/ 邢幼田
認識曹志漣已經超過二十個年頭，但我七歲的女兒，皮皮，似乎更能抓住「曹阿姨」是怎樣一回事。上星期天我們獨自漫步在柏克萊第四街，那是所有美麗事物聚集的地方。皮皮指著流行服飾店櫥窗裏一件洋裝，然後對我說：「那件衣服看起來像曹阿姨。」那是件深紫色絲質洋裝，下擺伴隨令人驚訝的亮彩緞帶分流蜿蜒在縫邊處。從遠方，那衣裳看起來像隻優雅的鳥兒，藉著羽翼帶領，就要揚升離開地面。我們進入店裡靠近端詳那衣服，發現緞帶充滿了不可思議的混合物件繡像：電腦、項鍊、跑車、烏龜、金色玫瑰、吃了一半的蘋果和嬰兒奶瓶！
志漣總是充滿驚奇。我從不知道當第一次打開她的書稿會有什麼等著我，但奇怪得很，我曾十分渴望讓她帶領著無論她想把我領向何處，並不是因為尋求改變而希望置身於冒險當中，只因為這是曹志漣文字的萬千魔幻世界。尚未閱讀志漣的東西之前，我不曾知道中國字能夠有其性格，而字是更多的字述；不曾意識到那些指涉的名可以共時替代並重現其性格特質，同時我們與許多字的生命是何等危險地糾葛在一起。
作為一個想像封閉無可救藥的傳統派和社會研究者，我反覆請求志漣去寫「一個真正的故事」。但這不足以滿足志漣所要的。她的「想像書」不是一個故事，也比真實的故事更為真實。這本書擁有多維度向的工程：是一個藉由遊戲傳達中國字多重特質與群字繁多個性的呈現；也是曹志漣自我靈魂的探索（志漣，原諒我無趣的用辭，不要對一個地理學者有太多期待）；這是一場文學延伸領土上的戰爭宣言；也是在這過度商業化世界中對擬真藝術誠實與勇敢的批判。在遊戲與「想像」背後，曹志漣正述說她所察覺眾多自我和豐富世界中的眾多思維與豐富故事。她所帶給我的早已超過我的要求。
I have known Jerlian for over twenty years, but my seven year old daughter Pipi seems to have a much better grasp of what Auntie Tsao is all about. Last Sunday we were strolling along 4th Street in Berkeley, where all the beautiful things are. Pipi pointed to a dress in the window of a fashion shop and said to me, "that dress looks like Tsao a-yi." It was a dark purple silk dress, with an amazing assortment of bright-color ribbons sawn to the hem at the bottom. From afar, the dress looked like a graceful bird with feathered wings that were about to take the bird off the ground. We went into the shop and took a closer look at the dress. We found that those ribbons had embroideries of an unthinkable mixture of objects, like computers, ecklaces, sports cars, turtles, golden roses, half-eaten apples, and baby bottles!
Jerlian is full of surprises. I never know what was waiting for me when I opened her book manuscripts for the first time. But oddly enough, I have been quite willing to let her take me to wherever she wanted to take me. This is not me being adventurous for a change. This is Jerlian's magical worlds of words. Before reading Jerlian's stuff, I did not know that characters could have characters and words are more than words. I did not know that names could substitute and represent personalities simultaneously, and the life of words is dangerously intertwined with that of our own.
As a hopeless traditionalist and a social researcher with boxed imagination, I repeatedly pleaded to Jerlian to write "a real story." But Jerlian is too ambitious for that. Her Book of Imagination is not A story, and it is more real than real. The book is a project with many dimensions: it is a playful performance of characters with characters and words with personalities; it is Jerlian's own soul searching ( pardon my use of a boring English expression, Jerlian -- don't expect too much from a geographer ); it is a declaration of war to expand literary territories; it is also an honest and brave critique of pseudo arts in an overly-commercialized world. Underneath the playfulness and the "imagination," Jerlian is telling real storieS of her mindS, of the worldS she sees, and of herselVES. She has given me much more than I asked for.
本文作者：
美國加州大學柏克萊分校都市與區域計畫博士
現任美國加州大學柏克萊分校地理系副教授
完全支援