I was one of the only kids in college who had a reason to go to the P.O. box at the end of the day, and that was mainly because my mother has never believed in email, in Facebook, in texting or cell phones in general. And so while other kids were BBM-ing their parents, I was literally waiting by the mailbox to get a letter from home to see how the weekend had gone, which was a little frustrating when Grandma was in the hospital, but I was just looking for some sort of scribble, some unkempt cursive from my mother.
念大學的時,我是唯一一個 每天都要到郵政信箱報到的孩子 主要是因為 我媽從來就不相信 電郵、臉書、簡訊或手機這些東西 所以, 當其他人都在用黑莓機連絡爸媽時 我真的就是站在郵箱旁邊等 等一封家書,看看家裡近況如何 聽說奶奶住院,有點沮喪 但我在找熟悉的筆跡 我媽媽潦草的筆跡
And so when I moved to New York City after college and got completely sucker-punched in the face by depression, I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I wrote those same kinds of letters that my mother had written me for strangers, and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens of them. I left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the U.N., everywhere. I blogged about those letters and the days when they were necessary, and I posed a kind of crazy promise to the Internet: that if you asked me for a hand-written letter, I would write you one, no questions asked. Overnight, my inbox morphed into this harbor of heartbreak -- a single mother in Sacramento, a girl being bullied in rural Kansas, all asking me, a 22-year-old girl who barely even knew her own coffee order, to write them a love letter and give them a reason to wait by the mailbox.
畢業後,我搬到紐約 好巧不巧遇上金融海嘯 那時候,我只想到要做一件事 我照著媽媽以前寫給我的信, 再寫了一些給陌生人 把數十封信 塞到每個角落 放在咖啡廳、圖書館、聯合國總部,每一個地方 然後,我在部落格上公布了這件事 告訴大家什麼時候可以拿到這些信 也向大家保證 我可以毫無條件地寫信給 每一個想要收到手寫信的人 一夜間, 我的郵箱變成大家的避風港 一位沙加緬度的單親媽媽、 一位被霸凌的堪薩斯農村女孩 大家都要我這個22歲 連自己點什麼咖啡都搞不清楚的女孩 寫情書給他們 並給他們一個等待的理由
Well, today I fuel a global organization that is fueled by those trips to the mailbox, fueled by the ways in which we can harness social media like never before to write and mail strangers letters when they need them most, but most of all, fueled by crates of mail like this one, my trusty mail crate, filled with the scriptings of ordinary people, strangers writing letters to other strangers not because they're ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee, but because they have found one another by way of letter-writing.
如今,我參與了一個國際組織 一個專門透過郵箱寄信的組織 這個組織 史無前例地利用社群媒體 寫信給迫切需要的陌生人 但最重要的是 用像這個裝了郵件的紙箱支撐著, 我最可靠的裝信紙箱, 裡頭裝滿了平凡人的筆跡, 陌生人寫信給其他陌生人, 並非因為他們將要見面或者喝杯咖啡聊天, 而是因為他們藉由寫信發現彼此。
But, you know, the thing that always gets me about these letters is that most of them have been written by people that have never known themselves loved on a piece of paper. They could not tell you about the ink of their own love letters. They're the ones from my generation, the ones of us that have grown up into a world where everything is paperless, and where some of our best conversations have happened upon a screen. We have learned to diary our pain onto Facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.
但你知道嗎,我老是被這些信感動的是 其中大部分的信是被一些從來不知道 他們自己喜歡紙上文字的人所寫。 他們無法告訴你他們自己情書上的油墨。 他們和我是同個世代的人, 我們成長在沒有紙張的世界, 而且有些我們最好的溝通 都發生在銀幕上。 我們知道怎麼將我們的痛苦記錄在臉書上, 我們講話時非常簡短,有時用到少於140字母。
But what if it's not about efficiency this time? I was on the subway yesterday with this mail crate, which is a conversation starter, let me tell you. If you ever need one, just carry one of these. (Laughter) And a man just stared at me, and he was like, "Well, why don't you use the Internet?" And I thought, "Well, sir, I am not a strategist, nor am I specialist. I am merely a storyteller." And so I could tell you about a woman whose husband has just come home from Afghanistan, and she is having a hard time unearthing this thing called conversation, and so she tucks love letters throughout the house as a way to say, "Come back to me. Find me when you can." Or a girl who decides that she is going to leave love letters around her campus in Dubuque, Iowa, only to find her efforts ripple-effected the next day when she walks out onto the quad and finds love letters hanging from the trees, tucked in the bushes and the benches. Or the man who decides that he is going to take his life, uses Facebook as a way to say goodbye to friends and family. Well, tonight he sleeps safely with a stack of letters just like this one tucked beneath his pillow, scripted by strangers who were there for him when.
如果這次不是只關效率呢? 昨天我拿著這個裝了信件的紙箱搭地鐵, 我跟你說,這紙箱是一個話匣子。 如果你需要話題的話,就帶一個吧。(笑聲) 有個男人盯著我看,他看起來好像是在說: 「奇怪了,為什麼你不用網路呢?」 我心想:「先生,我不是戰略家, 也不是專家。我姑且算是一個說故事的人吧。」 我能夠告訴你的是有個妻子, 她丈夫剛從阿富汗回到家, 她經歷一段非常艱難的時間想辦法和丈夫溝通, 於是她將情書藏遍整個房子, 如同在說:「回到我身邊。 當你可以的時候,找到我。」 另外,有個女孩決定要將情書放在 自己位在愛荷華州迪比克的校園裡, 直到隔天當她走到教室外時, 她發現她的付出已經成熟, 發現有情書掛在樹上,藏在草叢和長椅中。 另一則是有個男人決定要結束他的生命, 透過臉書和朋友還有家人 道別。 嗯,今晚他舒適地睡在一疊信中, 就像我手上這一疊信,塞在他的枕頭下, 這些信由那些一向支持他的陌生人們所寫。
These are the kinds of stories that convinced me that letter-writing will never again need to flip back her hair and talk about efficiency, because she is an art form now, all the parts of her, the signing, the scripting, the mailing, the doodles in the margins. The mere fact that somebody would even just sit down, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through, with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up and the iPhone is pinging and we've got six conversations rolling in at once, that is an art form that does not fall down to the Goliath of "get faster," no matter how many social networks we might join. We still clutch close these letters to our chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, when we turn pages into palettes to say the things that we have needed to say, the words that we have needed to write, to sisters and brothers and even to strangers, for far too long. Thank you. (Applause) (Applause)
就是這些故事讓我相信 寫信不再是令人討厭, 也不是要講求效率的事, 因為現在這已經是種藝術, 每個部分都是,簽名,筆跡,郵寄, 邊緣的塗鴉。 事實是有個人可以就坐下, 拿出一張紙,從頭到尾想著一個人, 而這樣的心意是打開網路瀏覽器、 iPhone發出訊息聲告訴我們一次接收六則對話, 很難達到的, 這是種藝術, 不論我們加入多少社群網絡媒體, 並不會敗倒在「快速」哲學巨人之下。 當我們將胸膛拉近到紙張前, 更強烈地述說著早就想大聲說的事情, 當我們將這些書信化為調色盤,去訴說著 那些我們必須說出來的事情, 那些我們必須寫出來的事情 給我們的兄弟姊妹,甚至是陌生人,讓他們永遠珍藏... 謝謝(掌聲) (掌聲)