逛。

He mostly had to stay inside the trailer with his mom.

他大部分时间都得和妈妈呆在拖车里。

He'd pretend all the time that today was the day they were getting out, like he was trying to will it into existence.

他一直假装今天是他们离开的日子，就像他试图通过意志实现它一样。

Have faith, he'd say.

他会说，要有信心。

It will happen.

它会发生。

And then, one morning, a guard came and woke them up.

然后，一天早上，一名警卫过来把他们叫醒。

So I was sleepy because I tried to wake up my son later in the day so we wouldn't get up too early.

所以我很困，因为我试图在当天晚些时候叫醒我的儿子，这样我们就不会起得太早。

So I kept him sleeping until 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning.

于是我就让他睡到早上10:00或11:00。

That way, his day would be shorter and would go by faster.

这样一来，他的日子就会更短，也会过得更快。

And I did things like that.

我也做了类似的事情。

That day, they knocked on my door.

那天，他们敲了我的门。

And the officer told me, ma'am.

那位军官告诉我，女士。

She told me, they need you in court at 9:45.

她告诉我，他们需要你 9 点 45 分出庭。

OK, I told the officer.

好的，我告诉了警官。

And I was happy and I left the room.

我很高兴，然后离开了房间。

Happy because I said to myself, today, I'm getting out.

很高兴，因为我对自己说，今天，我要出去了。

She gets Alejandro and steps outside her trailer.

她抓住亚历杭德罗，走出她的拖车。

She merely sees that all of the other moms are also outside with their kids.

她只看到所有其他妈妈也都带着孩子在外面。

She's like, hey, I got called into court.

她就像，嘿，我被传唤到法庭了。

And they're all like, me, too.

他们都像我一样。

Everyone had been summoned.

每个人都被召唤了。

They go to this huge trailer that functions as a courthouse.

他们来到了这个用作法院的巨大拖车。

And as soon as they walk in, they get sent to different courtrooms.

他们一走进去，就被送到不同的法庭。

There's like 10 of them per room-- no judge, no lawyers.

每个房间大约有 10 个人——没有法官，没有律师。

Just a couple of ICE officers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

只有几名 ICE 官员、移民和海关执法人员。

Yiret sat down and put Alejandro on her lap.

伊雷特坐下来，把亚历杭德罗放在她的腿上。

Some of the other moms had their kids with them, too.

其他一些妈妈也带着孩子。

An ICE officer began speaking to them.

一名 ICE 官员开始与他们交谈。

"We need a signature from you guys," she says the officer told them in Spanish.

“我们需要你们的签名，”她说，警官用西班牙语告诉他们。

So that the kids can go with their sponsor, a relative or a responsible adult who could take care of them.

这样孩子们就可以和他们的担保人、亲戚或可以照顾他们的负责任的成年人一起去。

In other words, her son could be released, but she would stay here, alone in detention.

也就是说，她的儿子可以被释放，而她却要一个人被关押在这里。

He didn't say separate, but we're not dumb.

他没说分开，但我们又不傻。

And from the moment you're saying that you're talking about the kids staying and without me, obviously, it's a separation.

从你说你正在谈论孩子们留下来而没有我的那一刻起，显然，这是一次分离。

While this is happening, Alejandro is sitting there, just absorbing it all.

当这一切发生时，亚历杭德罗坐在那里，只是吸收这一切。

He doesn't say anything.

他什么也没说。

The officer said they should sign because of the coronavirus.

该官员说，由于冠状病毒，他们应该签字。

Their kids would be safer somewhere else, not locked up in here.

他们的孩子在其他地方会更安全，而不是被锁在这里。

So one of the moms got up and said, "Excuse me." She said, "How could you think that if this is dangerous for the kids, it's not dangerous for us, the coronavirus?"

于是一位妈妈站起来说：“对不起。”她说：“你怎么会认为，如果这对孩子们来说很危险，那么对我们冠状病毒来说就不危险呢？”

There is COVID at Dilley.

迪利有新冠疫情。

Some of the guards and some of the ICE officers have tested positive.

一些警卫和一些 ICE 官员的检测结果呈阳性。

The document the ICE officer handed Yiret to sign, it was in English.

ICE 官员交给 Yiret 签署的文件是英文的。

She asked for one in Spanish.

她要了一份西班牙语版的。

They said no. She asked if she could take a copy and show her lawyer first.

他们说不。她询问是否可以先拿一份副本给她的律师看。

They said no. So she started to quietly freak out.

他们说不。于是她开始悄悄地发慌。

Then she notices another one of the moms, a lady that had been there for about a year and always seemed to know what to do.

然后她注意到另一位妈妈，一位已经在那里呆了大约一年的女士，似乎总是知道该怎么做。

She gets up and goes to the bathroom.

她起身去洗手间。

So Yiret is like, I got to talk to her.

所以 Yiret 就想，我得和她谈谈。

Yiret takes Alejandro's hand and tries to follow her, but a guard stops them.

伊雷特拉着亚历杭德罗的手试图跟随她，但一名警卫阻止了他们。

No one's allowed to go to the bathroom together-- social distancing.

任何人都不允许一起去洗手间——保持社交距离。

Yiret's like, it's the boy.

Yiret 说，就是那个男孩。

He has to use the bathroom.

他必须使用浴室。

It works.

有用。

Once they're in the bathroom, she picks the stall next to the old-timer, who tells her, don't sign.

他们一进浴室，她就选了老前辈旁边的摊位，老前辈告诉她，不要签名。

You don't know where the kids will actually end up.

你不知道孩子们最终会去哪里。

Yiret is supposed to go back to the room at this point.

Yiret此时应该返回房间。

But she doesn't.

但她没有。

She improvises an escape.

她临时想出了逃跑的办法。

She and Alejandro start to leave the trailer.

她和亚历杭德罗开始离开拖车。

And when the guard asks, where are you going, she says, "We signed.

当警卫问你要去哪里时，她说：“我们签了字。

We're done." Then she and Alejandro run to another trailer.

我们完成了。”然后她和亚历杭德罗跑向另一辆拖车。

Where she can call a lawyer, which she does.

她可以打电话给律师，她也这么做了。

Her voice is really distinct, so I was like, is this Yiret?

她的声音非常清晰，所以我就想，这是 Yiret 吗？

And she was like, yes.

她说，是的。

She was talking really fast, and she sounded really worried and confused and had a lot of questions.

她语速非常快，听起来非常担心和困惑，并且有很多问题。

This is Ixchel Lopez.

这是伊克切尔·洛佩兹。

She's a paralegal for Proyecto Dilley.

她是 Proyecto Dilley 的律师助理。

It's a group that offers pro bono representation for families in detention.

该组织为被拘留家庭提供无偿代理服务。

Normally, there's always a team of them just sitting in a room at Dilley.

通常情况下，迪利的一个房间里总是坐着一群人。

But since COVID, they've had to work remotely.

但自从新冠疫情爆发以来，他们不得不远程工作。

So they came up with a way to still be there.

所以他们想出了一个方法来继续留在那里。

They made a hotline and took turns answering calls coming from the detention center.

他们拨打了热线电话，轮流接听看守所打来的电话。

That day was Ixchel's day.

那天是伊克切尔的日子。

Did it surprise you, in a way, that she was the first to call?

在某种程度上，她是第一个打电话给你的人，你是否感到惊讶？

Or were you kind of like, of course she'd be the first to call?

或者你是不是觉得她当然会第一个打电话？

Literally, I was like, of course.

从字面上看，我想，当然。

Of course.

当然。

Like, that was entirely unsurprising.

就像，这完全不足为奇。

I was like, out of everyone, it would be her.

我当时想，在所有人中，那就是她了。

Like, she's so badass.

比如说，她真是太坏了。

And she's so just, like, strong-willed, and she says it as it is.

她是如此公正，意志坚强，而且她就是这么说的。

She's like, this is messed up.

她说，这一切都搞砸了。

I think as soon as she said, OK, they're asking us if we want our children to be sent to live with our sponsors, I was like, oh my God.

我想，当她说，好吧，他们问我们是否希望我们的孩子被送到我们的资助者那里生活时，我当时就想，天哪。

Like, they're going to separate families again.

就像，他们将再次离散家庭。

And I remember hanging up with her and cussing up a storm and being like, what the fuck?

我记得挂断了她的电话，咒骂着一场暴风雨，然后说，他妈的怎么了？

Like, what?

比如，什么？

Ixchel starts texting, messaging, e-mailing what's going on to the rest of her team.

伊克切尔开始通过短信、短信和电子邮件向团队其他成员通报最新情况。

I think I hung up the phone and immediately got another call from--

我想我挂了电话，立即接到了另一个电话——

Oh, really?

哦，真的吗？

Ixchel Lopez Yeah, maybe within, like, two or three minutes.

伊克切尔·洛佩兹是的，也许在两三分钟之内。

It was another mom from Dilley.

这是迪利的另一位妈妈。

Frantic calls were also coming in to lawyers from the other two detention centers, all telling the same general story.

其他两个拘留中心的律师也接到了疯狂的电话，他们都讲述了同样的故事。

ICE was asking families to sign something.

ICE 要求家人签署一些文件。

But the whole thing was really confusing.

但整个事情确实令人困惑。

Some people were saying that they weren't even shown a document.

有些人说他们甚至没有出示文件。

Some were told, sign this.

有些人被告知，签署这个。

It just proves we talked to you.

这只是证明我们和你谈过了。

But others say ICE was threatening them, telling them that they had to sign, no choice.

但其他人表示，ICE 正在威胁他们，告诉他们必须签字，别无选择。

That the officer asked if they would give their child up for adoption.

In many cases, the officers asked all of this in front of the kids.

在很多情况下，警察会在孩子们面前询问所有这些问题。

Within 24 hours, the lawyers from all three family detention centers got on a giant Zoom call with press to sound the alarm, arguing it was illegal to break up families like this by asking parents to sign something they couldn't even understand.

24小时之内，三个家庭看守所的律师就通过Zoom向媒体发出了巨大的电话，向媒体敲响了警钟，称要求父母签署他们甚至看不懂的东西来拆散家庭是违法的。

And ICE wouldn't give the lawyers a copy of the document.

ICE 不会向律师提供该文件的副本。

ICE did put out a statement shortly after this, saying the officers were just going over a routine form with the detainees.

ICE 在此后不久发表了一份声明，称警察只是与被拘留者一起查看例行表格。

When Yiret hangs up with Ixchel, she looks over at her son, who's been quiet this whole time.

当伊雷特挂断伊克切尔的电话时，她看着她的儿子，他一直很安静。

[SPANISH] Interpreter His little eyes were filled with tears.

[西班牙语] 翻译他的小眼睛里充满了泪水。

He was worried since he thought that he was going to be separated from me.

And he told me, "Don't sign.

他告诉我，“不要签字。

Because wherever you go, I go."

因为无论你去哪里，我也去哪里。”

While Yiret was making the phone call, the guards had started looking for her.

当伊雷特打电话时，警卫开始寻找她。

They put her name and photo up on the screens that are all around the facility.

他们将她的名字和照片贴在设施周围的屏幕上。

As soon as she stepped out of the phone room, a guard recognized her, made her go back to the trailer where all the other moms were with the ICE officers.

她一走出电话室，一名警卫就认出了她，并让她回到拖车，那里所有其他妈妈都和 ICE 官员在一起。

When she gets there, the officers looked pissed at everyone.

And the other moms were saying, "No one sign.

其他妈妈们说：“没有人表示。

No one sign," signaling for everybody to not sign.

没有人签名”，示意所有人不要签名。

And I'm going to be honest.

我说实话。

I was telling the others that were there to not sign.

As a parent, you're supposed to be the one in charge.

作为父母，你应该是负责的人。

It's an unspoken pact between you and your kid.

这是你和孩子之间不言而喻的约定。

You're the one who decides things.

你是决定事情的人。

But in detention, so much was out of Yiret's control.

This was a rare moment where she got to at least say no.

[SPANISH] Interpreter I felt like I had an authority at that moment, when I was saying that to them.

But from then on, I felt-- you know how I felt?

但从那时起，我感觉——你知道我的感觉吗？

I felt like I was trembling.

我感觉自己在颤抖。

Like, this trembling took over my body.

就像，这种颤抖占据了我的身体。

Interpreter Because I felt like I was defying an authority, and I never thought that I would do something like that.

You know, they're the Department of ICE, and you can't say no to them if they decide to kick you out of the country.

你知道，他们是 ICE 部门，如果他们决定将你赶出这个国家，你不能拒绝他们。

I mean, we're in their hands.

我的意思是，我们在他们手中。

I reached out to ICE multiple times about this, but they haven't responded.

我多次就此事联系 ICE，但他们没有回复。

But the lawyers I talked to have a theory about why the ICE officers were doing this, though.

The government isn't supposed to detain kids longer than 20 days.

政府拘留儿童的时间不应超过 20 天。

But some families have been in detention for months.

There's this federal judge, Judge Dolly Gee, who has been basically yelling at ICE about this for a while.

联邦法官 Dolly Gee 已经就此事对 ICE 大喊大叫有一段时间了。

She keeps getting more and more annoyed.

她越来越生气了。

And the court deadline was coming up.

法庭的最后期限即将到来。

So the lawyers think ICE was trying to cover their ass.

Ask parents if they were willing to separate from their kids.

And when they said no, well, they could tell the judge, it's the family's fault.

当他们说不时，他们可以告诉法官，这是家人的错。

They won't release the kids.

他们不会释放孩子们。

So we have to keep everyone in detention.

所以我们必须拘留所有人。

But once a question like, do you want your kids to be separated from you, is said, you can't really hear it.

但一旦有人问你是否希望你的孩子和你分开，你就听不到了。

It becomes part of your world.

它成为你世界的一部分。

For days after this happened, Alejandro and his friends couldn't stop talking about it.

They kept asking each other's moms if they had signed.

他们不断询问对方的妈妈是否签名了。

Alejandro asked Yiret, too.

亚历杭德罗也问伊雷特。

She kept saying, no, you know I didn't.

她一直说，不，你知道我没有。

You were there.

你当时就在那里。

[SPANISH] Interpreter He was just scared.

[西班牙语] 翻译他只是害怕。

Look, he would sleep with me.

瞧，他会和我一起睡。

This kid, he couldn't even go to the playroom to play because he was scared that ICE was going to grab him and take him.

这个孩子，他连游戏室都不敢去玩，因为他害怕ICE会抓住他并带走他。

And sometimes, I'd tell him, "Son, go grab a-- go grab some milk." And he said, "No, mom, the officers are there, and they could take me." And he would sometimes even scream in his sleep.

有时，我会告诉他，“儿子，去拿点牛奶。”他说：“不，妈妈，警察就在那里，他们可以带走我。”有时他甚至会在睡梦中尖叫。

And so I'd ask him, "What's wrong?" And he'd say, "Mom, I'm scared.

所以我会问他：“怎么了？”他会说：“妈妈，我很害怕。

Don't sleep," he'd tell me, "because that's when they're going to take me."

For what it's worth, as far as I can tell, when presented with the option of letting their kid out or being stuck together in detention, every single family chose to stay.

据我所知，就其价值而言，当面临让孩子出去或被关押在一起的选择时，每个家庭都选择留下来。

All the lawyers I talked to-- and they represent almost every single family in these facilities-- they told me they didn't know of anyone who agreed to separate.

我采访过的所有律师——他们几乎代表了这些设施中的每个家庭——他们告诉我，他们不知道有谁同意分居。

Better to be alone together.

最好单独在一起。

At least this was a loneliness they knew.

至少这是他们所知道的孤独。

Nadia Reiman is one of the producers of our show.

纳迪亚·雷曼 (Nadia Reiman) 是我们节目的制片人之一。

Alejandro and his mom did finally get released seven weeks ago, but it had nothing to do with the judge's order.

Alejandro had to have his appendix out, and they couldn't care for him at the facility.

The judge has extended the deadline for ICE to figure out what to do with kids who have been detained longer than 20 days.

法官延长了 ICE 决定如何处理被拘留超过 20 天的孩子的最后期限。

ICE has until the end of the month.

ICE 截止到月底。

We've arrived at Act Four, Applied Bob Studies.

我们已经到了第四幕，应用鲍勃研究。

Can we take a moment to review some of the negative connotations the word "isolation" brings up?

我们能否花点时间回顾一下“孤立”一词所带来的一些负面含义？

Think of the penalty box or solitary confinement.

想想惩罚箱或单独监禁。

But what if that isolation is a choice you make?

但如果这种孤立是你的选择呢？

Does that aloneness feel like something very different?

那种孤独感是不是感觉很不一样？

I spoke to someone with an idea of the answer to that question-- writer Sandy Allen.

我采访了一位知道这个问题答案的人——作家桑迪·艾伦。

The story begins in 2017.

故事要从2017年说起。

Sandy was living in Brooklyn with an increasing feeling that they wanted to live closer to nature.

桑迪住在布鲁克林，越来越觉得他们想要生活得更接近自然。

It wasn't that they'd fallen out of love with cities.

这并不是说他们不再热爱城市。

This was less about running away than it was about actively running toward something-- something green and lush.

这与其说是逃跑，不如说是积极地奔向某样东西——某种绿色郁郁葱葱的东西。

And on top of that, Sandy was beginning to come out as a non-binary.

最重要的是，桑迪开始表现出非二元性别的特征。

I think I was just starting to play with such things as dressing a little more androgynously and leaving the house and/or going to a barbershop for men and getting a haircut there and trying to kind of like violate that taboo and not feel too weird if all these men were staring at me as I got a haircut.

我想我才刚刚开始尝试这样的事情，比如穿得更中性一些，离开家和/或去男士理发店在那里理发，并试图有点违反这个禁忌，如果我理发时所有这些男人都盯着我看，我也不会觉得太奇怪。

In those months of change, they'd begun to notice how their very appearance seemed to make the air charged.

在这几个月的变化中，他们开始注意到他们的外表似乎让空气充满了活力。

I had shifted from appearing like a certain thing in public, which was like a white woman, to appearing like this other thing, which was this white-- I don't know.

我已经从在公共场合表现得像某个东西，就像一个白人妇女，变成了看起来像另一个东西，就是这个白人——我不知道。

Like, are you a dude or what?

比如，你是个家伙还是什么？

And I was, I think, all of the time becoming more and more aware of everybody who saw me, and what did I look like to them, and how much of a threat was a random woman in a woman's room going to be to me.

Was I going to get weird looks?

我会受到奇怪的目光吗？

Was I going to get yelled at?

我会被骂吗？

Was I going to get hostile comments muttered at me?

我会受到敌意的评论吗？

And I'm a sensitive flower.

我是一朵敏感的花。

I'm a very, like-- I really-- I don't know.

我是一个非常、我真的、我不知道的人。

I'm very sensitive to people's feelings and emotions.

我对人们的感受和情绪非常敏感。

And so I think there was a sense of, it would probably be wiser for me to cut down on the volume of interactions that I have with strangers.

所以我认为，减少与陌生人的互动量对我来说可能会更明智。

But Sandy had at their fingertips an example of how to handle the situation, their Uncle Bob.

但桑迪手头有一个如何处理这种情况的例子，那就是他们的鲍勃叔叔。

At some point, he'd also decided that the volume of interactions in his life was way too big.

在某些时候，他也认为自己生活中的互动量太大了。

And he took decisive, radical action.

他采取了果断、激进的行动。

He moved a few hours away from where he'd grown up in the Bay Area to somewhere farther up north, a place mostly free of other humans.

他从湾区长大的地方搬到了几个小时外的更北部的地方，那里几乎没有其他人类。

Sandy had known Bob as a sort of weird figure who lived a mostly solitary existence.

桑迪知道鲍勃是一个奇怪的人物，他大部分时间都过着孤独的生活。

Sometimes they'd see him at Christmas or at their grandfather's vacation home in northern Minnesota.

有时他们会在圣诞节或明尼苏达州北部祖父的度假屋见到他。

Bob liked to have long conversations, and sometimes he'd leave long, rambling messages on Sandy's family's answering machine, playing his music or comedy skits.

Growing up, Sandy didn't see Bob as a kindred spirit.

在成长过程中，桑迪并不认为鲍勃是志趣相投的人。

In a family that didn't talk directly about things, Bob was an incomplete picture, an example of failure.

在一个不直接谈论事情的家庭中，鲍勃是一个不完整的画面，一个失败的例子。

As a teenager, Bob had been given the psychiatric diagnosis of schizophrenia and was repeatedly hospitalized and prescribed antipsychotic medication, sometimes against his will.

In family lore, he was kind of this troubled guy, who'd got kicked out of high school and then bounced between psych hospitals and friends' couches.

Sandy and Bob weren't close.

桑迪和鲍勃关系并不亲密。

And then, one day, in 2009, just as Sandy had started grad school in Iowa, they got a package in the mail.

然后，2009 年的一天，正当桑迪开始在爱荷华州读研究生时，他们收到了一个包裹。

Bob had written his autobiography and sent it to them.

鲍勃写了他的自传并发送给他们。

I initially got this text in the mail from my hermit uncle that was typed in all caps on a typewriter and 60 pages.

我最初是从隐士叔叔的邮件中收到这段文字的，它是用打字机用大写字母打出来的，共 60 页。

And it had swear words and slurs, and it was a mess.

而且里面有脏话和诽谤，场面一片混乱。

And it was-- I was just like, what is this?

我当时想，这是什么？

I don't want this, you know?

我不想要这个，你知道吗？

And at the time, I would have thought, OK, this guy-- as I would have called him way back, my crazy Uncle Bob-- my crazy Uncle Bob and me, we are as far apart as two people can be.

I would have thought in my heart, here I am.

我心里想，我在这里。

I am a scholastic achiever.

我是一个学业有成的人。

And here's Uncle Bob, who lives in the desert.

这是住在沙漠里的鲍勃叔叔。

And I've been to his house once, and it was full of cigarette smoke and bibles and a TV that he hadn't turned off in decades.

我去过他家一次，那里充满了香烟烟雾和圣经，还有一台他几十年来没有关过的电视。

And I kind of got out of there and was like, all right, I don't really need to know that guy.

我离开了那里，然后想，好吧，我真的不需要认识那个人。

But then Sandy got to reading the manuscript.

但后来桑迪开始阅读手稿。

And they didn't just read it.

他们不只是读了它。

They dove into it, tried to figure out who Bob was, even started writing a book about him.

他们深入研究，试图找出鲍勃是谁，甚至开始写一本关于他的书。

And they discovered something.

他们发现了一些东西。

Bob had solved for himself a problem that his mental health professionals and the world in general hadn't been able to.

鲍勃为自己解决了一个他的心理健康专家和整个世界都无法解决的问题。

Bob had managed to bring out the best version of his life, living alone, far away from the crush of people.

鲍勃成功地展现了他生活中最好的一面，独自生活，远离人群。

And Sandy found that Bob was mostly content.

桑迪发现鲍勃基本上很满足。

And I saw that as a model for, like, OK, you've realized you're incompatible with society at large, perhaps.

我认为这是一个模型，就像，好吧，你可能已经意识到你与整个社会不相容。

So what do you do?

那么你做什么呢？

I was like, well, I kind of have a guidebook here.

我当时想，好吧，我这里有一本指南。

And so they took Bob's example and moved.

所以他们以鲍勃为榜样并采取了行动。

In 2017, Sandy and their boyfriend, now husband, moved upstate to the Catskills.

2017 年，桑迪和他们的男友（现在的丈夫）搬到了州北部的卡茨基尔。

They weren't under any romantic illusions about country living.

他们对乡村生活没有任何浪漫的幻想。

It's like, if I go to a grocery store or I go to the post office, an old man would stare at me the whole time I grocery shopped.

就像，如果我去杂货店或邮局，一个老人会在我买杂货的整个过程中盯着我看。

Or little kids would debate what gender I was in front of me.

或者小孩子会在我面前争论我的性别。

You know what I mean?

你知道我的意思？

That kind of stuff could happen here, just as well as it could happen anywhere.

这种事情可能发生在这里，就像它可能发生在任何地方一样。

And there isn't really anywhere where I think I feel entirely safe, other than my house, [LAUGHS] which is why I like my house so much.

除了我的房子之外，没有任何地方能让我感到完全安全，[笑]这就是为什么我如此喜欢我的房子。

Tell me about your setup then.

然后告诉我你的设置。

So how isolated is life up there, really?

那么那里的生活真的有多孤立吗？

So when we moved here where I sit on my front porch, I don't see another human dwelling.

因此，当我们搬到这里，我坐在前廊上时，我没有看到其他人类住宅。

It's very much like my neighbors are trees, and trees and trees and trees.

这很像我的邻居是树，树，树，树。

It's just-- it's astonishingly beautiful in a million ways every day.

它每天都以一百万种方式呈现出惊人的美丽。

I mean, I think that is mental health care.

我的意思是，我认为这就是心理保健。

Before COVID-19, Sandy's husband traveled a lot for work.

在出现新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 疫情之前，桑迪的丈夫经常出差工作。

Sometimes Sandy was alone for weeks at a time.

有时桑迪一次会独自一人好几个星期。

It felt incredibly challenging at times, especially early on.

有时感觉非常具有挑战性，尤其是在早期。

I was like, oh, no. I felt like, oh, what did I just do?

我当时想，哦，不。我感觉，哦，我刚刚做了什么？

Like, I've replaced people with trees.

就像，我用树代替了人。

I had that feeling of like, oh, no, I'm going to have no friends.

我有一种感觉，哦，不，我将没有朋友了。

And then I remembered Bob.

然后我想起了鲍勃。

And I remembered, well, Bob didn't let living in the desert stop him from having friends.

我记得，好吧，鲍勃并没有让沙漠生活阻止他交朋友。

Bob built a system for himself, where he interacted with people, but not so many and not so much that it became unwanted noise in his head.

鲍勃为自己建立了一个系统，他可以在其中与人互动，但互动的次数不会太多，也不会太多，以至于在他的头脑中产生不必要的噪音。

He was only as alone as he needed to be.

他只是需要一个人就够了。

It turns out Bob, a man who proudly called himself a hermit, living only with his two dogs, was actually something of a social savant.

事实证明，鲍勃，一个自豪地称自己为隐士，只和他的两只狗住在一起的人，实际上是一位社交专家。

I think in Bob's specific case, it totally surprised me.

我认为鲍勃的具体案例让我感到非常惊讶。

I got on the phone with every person who had known him, who I could possibly find, who would talk to me.

我给每一个认识他、我能找到的、愿意和我说话的人通了电话。

And everybody who I found, everybody I spoke with was like, you will not believe it.

我找到的每个人，与我交谈过的每个人都说，你不会相信。

Bob used to call all the time.

鲍勃过去常常打电话。

Bob would stay in touch.

鲍勃会保持联系。

And I was kind of like, isn't that funny how a norm here seems to be, if you're physically isolated, you have to really cut off from people?

我当时想，如果你在身体上与世隔绝，你就必须真正与人隔绝，这似乎是一种常态，这不是很有趣吗？

And I think Bob, if anything, because of the life he'd led and all of the ways in which I think he was a lonely person, he was actually, I think, really adept at overcoming maybe that little voice inside your head that says, all right, don't reach out.

You know, like, don't do that.

你知道，就像，不要这样做。

That would be weird, or whatever.

那会很奇怪，或者其他什么。

Like, Bob was not worried about that.

就像，鲍勃并不担心这一点。

He was calling people.

他正在打电话给人们。

And I think it's forced me in a way to-- I don't know-- not really accept physical isolation as an excuse for being disconnected.

我认为这在某种程度上迫使我——我不知道——不真正接受物理隔离作为与外界隔绝的借口。

I try to tell myself, like, hey, don't just stop talking to people because you live out here.

我试着告诉自己，嘿，不要因为你住在这里而停止与人交谈。

It's something that you have to invest in.

这是你必须投资的东西。

Sandy wanted to learn how to be alone, and how to do it comfortably.

桑迪想学习如何独处，以及如何舒适地独处。

In their words, "to just hang out with themself." And Bob provided a model.

用他们的话来说，“只是和自己一起出去玩”。鲍勃提供了一个模型。

His big three tenets were creativity, community, and spirituality.

他的三大原则是创造力、社区和灵性。

Bob was like this just example I had kind of in my head of like, OK, you're alone.

鲍勃就像我脑海中的一个例子，好吧，你是孤独的。

What are you going to do about it?

你打算怎么做？

You know what to do.

你知道该怎么做。

Bob showed you.

鲍勃向你展示了。

Like, it's not the same stuff.

就像，这不是同一个东西。

I don't read the Bible and play the guitar and watch Joel Osteen and call my cousin, Jane.

我不读《圣经》，不弹吉他，不看乔尔·欧斯汀，也不打电话给我的表弟简。

I don't do the same stuff that Bob did.

我不做鲍勃做的同样的事情。

I do call Jane.

我确实打电话给简。

But I had to figure out what are my versions of read the Bible, play guitar.

但我必须弄清楚我的读圣经、弹吉他的版本是什么。

Their version of that was singing and playing the piano, baking bread, and, where possible, growing food and sharing it with their small community.

Would you say that you've ended up getting what you wanted?

你会说你最终得到了你想要的吗？

Would you-- did it make your life better in the ways that you hoped it would?

你会——它会让你的生活以你希望的方式变得更好吗？

Oh, I mean, honestly, Bim, I don't even remember what the world was before.

哦，我的意思是，老实说，Bim，我什至不记得以前的世界是什么样的。

I mean, I feel like my whole consciousness began about three years ago when I moved to this house.

我的意思是，我觉得我的整个意识大约是在三年前我搬到这所房子时开始的。

That is a big thing to say.

这是一件大事。

Sandy Allen Is that weird?

桑迪·艾伦这很奇怪吗？

I don't remember.

我不记得了。

For me, this is my whole universe now, is like this place, the weather here today and what's going on in my garden.

对我来说，这就是我现在的整个宇宙，就像这个地方，今天这里的天气以及我花园里发生的事情。

I think I've just, like-- yeah, I've had a full head transplant of some kind.

我想我只是，是的，我接受了某种形式的全头移植手术。

Even since the first afternoon I was here, I was just like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

即使从我来到这里的第一天下午起，我就一直想，是的，是的，是的，是的，是的，是的。

This is what I want to be doing.

Sandy is not alone-- not really.

The same way Bob wasn't either.

Instead, they're in a sort of self-governing isolation, which is different to the misery of COVID-19 driving us into our own homes indefinitely.

相反，他们处于一种自我管理的孤立状态，这与 COVID-19 迫使我们无限期地呆在自己家里的痛苦不同。

Sandy's isolation is completely under their control.

桑迪的孤立完全在他们的掌控之中。

They looked squarely at aloneness and made decisions about how to manage it.

他们正视孤独，并决定如何管理它。

Alone is one of those words that I immediately kind of wonder, aren't we all alone?

孤独是我立即想知道的词之一，我们不都是孤独的吗？

Is there anybody who does not feel very alone?

I would love to meet that person.

There's stuff that can make that even more profound.

有些东西可以让这一点变得更加深刻。

And I think when you're queer-- or trans maybe, too-- you just know that some people aren't going to be in your life forever.

我认为当你是酷儿时——或者也可能是跨性别者——你就会知道有些人不会永远出现在你的生活中。

For me, coming out has entailed a fair amount of social loss.

对我来说，出柜会带来相当大的社会损失。

As long as you're alive, you're going to have to contend with being inside your head, being inside your story, being inside the world, which is full of prejudice and bullshit.

I think that for me, that really thinking about not let's solve it all, or like, how will I combat loneliness forever.

我认为对我来说，真正思考的是不要让我们解决所有问题，或者像，我将如何永远对抗孤独。

Definitely, I've had these moments where I'm like, wow, I've really set myself up to just be alone.

当然，我也曾经历过这样的时刻，哇，我真的让自己一个人呆着。

I've tried to kind of give myself permission to embrace, yeah, I'm weird, you know?

我试着允许自己拥抱，是的，我很奇怪，你知道吗？

I'm not normal.

我不正常。

I've never been normal.

我从来都不是正常人。

There was never a moment of my life when I understood whatever a person who was assigned woman at birth or man at birth and just feels that way-- I don't know what that is.

I've never known what that is.

So for me, it's so freeing to just be like, yeah, I live in the country by myself for the most part.

所以对我来说，是的，我大部分时间都独自住在乡下，这真是太自由了。

And I can walk around topless.

And I've had top surgery.

And I don't care if anyone drives by and sees my scars.

我不在乎是否有人开车经过并看到我的伤疤。

This is who I am.

这就是我。

And life is glorious.

而生命是辉煌的。

And let's show up for it, you know?

Bob wasn't sitting in the desert, going, oh, woe is me.

鲍勃并没有坐在沙漠里，说，哦，我真可怜。

I'm sure he had minutes and days where he felt that way.

我确信他曾有过这样的感觉。

I think he did sometimes get really down about some of the experiences that he had in his life.

我认为他有时确实会对自己一生中的一些经历感到非常沮丧。

Especially the first time he was in a hospital, I think a lot of stuff happened to him that really was hard.

尤其是他第一次住院的时候，我想他身上发生了很多事情，真的很难受。

And I think he also was someone who, despite a lot, figured out how to sit down at his typewriter or pick up his guitar and continue on.

我认为他也是一个尽管经历了很多事情却知道如何坐在打字机前或拿起吉他继续前进的人。

Sandy Allen, their book about their Uncle Bob is called A Kind of Miraculous Paradise, A True Story About Schizophrenia.

桑迪·艾伦（Sandy Allen）写了一本关于鲍勃叔叔的书，书名叫《一种神奇的天堂，一个关于精神分裂症的真实故事》。

Credits Bim Adewunmi Our program was produced today by me and Nadia Reiman.

致谢 Bim Adewunmi 今天我们的节目是由我和 Nadia Reiman 制作的。

People who worked on today's show include Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Noor Gill, Damien Graves, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker.

Our managing editors are Sarah Abdurrahman and Diane Wu.

我们的执行编辑是 Sarah Abdurrahman 和 Diane Wu。

Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum.

我们的执行编辑是大卫·凯斯滕鲍姆。

Special thanks today to Rob Rosenthal, Melissa Flores, Shay Fluharty, Bridget Cambria, Andrea Meza, Leroy Chiao, Julia Furlan, Jami Sunkel, Christopher W.

Clark of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Laela Sayigh, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

康奈尔大学鸟类学实验室的克拉克、莱拉·萨伊和伍兹霍尔海洋研究所。

You can hear the original version of Lilly's story about the whale that may or may not be lonely at transom.org, a website that gives people the tools and inspiration to make their own Public Radio.

Lilly made this as part of a training they offer called the Transom Story Workshop.

礼来公司将其作为他们提供的名为横梁故事研讨会的培训的一部分。

Visit transom.org to learn about their workshops and to check out all the resources they offer.

请访问 transom.org 了解他们的研讨会并查看他们提供的所有资源。

Our website, thisamericanlife.org.

我们的网站 thisamericanlife.org。

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

《美国生活》由公共广播电台 PRX 向公共广播电台播出。

Thanks to our show's usual host, Ira Glass.

You know, he has Netflix, but not HBO Max, which led to a horrible realization about his favorite sitcom.

你知道，他有 Netflix，但没有 HBO Max，这让他对他最喜欢的情景喜剧有了一个可怕的认识。

I had that feeling of like, oh, no, I'm going to have no friends.

我有一种感觉，哦，不，我将没有朋友了。

I'm Bim Adewunmi.

我是比姆·阿德温米。

We'll be back next week with more stories of This American Life.

下周我们将带来更多《美国生活》的故事。

This American Life is produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago and delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange.

《This American Life》与 WBEZ Chicago 合作制作，并由 PRX 公共广播电台传送到各电台。

中文为机器翻译，仅供参考。