亚马逊给我推荐一本叫《隐城》（Invisible Cities）的书。看了。
摘录自卡尔维诺《隐城》:
Kublai Khan had noticed that Marco Polo's cities resembled one another, as if the passage from one to another involved not a journey but a change of elements. Now, from each city Marco described to him, the Great Khan's mind set out on its own, and after dismantling the city piece by piece, he reconstructed it in other ways, substituting components, shifting them, inverting them.
这段的大概意思是，大汗发现马可波罗说的城，每个组成元素都差不多。马可波罗在一旁描述，大汗也不认真听了，脑子里就把之前描述过的城的元素拆了重新组合，然后跟马可波罗说，看，你说的我都知道，我不出门也能经历了你说的这些城。
"From the number of imaginable cities we must exclude those whose elements are assembled without a connecting thread, an inner rule, a perspective, a discourse. With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else. "……"Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours."
然后马可波罗回答，不然，每个城的元素都是有机组合在一起的。如果一个城真的只是简单的元素堆砌，而这些元素没有有机关联，没有潜藏规律，背后没有想法，理念和灵魂，那么这样的城并无想象的价值。城就像梦，梦里能见到想象力所及的一切，然而梦的核心是欲望与恐惧。同理，没有欲望和恐惧就不成城了。城也相信自己或者是应运而生，或者是设计而成。然而你爱一个城，并不是因为里面有你爱的那些元素，而是因为它给了你一些答案，一些和内心想法暗相呼应的答案。
很多年以前，我写过一篇《旅行的意义》，大概的意思是说，旅行其实看不到什么新的东西，最多只是在途中读自己的心。后来去世界最大的尼亚瓜拉瀑布，感觉大自然之威不外如是之后，就很少出游了。就在像文中的大汗一样，只靠想象力把万物排列组合，觉得更好。
这个书倒是给了我一个新的视角来看旅行的意义。别用脑子看，用心看，它会拨动你心中的弦的。想想也对啊，汉诗也都是那么些元素排列组合，天对地雨对风大陆对长空山花对海树赤日对苍穹。可是汉诗却能写尽万千心绪，李杜诗篇万古流传。原来如此嘛。
书不错。
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