闻夕felicity对《木匠手记》的笔记(11)

报社教给我什么是机械的过程。坐在新闻间的桌子前，指尖噼里啪啦打着字，咔嗒咔嗒点击着鼠标，银幕灰暗的光亮映出我脸颊上苍白的皮肤和呆滞无神的双眼，我感觉到一种让大脑变得迟钝的机械化运作，一种不需要思考、不需要意义和目的的行动。 但是在这里，在铺瓷砖的时候，每一块瓷砖都有自己的位置，都是整体的一部分，每一次测量都有意义，每一次切割都有意义。它是重复的，的确如此，但它并不无聊。一天试工之后，我有一种感觉，那就是即便你切过几千块瓷砖，即便你用了一年瓷砖切割机，你还是要小心翼翼。尽管你已经能做得更快，做得更好，切得更直，更少卡住刀片——但你还是要集中注意力。铺瓷砖的重复性引发了存在感，一种具体、有形的即时感。

The newspaper taught me what rote was. Sitting at my desk in the newsroom, fingertips tip-tapping, click-clicking, the dull glow of the screen reflecting off the pale skin of my cheeks, my glazed eyes, I’d felt a brain-dulled mechanization, action without thought, action without meaning or purpose. But here, with the tiles, each one had its place, part of the whole, each measurement had a purpose, each cut. There was no slumped semi-consciousness. It was repetitive, yes, but somehow not boring. The sense I was getting on this try-out day was that even if you cut thousands of tiles, even if you spent a year at the tile saw, you’d still have to pay attention. Every time. You’d get faster. You’d get better—straighter cuts, less jamming of the blade—but you’d still have to focus. The repetition with the tiles provoked presence, a specific physical hereness.

我们接了一个新项目，在萨默维尔市一个死胡同里建一个后院木板露台。大约用了一周的时间。 现有的台子破碎、腐烂不堪，拆除掉它之后，我们用匙形取土器挖了四个木桩坑。匙形取土器下方有两个相对的铲子，上方是两个长长的把手，两只手一起用力把它往地上一戳就可以插到土里。当取土器进到土里之后，把两个把手拉开，合起两片铲子，就抓起了泥土，把土从坑里提出来堆在附近。这个工作需要做好几个小时，累得我胳膊酸疼。 每个坑都要挖到四英尺深，这算很深，让我想到了棺材。在美国东北部，对于支持木板露台等结构的木桩，规定深度就是四英尺。玛丽解释说，这是能够到达冰冻线以下的深度。冬天，地表以下的土壤都会结冰。低温钻进土壤下面，就好像二月份的时候，寒意渗进你的皮肤，进入你的血液和骨头里。土壤中的水分结成冰之后，体积在地下膨胀，巨大的力量挤压着所有阻挡它的东西，每英寸几万镑的力量，足以移动栅栏木桩、梁柱和楼房。春天到来的时候，你会看到一个栅栏木桩从土地里面升了起来，和其他的木桩不在一个水平面上，这就是发生了隆起。冰冻让地下的东西发生位移、隆起，就像肺吸气时胸腔会鼓起来，因此栅栏木桩的洞要挖到冰冻线以下这一点非常重要。 这些我以前都不知道。我从未考虑过泥土、水、低温以及它们与露台木桩之间的关系，从未考虑过所有这些地下的活动，从未考虑过我看不到的东西。做了木匠这一行，我开始注意所有路过的门前屋后的露台。我寻找着经加压处理的木材上呈现出的绿色痕迹。这些痕迹就是曾经被砷和其他化学物质浸泡的地方，以此来防水、防腐。自从玛丽告诉了我这种木料含砷这件事情，我再给露台砍木头的时候，就开始屏住呼吸。经加压处理的木材要比普通木材更重，而且摸起来有一种奇怪的冰冷、潮湿的感觉。当我在自己的小世界里行走的时候，我看到到处都是露台，露台上放着盆栽的天竺葵和吊挂的蕨类植物。栏杆上缠绕着闪烁的圣诞节灯饰。立柱上锁着的自行车装有带防水垫的软座椅。到处都是木板露台，每一根木头都被人测量过、切割过。 这就好像站在一连串我认为理所应当的事情前面。比如说，楼梯。对于在不同楼层之间移动、走到家门口、走到地下搭乘火车前往城市的其他地方来说，它都是能发挥作用的。相关的规定决定着台阶高度和深度。我们都知道如果一级台阶比前一级高出一点是种什么感觉，我们的脚趾可能会踢到台阶的边缘；或者更刺激一点，下楼梯的时候，在脚掌落地之前你所有的骨头都以为是一个结实的东西在等待着你，来承受你的重量——但是它没在那里。或者它来得太早了，把你从脚踝到膝盖都震了一下，撞击带来的震动让人不舒服。我们在即将睡着之时都会有那种坠落的感觉，向前迈步但没碰到地面，双腿在床单上突然蹬了一下，那是一种突降的感觉。肌肉的记忆很快就形成了——我们的骨头知道下一级台阶应该在哪里——重要的是台阶能够不负所望。关于台阶的规则可以追溯到很久以前。

We spent a week building a back deck on a dead-end street in Somerville. After demoing the existing one, crumbling and rotted, we dug four post holes with a post-hole digger, a dual-sided shovel with two long handles that you plunge into the earth in a two-handed combination of throwing and stabbing. Once it’s in, you pull the handles apart to bring the shovels together to grip the dirt, then lift the load out of the hole and pile it nearby. It took hours and made my shoulders ache. Each hole had to be four feet deep, which is a long way into the earth, a depth that brings coffins to mind. Four feet is regulation depth in the northeast to support a structure like a deck; that’s the depth that reaches below the frost line, Mary explained. In winter, soil freezes from the surface downward. Low temps creep in and down, the way on certain days in February the cold seems to seep below the surface of your skin and deep into your blood and bones. As water in the soil turns to ice, it expands under the earth, and presses in at whatever it comes up against with magnificent force. Tens of thousands of pounds per inch can shift a fence post, a beam, a building. When, come spring, you see a fence post that’s risen from the earth, uneven with its partner posts, heaving is what’s happened. The freeze makes what’s under the surface shift and heave, like a chest rising with a big breath in the lungs, so it’s important to dig fence-post holes below that frost line. I’d known none of this, had never considered dirt and water and cold and their relationship to deck posts, all the action underneath the surface, the stuff we never see. I started to notice stoops and decks and porches everywhere I went. I looked for the greenish tint of pressure-treated wood. It used to be impregnated with arsenic and other chemicals to repel water and prevent rot. When Mary told me about the arsenic, I started holding my breath as I chopped pieces for our deck. Pressure-treated wood is heavier than regular wood, and has a strange cold dampness to the touch. As I moved about my little world, I saw decks everywhere, with potted geraniums and hanging ferns. Twinkly Christmas lights twisted around railings. Balusters had bikes locked to them and waterproof cushions softened seats. Decks everywhere, each with wood that had been measured and cut by someone, and we were building one. It was like standing front row at a parade of things I took for granted. Stairs, for example. Useful for moving between floors, for reaching your front door, for heading underground to catch a train to another part of the city. Codes regulate height and depth. We all know the feeling of a stair rising higher than the one before it, catching our toe on its lip; or more jarring, in the descent, stepping down with the expectation in your every bone that a solid thing will be there to meet you, to take your weight—and it not being there. Or it comes up too soon and sends a jolt through the ankle, up into the knee, the ugly vibration of impact. We’ve all felt that falling feeling right before sleep, the plunging feeling where we take a step and miss and make a fast thrash in our sheets. Muscle memory is fast formed—our bones know where the next step should come—and it’s important that steps answer those expectations. Rules for stairs go back a long way.

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玛丽算出每级台阶的高度和踏板的宽度，还有从和后门高度持平的露台到地面需要搭建多少级台阶。我切了一些厚木板，做踏板和梯级竖版，我不敢相信正在发生的一切。三天之前，如果房子的主人从后门走出来，他还会掉下来，脑袋可能会撞到木桩。现在，这有一个露台，向下走七级台阶就可以抵达地面。我们没有建造金字塔或是巴特农神庙，但这也很不简单了。当我们把最后一根木桩的柱帽固定在露台上之后，我爬上楼梯，咧开嘴笑了起来。

在子宫和洞穴之后，人们晒干动物的毛皮，把它们吊起来做成帐篷。中世纪起，人们开始把吃饭和睡觉的地方分隔开。为了安全、取暖，一家人会睡在一间屋子里。随着卧室数量增多，供全家人围炉取暖的较大居家空间不再只有一处，这些都与阅读崛起的时间相吻合。墙壁起到保护的作用。它们把一些东西隔绝在外（如虫子、小偷、邻居、烦人的兄弟、熊、风），同时把一些东西保存在里面（如温暖、秘密、全家人晚上的安全）。 在新英格兰，和第一批殖民者一样古老的石墙在田野和森林中蜿蜒，石墙一边是花栗鼠和花纹蛇的小窝，另一边分隔开草地和农田。1872年美国农业部的一篇报道中称，新英格兰有长约达二十四万英里的石墙，犹如一条弯曲的脊柱。现在没有任何官方的统计，但是据估计，目前仍然存在着一半长度的石墙。这些石墙赋予了整体风景朴实之感。它们标志着人类曾经一砖一石的努力。每一块石头都是人们用双手搬起来，用牛拉过来，一块一块摆放好的。人们把田野清理干净，圈占土地；人们把野兽关进围栏之中，为家族的墓地建起栅栏。 墙壁证明了人类情感上的需要，这和结构上的需要一样重要。墙壁让我们不必经受风雨，不必见到陌生人。墙壁保证我们的私人活动和生活不被人所知。墙壁让我们不必把缺点和恐惧暴露在外。墙壁传递出的信号是：我们是脆弱的。

Humankind’s first wall? Made of cave. Or, possibly, of flesh, as Ovid has it: “We dwelled within our mother’s womb until . . . nature willed that we not lie so cramped in narrow walls . . . she drew us out into the open air from our first house.” After womb and cave, pelts were dried, strung up, and turned to tents. In medieval times, space for eating and sleeping went undivided. Families slept in the same room for safety and for warmth. The rise of bedrooms, of more than one big household room where families heaped together by the hearth, coincided with the rise of reading. Walls protect. They keep out (bugs, thieves, neighbors, annoying brothers, bears, wind). They keep in (heat, secrets, your family safe at night). In New England, stone walls, as old as the first colonizers, wind through fields and forests, home to chipmunks, garter snakes, dividing meadows and farmland property. A U.S. Department of Agriculture report in 1872 estimated that some 240,000 miles of stone walls crossed the contours of the New England landscape like winding spines. No official tally of mileage exists right now; it’s estimated that half of all those miles of stone remain. These walls impart an austerity to the landscape. They signal the presence and stone-by-stone effort of humans before. Each rock was hefted by hand or lugged by oxen and placed one by one, to clear fields and mark land, to pen beasts or rim a family graveyard. Walking paths through woods, forests thick with pine and oak and birch, sunlight speckling the path between the lace of needles and leaves, I’ve come across stone walls through the trees, away from the path, miles from the road. There’s something haunted in them. Long-gone farmers deposited these rocks here, held them, placed them, and in that effort, in the solid thing that remains, their human presence is felt, and their goneness. These walls serve as a chain backward through time. Dividing space—whether it’s cow pens or countries—is a powerful thing. Walls speak to an emotional need as much as a structural one. They protect us from wind and rain and strangers. They protect our private acts and parts. They protect us from our shortcomings and our fears. A wall broadcasts: I am vulnerable.

重新修建露台的时候，我们使用的是巴西胡桃木，这种木材上面有鲜艳的红色斑点。用电锯锯开胡桃木的时候，会闻到肉桂、糖蜜，还有点巧克力的味道。巴西胡桃木还有其他的名字，比如安不亚，因不伊亚，卡尼莱不依亚。不知为何，这些单词听起来就和闻起来一样；易培（不同的人可能会发“易培”和“爱培”两种音）是它的另一个名字。人们也会称它为铁木，这也很形象——巴西胡桃木在水中会沉底。随便拿起一块胡桃木，你马上就会发现，它和我们熟悉的木头不在一个重量级。像羽毛一样轻的雪松重量是每立方尺二十二磅，而坚硬结实的橡树密度很大，每立方尺有四十三磅，易培则是每立方尺六十六磅，它的密度非常大，所以我们要先用一种特殊的尖头钻在安装螺丝钉的位置钻孔，通过螺丝钉来固定露台木板和框架。钻孔的时候钻头柄温度太高了，我们不得不停了下来。钻孔的地方飘上来几缕烟雾，带着一股棉花糖的香甜味道，还有辛辣的后调，这种陌生的刺鼻气味和从烟囱里飘出来的味道感完全不同。我们吹着钻头，给它降温，又在空中挥舞着电钻，降低金属的温度。我们已经弄坏一个钻头了。那个钻头温度过高，在钻孔时断掉了。当我把剩下的小钻头从电钻上拿下来的时候，我的袖子挽在上面，它正好落在了我前臂的皮肤上，留下了一个钻头大小的红色烙印，让我疼了一整天。

For the rebuilt deck, we were using Brazilian walnut the rich red color of freckles. When I sliced through it with the saw, it smelled like cinnamon, molasses, a little bit like chocolate. Other names for Brazilian walnut are embuya, imbuia, canela-imbuia; somehow those words sound the way this wood smells. Ipe (pronounced ee-pay or eye-pay depending on whom you ask) is another name for it. It’s called ironwood as well, for good reason. Brazilian walnut sinks in water. To lift a board is to feel immediately that this is not like the weight of wood we’re most familiar with. Feather-light cedar is twenty-two pounds per cubic foot. The mighty oak’s density is forty-three pounds per cubic foot. Ipe’s is sixty-six. It’s so dense we had to use a special sharp drill bit to predrill a hole for every screw used to attach the deck planks to the frame. We paused when the shank of the bit got too hot drilling through the ironwood. Tiny twists of smoke rose from the holes with a sweet smell like marshmallows, and something acrid behind it, a sharp and unfamiliar scent, nothing like the homey smell of brushfires in the yard or chimney smoke; the smell itself signaled the fight the wood put up against heat. We blew on the bit to cool it off, waved the drill through the air to lower the temperature of the metal. We’d already broken one bit. It got too hot and cracked off in the hole. When I removed the remaining piece of bit from the drill, it fell and landed on my forearm, bare skin with sleeves rolled up. It left a drill-bit brand, a red burn mark painful for the rest of the day.

实验室里生产出来的东西会让你觉得和自己息息相关吗？对于不需要精心关照的东西，你可能会真的付出感情吗？木头漩涡般的纹理，木结和并不完美的地方，木头的裂痕和脆弱之处，所有这些都让人感觉舒服，因为我们明确地知道它们是从哪里来的。起初，是尘土、种子、日照和水，之后就长成了树。这是自然的产物，从这棵树上锯下来的木头做成了木板。可聚氯乙烯、聚乙烯、聚丙烯又是什么呢？ 在《神话学》一书中，罗兰·巴特对木制玩具的消失感到痛心，取而代之的“不雅致的材料”，“破坏了所有的愉悦、甜蜜以及触感中的人性”。木头是“一种亲切、富有诗意的物体，它不会割断孩子们和树木、桌子、地板之间亲密的联系”。他说的是玩具，但这个道理在此同样适用。合成木材做的露台，虽然易于维护，但却隔断了我们和事物本质之间的联系。当你的手指抚摸着一块原木、一把木制搅拌勺或一处楼梯扶手的时候，你能感觉到来自自然的颤动，来自熟悉事物的温度，以及“它属于土地”的微弱哼鸣。但是，如果你把手放在PVC露台上，你听不到任何低语，它和树荫、和松树的汁液没有任何关系。 当我们亲眼见证田野四周栅栏上的木头和林间小路上倒下的树干慢慢腐烂，看着它们改变了颜色，从鲜艳的棕红色褪色成灰色、绿色，最后变成黑色，看着它们改变了质地，从结实坚固到树皮片片脱落，被虫子啃食，被雨水浸泡变软，在时间和湿气中被分解成一摊泥状的物体后，在某种意义上这能够带给我们安慰，因为在时间的长河中，我们自身的消耗、软化和弱化，与这一过程异曲同工。我们无法在人造木头上找到与存在有关的任何安慰，它们不会随时间而变化。我们并不会嘲讽它相对而言的不朽，只是它无法诉说任何东西。但巴西胡桃木却在诉说着，当我为建造台阶和露台平台砍木板的时候，它在诉说，关于它的重量，它的硬度，还有时间。

How connected can you feel to something developed in a lab? Is it possible to love something you don’t have to care about? The comforting thing about wood, with its swirling grains, its knots and imperfections, its splinters and its vulnerability, is that we know exactly where it comes from. First there was dirt, a seed, sunlight, and water. Then a tree! A product of nature, and from that tree now there is a wood plank hewn from its trunk. What is polyvinyl chloride or polyethylene or polypropylene? Some people can answer that. But all of us know what a tree is. I also understand they’re a dwindling resource, and I wonder if and when composite wood will come to replace what comes from forests. In Mythologies, Roland Barthes laments the disappearance of wooden toys for ones made of “a graceless material” which “destroys all the pleasure, the sweetness, the humanity of touch.” Wood is “a familiar and poetic substance, which does not sever the child from close contact with the tree, the table, the floor.” He’s talking about kid things, but the argument is the same. A synthetic deck, though easy to maintain, severs our contact with the essential. Run your fingers over a piece of raw wood, a mixing spoon, a banister, and you can sense the vibration of the natural, the warmth of the known, a subtle hum that says this is of the earth. Lay your palm on a deck made of PVC; there is no murmuring there, no link to forest shade or pine sap. To witness the decay of wood on a fence that lines a field, on a forest path’s fallen trunk; to see it changing color, from rich brown-red, paling to gray to green, darkening to black; to see it changing texture, from solid and strong to flaking, chewed by bugs, softened by water, dissolved by time and moisture to a pulpy mess—it comforts us somehow, echoes our own wasting, our own softening and weakening over time. There is no existential comfort to be found in artificial wood, unchanged by time, none of the melancholy that paves our understanding and embrace of time and dying. It’s not that it taunts us with comparative immortality. It speaks nothing.

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普林尼在《自然历史》中写道，每种树木对于它自己的神灵来说都是“永远神圣的”，比如桃金娘之于阿弗洛狄忒，白杨之于赫拉克勒斯。普林尼说，山毛榉是宙斯的树，有些地方则将宙斯和橡树联系在一起。橡树的神圣之处在于，它的密度很大，在水中不会浮起来。

In his Natural History, Pliny writes that each kind of tree is “immutably consecrated” to its own specific divinity: the myrtle to Aphrodite, the poplar to Hercules. Pliny says the beech was Zeus’s tree; other sources link him with the oak. This wood had the sacred about it, so dense it sinks.

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“静物的任性”，这是我父亲以前常说的一个词，这是他从他祖母那里学来的，指的就是你着急的时候怎么都拧不回去的瓶盖，对螺丝刀来说过软的螺丝头等等。我的脑海中闪现过这句话，目前的情况就是这种任性的感觉。

“The perversity of inanimate objects.” It was a phrase my father often said, quoting his grandmother, to describe lids that wouldn’t screw back on when you were in a hurry, screw heads too soft for screwdrivers, moments when the dumbness of things outdoes your ability to calmly deal with them. It surfaced on my mind here, the whole situation taking on the air of the perverse.

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“你要比工具更聪明。”玛丽站在一排矮橱柜后面对我说。这是另外一句她常说的话。当工具、工序或者材料显得比我们更聪明的时候，或者它们没能正常配合我们的时候，又或者我们进度过快，没有考虑到最好、最高效地处理一件事情的时候，她就会说这句话。这句话提醒我们，我们拥有大脑，拥有思维的能力，但螺丝钉只是螺丝钉而已。它也提醒着我们，花点时间，去想想怎么解决问题。这句话通常听起来很有帮助，但现在却并非如此。 我按照说明书上指示的方向往里钻。我对此深信不疑，螺丝钉就是属于这里的，我就是应该这样做的。可这个转盘到底有什么问题？我到底有什么问题？为什么这样做不行？去他的螺丝钉，去他的电钻，去他的转盘，去他的宜家，去他的！ 我骂完了，并且正在使用大脑中比语言更低级的区域。我彻底被激怒了，嘴里咕哝着说着什么。

“深呼吸。”玛丽对我说。 我没回头，但愤怒的目光穿过头骨射向她。深呼吸？我讨厌玛丽，讨厌她的建议，我讨厌橱柜，我讨厌工具，我讨厌自己决定放弃了点击鼠标、敲击键盘的工作，放弃了和喜欢的人们一起喝咖啡。我更讨厌的是自己还没有这些工具聪明。我在这一年半的时间里什么都没有学会。现在，我要把满是汗水的胳膊从橱柜表面剥下来，那声音一点都不性感。而且，我讨厌廉价的北欧设计。 我又重新调整好姿势，用尽全身的力气按住电钻。螺丝钉飞了出去，转着圈滑到橱柜里面的一角，像滑冰运动员一样一直转个不停。我把头伸到橱柜里面，好像那是个烤箱一样，因为我不想让玛丽看到泪水在我的眼眶里打着转。 她递给我一个又尖又细的钻头。“先钻一下，”她平静地说着，“钻个导孔出来。” 这时候我想起来她以前说的话。不要试图把螺丝钉竖直地钻进材料里，先给它钻个洞，再把螺丝钉钻到这个洞里。我把十字刀头拆了下来，换上玛丽递给我的那个。我在转盘上钻了一个小的导孔，再换回原来的十字刀头，把螺丝钉放在刀头下，按在导孔上，又按下电钻的开关。螺丝钉钻了进去，钻了下去，转盘固定好了。

我走出屋子，看着花园里的百合。 愤怒将我的大脑清空了，愤怒散去后的松垮感以及沮丧和尴尬的余波，让我感觉自己是如此陌生。几分钟之前我还讨厌玛丽，而现在的我后悔几分钟之前自己做的所有决定。愤怒是多么强大的麻醉品啊。这不是真相，是不是？伴随着松垮感的还有对于独处的渴望，我只是想独自和被愤怒煽动起的情绪以及愤怒之外的真相和解。 丽贝卡·索尔尼在《浪游之歌》一书中引用了露西·利帕德关于因纽特人传统的故事，故事里面说，当你想要征服愤怒的时候，可以一边走一边用木棍在地上做标记，这能让人们看到愤怒的力量和长度。我很好奇我要走多远才能征服愤怒。 结束散步时，你把木棍插进土地里，这时你找到了什么？愤怒在你走过的路中消失了，你变成了自己熟悉的那个人，你转过身能看到新的景色。很多次我面对玛丽的时候，都想在裤子上擦擦手，大步流星地离开我犯下的所有错误，我想放弃，想要对失败妥协，我没有希望，也没有兴趣努力改正任何错误。木板太短了？不如放弃整个工程吧。洗碗机漏了好几年水，底层地板都腐烂了？我们离开这里吧。玛丽一次又一次地向我证明，她是如何花了那么一点时间和精力，多留心、思考了那么一点，就能够更正几乎所有的错误。 当然，这样的经验在恋爱中也同样适用。判断失误、激烈的争吵、长期的厌倦、似乎完全不了解彼此的错误表达，有多少次在遇到这些问题时，我只是用裤子擦了擦手，结束，然后离开。这样是行不通的，这是不对的。我还没有学会给爱情它本应该被给予的时间和努力。我还没有遇到值得我努力的那个人。耐心，一点技巧，还有和其他人相处的能力，哪怕他们偶尔会让你感到无趣、沮丧，或者偶尔要把你逼疯，这些也是和某个人共度一生所必需的技能。我觉得，开始这份工作之后，我能够经历人生中最深刻、最强烈的一段爱情，并非偶然。 在咒骂、喊叫，因沮丧和愤怒而感到绝望的时刻，你要停下来，拿着木棍出去走走，看看百合，然后回来看清真相，试着做得更好。哎，我学得真慢。那天早晨在牙买加平原，我最远也走不出花园，我手里也没有能够见证愤怒的力量的木棍。但是，当我走回房子前面，从那个角度看着房子的时候，我知道我会回到厨房里面再试一次。

“Be smarter than the tools,” Mary said from behind a low bank of cabs on the floor. It was another of her refrains. She used it when the tools or the process or the materials were outsmarting us, weren’t cooperating the way they should, or we were moving too fast, not considering the best or most efficient way to get a thing done. A reminder that we have brains and the ability to reason and the screw is just a screw. A reminder to take a second and think it out. It was usually a helpful thing to hear. It wasn’t now. I was drilling where the directions told me to drill. I was sure of it. The screw belongs here, I thought. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. What’s wrong with the Susan? What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t this work? Fxxk this screw. Fxxk this drill. Fxxk this Susan. Fxxk IKEA. Fxxk me. Swearing ceased. I was accessing some pre-articulate part of my brain. Huffs, grunts.

“Breathe,” Mary said. I shot her a dark look through the back of my skull. Breathe? I hated Mary and her advice. I hated the cabinet. I hated the tools. I hated the decision to quit my job where I clicked and tapped and got coffee with people I liked. I hated that I wasn’t smarter than the tools. That I hadn’t learned anything in a year and a half. That my life now involved peeling my sweaty arm flesh off a surface with a vaguely sexual sound. And I hated cheap Scandinavian design. I repositioned myself again, pressed the drill with all of my body. The screw flipped away and spun to the back corner of the cab, spinning and spinning like an ice skater. I put my head in the cabinet as though it was an oven because I did not want Mary to see that tears had welled up in my eyes. She passed me a sharp thin drill bit. “Drill out for it,” she said quietly. “Make a pilot hole.” And I recognized then what she’d said before. Don’t try to get the screw to go straight into the material, make a hole for it first, then drill the screw into that. I took the Phillips head bit off the drill and replaced it with the one Mary handed me. I bored a small starter hole into the Susan. I switched the bit back to the Phillips head and placed the screw onto the tip and pressed the screw into the hole and squeezed the trigger again. The screw plunged down and in and the lazy Susan was secured.

I went outside and looked at the lilies in the garden. Anger had cleaned me out. The hangover from it, the aftermath of all that frustration and embarrassment, left me feeling unfamiliar with myself. I hated Mary a few minutes ago. I regretted every decision I’d made a few minutes ago. What a potent intoxicant, anger. This wasn’t the truth, was it? The hangover came with the desire to be alone to reconcile what the anger provoked and what the truth was outside of anger. In Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit quotes Lucy Lippard writing of an Eskimo custom in which an angry person walks his or her anger off: “The point at which the anger is conquered is marked with a stick, bearing witness to the strength or length of the rage.” I have wondered how far anger might take me. What’s to be found at the end of that walk when you plunge your stick into the earth? Anger dissolved in the steps behind you, you return to who you know you are, and turn around to face a new view. So many times with Mary, I would’ve brushed my hands on my pants and walked away from whatever mistake had been made, given up, resigned to failure with no hope or interest in trying to rectify what had gone so wrong. Board’s too short? Might as well call it quits on the whole project. Subfloor’s rotted where the dishwasher leaked for years? Let’s get out of here. Mary showed me, over and over again, how a little time and effort, a little care and thought, can correct almost every ill. It’s a lesson that translates to love, of course. How many times, after a lapse in judgment, a bad fight, a stretch of boredom, a miscommunication that seemed to signal a total lack of knowing the other person, how many times had I brushed my hands on my pants, checked out, and walked away. It just wasn’t working. It just wasn’t right. I hadn’t learned yet to give it—love—the time and effort it demanded. I hadn’t met the person worth the effort. Patience, a little finesse, the ability to stay with something that periodically bored or frustrated you, that periodically drove you to the edge of madness, these were skills necessary too for sharing a life with someone. I do not think it a coincidence that the deepest, strongest love I’ve experienced began after I started this work. Swearing, yelling, moments desperate with frustration and anger—a break to walk with a stick, to look at the lilies, and I return, again, to get at the truth, to try to make it better. Oh I have been slow to learn. That morning in Jamaica Plain, I could walk no farther than the garden, and I had no stick to witness the strength of my rage. But what I saw when I turned again to face the house, from that view, what I knew, was that I would go back into that kitchen and try again. “Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” as Samuel Beckett put it. It’s easier to say screw it. It’s always easier to walk away. Screw up, and again, try to get it right, and again. Screw up better.

IWPR认为，很多男性主导行业中女性从业者过少的原因是“含有敌意的环境”。“大量研究表明，职业的选择往往受到多方面的限制，比如社会化，知识短缺，或者是在某一个性别明显占少数的行业内，接受培训、获得工作都存在直接的障碍。”如果你熟识的女性，或者哪怕只是听说过的女性中都没有从事某种工作的，那这种工作就不会成为你的必选项之一，因为你需要亲自去做人生规划。我想，这就好比某些工作（护士、牙科保健员、秘书）会让男性担心别人是否会怀疑他们不再有男子气概，对于女性来说也是如此。也有一些工作会让人对女子气提出质疑。虽然我很少从普遍社会性这个角度去考虑木匠行业女性从业者稀缺这一问题，但我的确发现，这个工作挑战了我对于女子气和性感的观念和感受。我们受到了关注。当我们在贮木场挑选木板的时候，装了一车厢纸面石膏板的时候，或是在家得宝（美国家居连锁店——译者注）举起几袋子水泥的时候，我们的周围全都是大块头的建筑工人，他们身上穿着连体工作服，脚上踩着走起路来声音沉重的工作靴，他们看我们的表情里不仅仅是好奇。

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有的时候，贮木场的员工会称呼她为先生。“我能帮你找点什么吗，先生？”我很想保护玛丽，冲他大声喊：“你是说女士吗？”我从没这么说过，因为玛丽是可以为自己而战的。但是我不确定她是否真的认为这是种战争。“都搞定了。”她会这样不慌不忙地说着。三年级的时候我剪了短发。第二天在学校里，我帮一位老师拉开门，她对我说了一声“谢谢你，先生。”我一下就沉默了，脚步也有点踉跄。先生？她穿着高跟鞋嘀嘀嗒嗒地走了过去，我感觉自己在发抖，脑袋里乱糟糟的。我是谁？难道我不是自己认为的那样吗？老师的评价夺走了我对自己的认知。我依旧能感觉到那个站在走廊里小小的我，依旧能想起那种迷惑和恐惧。每次玛丽被人错认为先生的时候，我都像是回到了三年级帮老师开门的时候，那种误解要把我推倒了。可对玛丽来说，这好像算不上什么。她并不是很关心自己是否属于女性的范畴。而我，远比我曾经以为的更在乎自己的女子气。

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My sex life didn’t stink, but I was finding that the carpentry work was altering it. The work I was doing didn’t make me less of a woman, but it felt like that, in a profound and surprising way. It’s odd to admit, and I feel small for doing so. I started noticing something shifting as I got dressed in the morning. I slid my legs into paint-stained jeans, crusty patches around the pockets where I’d wiped glue from my fingers. I tangled into a sports bra, pressed breasts, pulled on a tank top, a T-shirt, a long-sleeve shirt, weather depending. My sneakers were worn, with gray-white dried cement caked on the toes, paint blotches, more glue. I tied my long hair back into a bun, made sure I had my earplugs, and headed out into the day. I looked grubby and thick. I looked like someone doing manual labor. I felt like a boy. I am not a small woman. I am sturdy and curved. I feel lucky to have avoided the body image demons that skew reflections and make some women loathe their flesh. I like that I am strong. I like the muscles in my legs, quads and calves, and that my legs can run for miles. I flex my biceps in the mirror and feel proud of the bulge and the strength it suggests. I love having tits. I like the combination of firm—legs, shoulders, back—and soft—breasts and belly. I like the blurring, the strength and softness. As Virginia Woolf wrote, “It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly.” This feels deeply true to me, an abiding desire to have both sexes mingled in one body and one mind, a mental fertility. But dressed in work clothes, breasts bound in a sports bra, spending the days doing work with my body and hands, holding tools, tape measures, hammers, using saws to slice wood, using nail guns and drills, it shifted my sense of myself, my sexual self, my self as a woman. I hate admitting this. I hate that dirty jeans and using a drill were enough to disrupt my sense of my own self as a woman. I felt desexualized. In this way, I moved through the world without projecting that spark of possibility. In being dressed in work clothes that obscured curves, absent was that energy I gave off and got returned from men around me, absent was the sense within myself of sexual desire. I noticed not noticing. And I noticed not being noticed. The newsroom where I’d worked had sizzled with flirtation, crushes galore. I’d worn jeans and tight turtlenecks and had not worn makeup.

对于木工而言，没有退格键，没有撤销键。你不能刷新一块切坏了的木头。在以前的工作中，我觉得重新开始是一件理所应当的事情。快速点击几下鼠标可以修正所有事情。修正木工中的错误需要一套新的技巧，一套我并非与生俱来的技巧，而我很庆幸正在慢慢习得。

There’s no backspace key in carpentry, no control+Z. You cannot refresh a miscut piece of wood. I took for granted the undo-ability of labor in my old job. A couple quick clicks and anything could be fixed. Correcting for the errors in carpentry involved a new set of brain skills, ones that do not come naturally to me, and ones I was so grateful to be gaining.

木材成为硬木、软木的条件和它们的繁殖方式有关。让我来唤醒大一生物课的幽灵：被子植物就是种子外有果皮包被的植物，一般来说，落叶树（树叶会脱落的树）都是硬木树。红木，胡桃木，橡木，柚木和梣木是硬木的典型。而松木，云杉，雪松，红杉和针叶树等都是软木，这些也都是裸子植物。它们的种子在空中飞舞，外面没有果皮。软木成长速度快，通常比硬木便宜。硬木通常密度更大，巴杉木是个例外，夏天的时候两片巴杉木做成的飞机可以在后院飞来飞去。

Poplar is a creamy colored wood with swirls of green and sometimes a streak of purple in the grain like a final strip of a winter-sky sunset. It’s an inexpensive hardwood and resistant to the dings and dents of a high-use space like a pantry. Hard- and softwood qualification has to do with how the tree handles reproduction. To raise ghosts from freshman-year biology: angiosperms, the ones that produce seeds with a covering, typically deciduous trees (the ones that lose their leaves), are hardwood trees. Mahogany, walnut, oak, teak, and ash are examples of hardwood. Pine, spruce, cedar, and redwood, coniferous trees, are softwoods, gymnosperms all. Their seeds fly naked in the wind. Softwoods grow fast, and are usually cheaper than hard. Hardwoods are typically denser (balsa wood, of those swooping two-piece airplanes from summer backyards, is an exception).

我花了很长时间才学到，这份工作中并非所有的问题都能通过蛮力解决，事实上只有一小部分需要用力。当我们没办法从窗框上撬下一块镶边的时候，或者没办法固定橱柜、让它处于水平的时候，或者有些东西被堵住了、卡住了，胶水、黏缝涂得太厚了，达不到要求了，或者就是怎么也不配合的时候，我的本能冲动就是诉诸肌肉而非脑力。我的耐心储备池很浅，很快就会枯竭。在受挫的时候，我总会神经紧张，头脑发热，身体以同样的方式做出反应，迅速但愚蠢。 这样一来我就会弄坏东西。我弄坏过钻头，镶边木条，玻璃。我在墙面和地板上留下凹痕和刺痕，还有一次我不幸滑倒，柔软的手掌上也留下了这样的痕迹，那里现在还有个伤疤。 “精细。”玛丽经常这么说。换句话说就是，要柔和，要慢，不要用蛮力又撕又拉。让材料告诉你它们想要的处理方式，用心去倾听，用物理学知识、工具和耐心完成工作。 “就是哄着，”玛丽说，“知道在什么地方用力。”

every problem on the job—in fact, very few of them—could be solved with brute strength. When a piece of trim wouldn’t come out of the window frame, or a cabinet wouldn’t settle to level, or when things seemed jammed or stuck or too thickly glued or caulked or impossible to square or non-cooperative in whatever way, it was my impulse to opt for muscle over mind, to accomplish what needed accomplishing by force of body and will. My reservoir of patience was shallow and quickly drained. Thwarted, my mind got tight and hot, and body reacted in kind, fast and dumb. In this way, I broke things. I broke drill bits, pieces of trim, glass. I put dents and punctures in walls and floors, and, in one unfortunate slip, the soft meat of my palm where a scar marks the spot. “Finesse,” Mary said often. In other words, be gentle, go slow, don’t rip and yank with all your might. Let the materials tell you which way they want to go. Use your mind and listen closely. Allow physics and the tools and patience to get the job done. “It’s all about coaxing,” Mary said. “Knowing where to put the pressure.”

文豪加西亚·马尔克斯说：“最终，文学不过是木工……这两者都是艰难的工作……都是在和现实打交道，现实这种材料和木头一样坚硬。” 是的，写作和木工都需要耐性和练习，两者都要围绕把某些事情弄对、弄好去反复思考。两者都包含一次又一次地犯错误，但又能够忍受不断犯错误，直到做对为止。对于两者而言，理解某件事情最好的方式往往是把它拆分开进行剖析。对于两者而言，小块的个体组合在一起，连接在一起，变成更大、更完整的整体。对于两者而言，我们一开始都是两手空空，最后都有所获得。

The novelist Gabriel García Márquez once told the Paris Review that “ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. . . . Both are very hard work. . . . With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.” It’s true that writing and carpentry both require patience and practice, and both revolve around the effort of making something right and good. Both involve getting it wrong over and over, and being able to stay with it until it is right. In both, the best way of understanding something is often by taking it apart. In both, small individual pieces combine and connect to make something larger, total, whole. In both, we start with nothing and end with something.