我那时处于一种痴迷的英语学习状态，内心里恨不得使出自己的所有力气，迅速提高自己的英语水平。

我热衷于寻找尽可能多的题材，翻译给老师看。看完霍达的《穆斯林的葬礼》，我认为应该向Violet推介这部书，便将该书前边冰心老人做的小序译了出来，并告诉老师冰心是何许人也，还表示有一天要把这部优秀的小说的故事梗概译过来给她看——这件事并未做到，我的英文水平怎能做得到呢？我有点不自量力啊。

1997年，哈尔滨三中出了个学习优秀、各方面都出类拔萃的女生，考上了美国的哈佛，她的父母出了一本书，《为女儿擎起一片蓝天》。当时那本书非常畅销，被很多家长奉为教科书。我是在妹妹处看到这本书的，看完之后很受鼓舞，就在课堂上把这本书推荐给大家。当然我用的是英语，是以topic的形式讲的。但我发现Violet对我着重突出这个女孩儿考上了哈佛没有什么反应。我原以为她也会像我一样对这一“了不起”的女孩儿感兴趣，过后一想，我估计在北美那块儿地方上个哈佛也许没啥值得大惊小怪的吧？再说，她也不可能知道哈三中在东北的名气，也不可能理解在中国，一个中学生以那样优异的成绩考上世界名校而且仍是佼佼者，该是多么的难！

记不起是什么时候，我又写了一篇《Some jottings on life》，这两页纸上是我的原文，没有一点Violet的修改痕迹，也就是说，这些句子中可能存在文法及语法的错误，亦即通常所说的中国式英语。再有一点是，我在其中提到的那个曾写诗的朋友是谁，现在我也没想起是哪一位，难道是我虚构的人物？

This is a thing about a friend of mine. He was one of my schoolmates. Because he had a literal hobby, we had known of each other. He wrote a lot of poems which had much low-spirited sentences. We were often talking about literature. I felt he had very high ambition. We encouraged eachother. Since graduated, I had not seen him for ten years. I only kept touch with him in the letters at the first year of which we parted. Though I had not his information, I reckoned he must still be in his poetic road.

Last year I went to Hang Zhou and met him. After exchanging of conventional greetings, he told me he was doing some business and had given up writing poem for very long times. “Now I only know to earn money, then to eat, drink and enjoy myself.” He said.

That was all. I knew he was like me, have returned back to the common life. But I still surprised about his attitude to the life. He became a cynic!

His changing makes me think a lot. How easy can life change a person! I can not say we miss our ways, I can not say the life fools us, and I also can not say the ambition what we ever had are wrong …… I can not answer myself.

But I think the most important things in how to face life is keep an optimistic attitude, then set up our noble thoughts and feelings. We should love life and treasure it because each one only has his (her ) life one time!

By the way, the schoolmate of mine had ever fallen in love with a girl. But the girl had had a boyfriend. Certainly he was refused. But he still ran after her through a plenty of crazy poems. The girl got angry with him and thrown his poems to him. This made him disappointed because he believed firmly that only true love can awaken the love!

A maxam in a book extricated him from the anguish: Love is a beautiful feeling, though sometimes it may make you embarrassed, love itself is more precious than the hatred.

最后一句格言来自巴尔扎克的小说，我按中文的意思把它译成英文，结果让Violet大惑不解。她奇怪爱与恨是两种截然不同的感情，咋能放在一起比较哪个好、哪个坏呢？

她把我的这句话写在黑板上，让同学们讨论。以我的英语能力，无论如何也解释不清这条格言的真意，干脆用汉语向大家解释它的意思。

Violet站在那儿，望望这个，瞅瞅那个，被我带入五里雾中。

那段时间里，我还将从前自己写的“格言”翻译过来，向大家展示，现摘录几条：

1、              If much more imagination changes the normal humanity, I couldn’t say it is better of this imagination. The imagining is a petal in realistic flower bed, a rare fog in the air, a music, a poem.

2、              The beauty is the resource of civilization.

3、              If the philosophy runs in front of the history, it will be criticized by the philosophy.

4、              If the philosophy is getting the vassal of a government, it only save itself by overthrowing the government.