| Everyone has a moment in history, which
belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their
most powerful sway over him; and afterward when you say to this person "the
world today" or "life" or "reality", he will assume that you mean this moment,
even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed motions,
imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment
forever. For me, this moment---four years in a moment in history--was the war. The war was and is reality for me. I still instinctively live and think in its atmosphere. These are some of its characteristics: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the president of the United States, and he always has been. The other two eternal world leaders are Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. America is not, never has been, and never will be what the songs and poems call it, a land of plenty. Nylon, meat, gasoline, and steel are rare. There are too many jobs and not enough workers. Money is very easy to earn but rather hard to spend, because there isn't very much to buy. Trains are always late and always crowded with "service men". The war will always be fought very far from America, and it will never end. Nothing in America stands still for very long, including the people who are always either leaving or on leave. People in America cry often. Sixteen is the key, crucial and natural age for a human being to be, and people of all other ages are ranged in an orderly manner ahead of and behind you as a harmonious setting for the sixteen-year-olds of the world. When you are sixteen, adults are slightly impressed and almost intimidated by you. This is a puzzle finally solved by the realization that they foresee your military future: fighting for them. You do not foresee it. To waste anything in America is immoral. String and tinfoil are treasures. Newspapers are always crowded with strange maps and names of towns, and every few months the earth seems to lurch(突然倾斜) from its path when you see something in the newspapers, such as the time Mussolini, who almost seemed one of the eternal leaders, is photographed hanging upside down on a meat hook. |