from elephant to grasshopper

往中山陵路上

數月前，從米蘭昆德拉<被背叛的遺囑>裏，認識了海明威的<白象似的群山> Hills Llike White Elephants。找來看後，甚喜愛。跟朋友說起，她再提起了海明威的theory of omission / iceberg theory。

當時，我正在為手頭上的materials 尋求一個「認知某種特定影像」的方向 ---- 一個FORM，從而可能是一個結構之類的東西。等待著「沒錯了!就是這樣了。」的一種勇往直前的起步點。

海明威的另一短篇The Big Two-Hearted River，又是–種省略方法。

進一步給我啟示。

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"As he smoked his legs stretched out in front of him, he noticed a grasshopper walk along the ground and up onto his woolen sock. The grasshopper was black. As he had walked along the road, climbing, he had started grasshoppers from with dust. They were all black. They were not the big grasshoppers with yellow and black or red and black wings whirring out from their black wing sheathing as they fly up. These were just ordinary hoppers, but all a sooty black in color. Nick had wondered about them as he walked without really thinking about them. Now, as he watched the black hopper that was nibbling at the wool of his sock with its fourway lip he realized that they had all turned black from living in the burned-over land. He realized that the fire must have come the year before, but the grasshoppers were all black now. He wondered how long they would stay that way.

Carefully he reached his hand down and took hold of the hopper by the wings. He turned him up, all his legs walking in the air, and looked at his jointed belly. Yes, it was black too, iridescent where the back and head were dusty.

"Go on, hopper," Nick said, speaking out loud for the first time. "Fly away somewhere."

He tossed the grasshopper up into the air and watched him sail away to a charcoal stump across the road. "

---- from The Big Two-Hearted River