当月光女孩遇见阳光男孩

绘◎秋林夕

当月光女孩遇见阳光男孩

绘◎秋林夕

When Moonlight Girl Meets Sunshine Boy

I stumbled across①stumble across 偶然发现Justin's online dating profile while waiting for water to boil. It was just after 4 a.m.

"Message me if you want to talk about anything and everything until the wee hours of the night," his profile said.

The phrase "wee hours", as it turns out, means different things to different people. I have a circadian②circadian 英 [sɜː'keɪdɪən] 美 [sɝ'kedɪən] adj. 生理节奏的rhythm disorder③disorder 英 [dɪs'ɔːdə] 美 [dɪs'ɔrdɚ] n. 混乱；骚乱vt. 使失调；扰乱called delayed sleep phase syndrome. It's that

在等待水烧开的空当，我偶然看到了贾斯汀的在线约会个人主页。当时刚过凌晨四点。

“如果你想探讨任何事情，请发信息给我，凌晨之前都可以。”他在个人主页上写道。

事实证明，在不同的人看来，“凌晨”有着不同的含义。我有昼夜节奏紊乱的问题，即睡眠相位后移综合症。我的生物钟会在日出时告诉我该上床休息了，在日落时告诉我该醒来了。基本就像吸血鬼一样——偏离被社会认可的时钟约八小时。my circadian clock tells me it's time for bed when the sun is rising and time to wake up as it's setting. As a vampire, basically — offset from society's clock by approximately eight hours.

Now, as a freelance writer making my own schedule, I aways going to bed around 8 or 9 a.m. and waking around 4 or 5 p.m. Alone with my books and my thoughts, I write about physics. The dark of night is perfect for contemplating the universe.

Of course, my chronologic freedom comes with a few technical difficulties, such as an inability to take calls from editors, listen to music without headphones or remember what day of the week it is, since my days are always changing in the middle.

Then there's dating.

On my first date with Justin, we went to an art museum at 7 p.m, I learned that he had a 9-to-5 job and enjoyed cycling and being "out in the sunshine".

I didn't mention that I was midway through a regimen of prescription vitamin D. "Sunshine" was not in my vocabulary.

For our second date, it was my turn to make plans. "I know you're on a normal human schedule④schedule 英 [ˈʃɛdjuːl] 美 ['skɛdʒul] vt. 安排，计划；编制目录；将……列入计划表," I texted him. "But the Perseid meteor shower peaks tomorrow night. Want to find a dark spot and watch?"

At midnight, we found a cozy spot by the Charles River and gazed upward. Despite the city lights, we saw three meteors blaze above the Boston skyline.

We talked about starlight, how it had begun its journey thousands of years ago and we were looking back in time. I thought how in a sense that's always true: My now is not the same as his and never will be. There's always a delay⑤delay 英 [dɪ'leɪ] 美 [dɪ'le] vi. 延期；耽搁vt. 延期；耽搁n.被耽搁或推迟的时间, each of us living in the immediate past of the other, regardless of how tightly he wrapped his arms around my waist. We are all trapped in our own time zones. The best we can do is try to meet in an imaginary middle.

So that's what we did. He booked us a trip to go night skiing. I made it to the beach in time to feel the sun on my skin. He rigged up a high-powered bike light and took me for

现在，作为一名自行制定个人日程表的自由撰稿人，我每天早上八九点钟上床，下午四五点钟醒来。当我书写与物理有关的文字时，唯有我自己的书籍和思想为伴。在暗夜中思索宇宙的奥秘，是再合适不过的。

当然，我在作息方面的自由遭遇了几个技术上的难题，比如无法接编辑打来的电话，无法不戴耳机听音乐，无法记住每一天是星期几，因为我的一天总是从半截儿算起。

还有就是约会。

第一次和贾斯汀约会，我们在晚上七点去了一家艺术博物馆。我得知他有一份朝九晚五的工作，喜欢骑自行车，喜欢沐浴在“户外的阳光里”。

我没提及自己正按照医生的处方猛补维生素D。我的字典里根本没有“阳光”这个词。

第二次约会时，轮到我制订计划了。“我知道你是一个作息时间正常的人，”我在发给他的信息中写道，“但英仙座流星雨将在明晚达到高潮。想要找个黑暗的角落一起观赏吗？”

午夜时分，我们在查理斯河边找到了一个舒服的地方。尽管城市里闪耀着灯火，我们还是看到三颗流星在波士顿天际线上方划过。

我们谈论星光，说起它如何于数千年前就踏上旅程，而我们其实是在回望过去。我发现在某种意义上，事情竟然总是如此：我的现在和他的现在不是一回事，而且永远也不会是一回事。延迟永远存在，我们俩都活在对方刚刚度过的时间里，不论他如何紧紧地搂着我的腰。我们都被困在各自的时区里，最好的情况是设法在想象中的钟点碰头。

于是我们这样做了。他为我们俩预定了一趟夜间滑雪的行程。我也及时赶到海滩上，体会了阳光洒在皮肤上的感觉。他给自行车配备了一盏高功率的车灯，载着我在一个夏夜里骑行了好长一段路。我拿泰国风味的食物当早餐；他则拿薄饼当晚餐。

然而，这种持续不断的妥协最终造就了两具脾气暴躁、睡眼惺忪的躯壳。他回到位于缅因州的故乡去厘清思路。我则回归了黑夜。a long ride in the summer dark. I ate Thai food for breakfast; he ate pancakes for dinner.

Eventually, however, the constant compromise made for two grumpy, bleary-eyed shells of human beings. He went back to his hometown in Maineto clear his head. I returned to the night.

One afternoon (i.e., just after midnight), I got an email from him suggesting we try a new approach.

"There is no world we both occupy at the same time," he wrote. "It's an illusion⑥illusion 英 [ɪ'l(j)uːʒ(ə)n] 美 [ɪ'luʒn] n. 幻觉，错觉. We don't actually need to find that." Instead of fighting our difference, he said, let's just love each other from across the clock.

As a token of our new living arrangement, I gave Justin an illustrated edition of "The Day Boyand the Night Girl". In the story, a witch raises two children in captivity, allowing the boy to see only day and the girl only night. But one day, the boy stays out longer than he's supposed to, and when it gets dark, he becomes terrified. The girl finds him shaking in the garden and tries to comfort him, explaining "how gentle and sweet the darkness is, how kind and friendly, how soft and velvety⑦velvety 英 ['velvɪtɪ] 美 ['vɛlvəti] adj. 天鹅绒般柔软的；醇和的，可口的!"

Since she's wide awake, she promises to watch over him while he sleeps. When the sun rises, he awakens to find that now she's scared, a stranger to the sun, and so he carries her in his arms while she sleeps until dark.

Justin and I figured we would do the same. I always made sure to wake up before he got home from work so we could cook and eat together — his dinner, my breakfast. Then he'd go to bed, and I'd write for hours beneath the moon. Eventually, I would craw quietly into his arms and we'd dream happily alongside each other — for a few minutes, anyway, before he had to get up.

On weekends, he played guitar, saw friends, soaked in

一天下午（意即午夜过后），他发来一封邮件，建议我们采取一种新的相处模式。

“我们俩同时占据的世界并不存在，”他写道，“它是一种幻觉。我们其实不必寻找它。”与其对抗我们的差异，他说，我们不如隔着时间相爱。

作为我们全新的生活安排的象征，我送给贾斯汀一本插画版《日之少年与夜之少女》，在这个故事里，一个女巫圈养着两个孩子，让男孩只能看到白天，让女孩只能看到黑夜。但有一天，男孩待在外边的时间超出了规定，当天色变暗的时候，他很害怕。女孩发现他在花园里瑟瑟发抖，试图安慰他，向他解释“黑暗是多么温柔甜蜜，多么善良友好，多么柔软光滑！”

由于她正处于完全清醒的状态，于是承诺在他睡觉时看护他。当他在太阳升起之际醒来，发现她正惊魂未定，因为从未见过太阳，于是让她在自己怀中睡去，直到黑夜降临。

我和贾斯汀认为，我们俩也可以如此行事。我总是确保自己在他下班回家之前起床，这样一来我们就能一同烹饪和进餐——他的晚餐，我的早餐。然后他上床睡觉，我则在月光下写上几个小时。最终，我会悄悄溜进他怀里，我们会一同幸福地进入梦乡——尽管只有几分钟，在他不得不起床之前。

周末，当他弹吉他、见朋友、晒太阳的时候，我仍在梦乡之中。等到我把自己拖到咖啡机前，他已经骑行了35英里，吃过了两餐饭。太阳下山时，他会用一句欢快的“早上好”跟我打招呼。接着，他把自己一天的经历讲给我听；我则把自己前一天的经历讲给他听。

就这样，地球轮番为我们俩旋转。我们充分利用了两人生活中相互重合的那些小时，然后让对方在各自的时间里自得其乐。

到了8月份，地球像往年一样，又从那颗古the sunshine, all while I was still dreaming. By the time I dragged myself to the coffee maker, he'd cycled 35 miles and eaten two meals. With the sun setting, he greeted me with a happy "Good morning!" He told me about his day; I told him about my yesterday.

And so it went, the earth spinning for each of us in turn. We made the most of the hours when our lives overlapped⑧overlap 英 [əʊvə'læp] 美 ['ovəlæp] n. 重叠；重复, then let each other thrive in our own times, like animals in our wilds.

In August, the earth made its annual pass through the dust and debris of that ancient comet. Late that night, Justin drove me to a secluded beach on the north shore of Massachusetts where a handful of stargazers stared skyward. He put down a blanket as frogs croaked in the distance. Then he fumbled in his camera bag, pulling out a small black box. I couldn't see what was inside, just a glint, like the flicker of a star. Then he asked, "Will you marry me?"

We lay back on the blanket, grinning, as meteors streaked the sky. By then it was nearly 2 a.m, too late to call anyone, to squeal our news to family and friends. Instead we just lay there in our shared place and time, surrounded by sand and ocean and a few hundred billion stars.老彗星的尘埃和碎片中经过。当天深夜，贾斯汀开车将我载至马萨诸塞州北海岸一处僻静的沙滩，那里只有不多的几个人在看星星。他就着远处的蛙鸣铺开一条毯子，又在相机包里摸索一番，拿出一个黑色的小盒子。我看不清盒子里装着什么，只看到闪耀的光芒，就好像星星眨着眼睛。然后他问：“你愿意嫁给我吗？”

我们仰面躺在毯子上，在流行划过夜空之际咧着嘴笑。当时已经接近凌晨两点，太晚了，不好打电话给任何亲朋好友汇报我们的喜讯。因此我们只是躺在那儿，躺在我们共同的时空里，周围是沙滩、海洋和数不清的星星。