这本书是作者作为一个采访者，去采访一个人叫Knight, 这个人在森林里独自隐居了将近20年的生活，除了每隔一段时间下山去偷点咖啡，偷点巧克力(太爱吃甜食最后牙坏了无法自拔，哈哈哈)，或者偷很多书，也偷点家居用品，干净的衣服衬衫，原材料diy个什么的，从来没有被抓到过，确认是大神了，但大神最终还是被抓，因盗窃罪被判入狱。这样的一个终极隐士，怎样在森林里一个人过了20年？怎么样摆脱一个人的社交本能，不需要任何的帮助，也从不感觉到孤独？20年，是一个人的青春，是一个人的中年，是大半辈子的爱恨情仇。在深山的这些年他都有怎样的境遇奇闻，怎样看待这个世界？我带着满满的好奇去读这本书。

读这本书的时候，我特别享受，甚至想读第二遍。我想其实很多人也曾想过这样的生活，不被别人打扰，不被任何期待打扰，一个人长久地生活在社会里，连自己的名字都成为了束缚。但，睡前的痴心妄想和所有勇敢，终究被清晨的闹钟一一敲碎。

Reading Notes of THE STRANGER IN THE WOODS

1. Knight seemed to weigh the precision of every word he used, careful as a poet.

他说话的时候斟酌着每一个词语，像个诗人一样。

我也希望成为这样的人，会斟酌每一个词语，虽然经常都会遇到词不达意的时候，但起码会思考每一个词语带来的力量。

2. Pursuers are the most modern type of hermits. Rather than fleeing society, like protesters, or living beholden to higher powers, like pilgrims. pursuers seek alone time for artistic freedom, scientific insight, or deeper self-understanding.

追逐者从某种意义上都算是隐士，他们在漫长的孤独中寻找艺术自由，寻找科学见解，寻找真正的自我。

3. Yet almost every hermit communicates with the outside world. Following the Tao Te Ching, so many protester hermits in China wrote poems—including poet-monks knowns as Cold Mountain, Pickup, Big Shield, and Storehouse—that the genre was given its own name, shanshui.

他在隐居的生活中读了很多书，包括老子的《道德经》, 很多中国古代诗人僧侣以“山水”为题材的禅诗，他认为这都是隐士们与外界交流的方式和内容。

4. “If you’re born a human oddity,” says the introductory chapter of Very Special People, “every day of your life, starting in infancy, you are made aware that you are not as others are.” When you get older, it continues, things are likely to get worse. “You may hide from the world,” advises the book, “to avoid the punishment it inflicts on those who differ from the rest in mind or body.” 

这样与生俱来的被排斥感，逃避这个世界也许是一种自我救赎吧。

5. “Solitude bestows an increase in something valuable. I can’t dismiss that idea. Solitude increased my perception. But here’s the tricky thing: when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I  became irrelevant.” 

独处会放大一切的感官感知，逐渐自我的观念也放得越来越大，大到虚无。

如果真的会这样，那真的挺好的。

6. My desires dropped away. I didn’t long for anything. I didn’t even have a name. To put it romantically, I was completely free.

这一生中，自己的名字，都是为别人而存在。如果孤独到身边一个人都没有，那名字对自己来说，也没任何价值。到人生的最后，一个一个人都变成数字，从数字再变到灰尘，一阵风，就扬走了。

7. New York University placed more than twenty Buddhist monks and nuns inside magnetic resonance imaging machines, tracking blood flow to their brains while they meditated. Other neuroscientists conducted similar studies. The results remain preliminary, but it appears that when the human brain experiences a self-consciously chosen silence, as opposed to sleep, the brain does not slow down. It remains as active as ever. What changes is where the brain is functioning. 

科学家试图研究过那些得道高僧打坐冥想时的大脑活动。研究得出，冥想时的大脑活动并没有像熟睡中那样缓慢沉静，而是集中活动在一个指定区域内。

8. Language and hearing are seated in the cerebral cortex, the folded gray matter that covers the first couple of millimeters of the outer brain like wrapping paper. When one experiences silence, absent even reading, the cerebral cortex typically rests. Meanwhile, deeper and more ancient brain structures seem to be activated—the subcortical zones. People who live busy, noisy lives are rarely granted access to these areas. Silence, it appears, is not the opposite of sound. It is another world altogether, literally offering a deeper level of thought, a journey to the bedrock of the self. 

这一段从神经角度讲，人在完全沉默时激发的大脑活动区域，没有语言侵袭的深层原始区域，全然进入另一个自我世界。我们这些奔波于生活，行走在嘈杂闹市中的人很难体会到的感觉。

9. The world is a confusing place, meaningful and meaningless at one. 

是啊，世界从始至终都是这样一个矛盾存在，我们繁忙于没有意义的事情，却一直在追寻着意义。

P.s. 如果有读过这本书的小伙伴，或者觉得这些读书笔记里面的观点有待探讨，又或者觉得这些读书笔记对你有帮助，还或者觉得这样做读书笔记的形式有什么可以改进的地方帮助你更好得吸收这本书的精华内容，更或者只是简单地帮助你提高英文阅读水平。

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