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Now, I'm the kind of person who, when a ninth-generation Indonesian medicine man tells you that you're destined to move to Bali and live with him for four months, thinks you should make every effort to do that. And this, finally, was how my whole idea about this year of traveling began to gel. I absolutely needed to get myself back to Indonesia somehow, on my own dime this time. This was evident. Though I couldn't yet imagine how to do it, given my chaotic and disturbed life. (Not only did I still have a pricey divorce to settle, and David-troubles, I still had a magazine job that prevented me from going anywhere for three or four months at a time.) But I had to get back there. Didn't I hadn't he foretold it? Problem was, I also wanted to go to India, to visit my Guru's Ashram, and going to India is an expensive and time-consuming affair, also. To make matters even more confusing, I'd also been dying lately to get over to Italy, so I could practice speaking Italian in context, but also because I was drawn to the idea of living for a while in a culture where pleasure and beauty are revered.
我是那種當一位第九代印尼藥師跟你說你注定搬到巴厘島跟他住四個月的時候 ，會覺得自己應當盡力而為的人。最終，我這一年的整個旅行想法都因而開始瓦解。我必須讓自己再回到巴厘島才行，這回用的是自己的錢。這很明顯。盡管如果考慮到我當時雜亂失常的生活，我無法想象自己應該怎么做（不僅要解決一場昂貴的離婚，以及大衛的問題，還有一份不容許我一次離開三四個月的雜志社工作。）但是我“必須”回到那里。不是嗎？他不是已做了預言？不過問題是，我也想去印度，去拜訪印度導師的道場，而去印度也還是件花錢、花時間的事情。更為難的是，我最近想去意大利想得要命， 除了可以實地練習講意大利語外，也因為我渴望在一個崇尚享樂與美的國家住上一陣子。
All these desires seemed to be at odds with one another. Especially the Italy/India conflict. What was more important? The part of me that wanted to eat veal in Venice? Or the part of me that wanted to be waking up long before dawn in the austerity of an Ashram to begin a long day of meditation and prayer? The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously amid extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? My truth was exactly what I'd said to the medicine man in Bali—I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence—the dual glories of a human life. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I'd been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion . . . well, surely there was a way to learn that trick. And it seemed to me, just from my short stay in Bali, that I maybe could learn this from the Balinese. Maybe even from the medicine man himself.
這些渴望似乎互相抵觸。尤其是意大利 ／印度的矛盾。什么比較重要？想在威尼斯吃小牛肉的我？或者黎明前在樸素的道場中起身、開始整天靜坐禱告的我？偉大的蘇菲主義者魯米（Rumi），曾叫他的學生們寫下他們人生中最想要的三件事。假若清單中的任何項目與其他項目發生沖突，魯米告誡說，就注定不快樂。過單一目標的生活較好，他如此教導。那如果要在極端中過協調的生活，怎么樣呢？如果說，你能創造一種遼闊的生活，有辦法把看似不協調的對立物整合成一種無所不包的世界觀，那又如何？我的理念正是我告訴巴厘藥師的話——我想同時體驗兩者。我要世俗享樂，也要神圣的超越——人類生活的雙重榮耀。我要希臘人所謂的，善與美合而為一。在過去 痛苦的幾年間，我失去了兩者，因為歡樂與虔誠都需要在沒有壓力的空間中茁壯，而我卻生活在一個焦慮無止境的垃圾壓縮機當中。至于如何在享樂的需要以及對虔誠的渴望之間求取平衡……這個嘛，總有方法學到訣竅。從我在巴厘島的短暫居留看來，似可從巴厘人，甚至藥師本身身上學到這點。
Four feet on the ground, a head full of foliage, looking at the world through the heart . . .
四腳著地，枝葉蔓生的腦袋，通過心看世界……
So I stopped trying to choose—Italy? India? or Indonesia?—and eventually just admitted that I wanted to travel to all of them. Four months in each place. A year in total. Of course this was a slightly more ambitious dream than "I want to buy myself a new pencil box." But this is what I wanted. And I knew that I wanted to write about it. It wasn't so much that I wanted to thoroughly explore the countries themselves; this has been done. It was more that I wanted to thoroughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country, in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. It was only later, after admitting this dream, that I noticed the happy coincidence that all these countries begin with the letter I. A fairly auspicious sign, it seemed, on a voyage of self-discovery.
我決定不再選擇意大利、印度或印尼？最后我只好承認，我通通都想去。每個地方待四個月，總共一年。當然，這個夢想比“我想給自己買新鉛筆盒”稍有企圖心。但這是我的愿望。而我知道我想寫下這些過程，倒不是為了徹底探索這些國家本身；這已經做過。而是去徹底探索自己處在每個國家當中的自我面貌，因為這些國家在傳統習慣上把那件事做得很好。我要在意大利探索享樂的藝術，在印度探索虔誠的藝術，在印尼探索平衡二者的藝術。承認了這個夢想后，我才留意到令人愉快的巧合：這些國家都是以字母“I ”起頭，似乎蹊蹺地預示了自我發現的旅程。
Imagine now, if you will, all the opportunities for mockery this idea unleashed in my wiseass friends. I wanted to go to the Three I's, did I? Then why not spend the year in Iran, Ivory Coast and Iceland? Or even better—why not go on pilgrimage to the Great Tri-State "I" Triumvirate of Islip, I-95 and Ikea? My friend Susan suggested that perhaps I should establish a not-for-profit relief organization called "Divorcées Without Borders." But all this joking was moot because "I" wasn't free to go anywhere yet. That divorce—long after I'd walked out of my marriage—was still not happening. I’d started having to put legal pressure on my husband, doing dreadful things out of my worst divorce nightmares, like serving papers and writing damning legal accusations (required by New York State law) of his alleged mental cruelty—documents that left no room for subtlety, no way in which to say to the judge: "Hey, listen, it was a really complicated relationship, and I made huge mistakes, too, and I'm very sorry about that, but all I want is to be allowed to leave."
請各位試想，這念頭為我那些自作聰明的朋友們提供了多少嘲弄的機會。我要去三個以“I”開頭的國家，是嗎？那為何不在這一年去伊朗（Iran）、象牙海岸（Ivory Coast）和冰島（Iceland）呢？甚至這樣更好——何不去朝拜大紐約地區的艾斯利普（Islip）、I-95公路和宜家（Ikea）？我的朋友蘇珊建議我成立一個非營利救濟組織，名叫“無國界離婚人士”。但這些玩笑都處于假設階段，因為我仍沒有去任何地方的自由。那場離婚——在我從婚姻出走過后許久 ——尚未發生。我開始不得不給我先生法律壓力；從我恐怖的離婚噩夢中，使出可怕的手段，比方說送交文件，寫惡毒的法律控訴（紐約州法律的要求），控訴他有所謂的精神虐待情事——這些文件沒有斟酌余地，無從告訴法官：“嘿，聽著，這真的是一段復雜的關系，我也犯過許多大錯，很抱歉，但我只想獲準離去。”
(Here, I pause to offer a prayer for my gentle reader: May you never, ever, have to get a divorce in New York.)
（在此，我停下來為我溫文儒雅的讀者禱告： 但愿你永遠無須在紐約辦離婚。）
