恋恋笔记本：The Notebook -01

这是薄薄的一本书，只有两百多页，作者Nicholas Sparks用不大的词汇量勾勒出一个动人的爱情故事和迷人的美国南部风光。

多年以前，诺亚和艾丽，这对身份悬殊却堕入爱河的恋人，因艾丽家人的阻挠而使得这段恋情戛然而止。失望的诺亚选择参军，而艾丽也开始了新的生活。二战结束后，他们重新相遇，又该如何面对这份曾经的感情......这一切都由一位老先生从笔记本里娓娓道出。

Chapter 1：Miracles

Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end?

The sun has come up and I am sitting by a window that is foggy with the breath of a life...gone by. I'm a sight this morning: two shirts, heavy pants, a scarf wrapped twice around my neck and tucked into a thick sweater knitted by my daughter thirty birthdays ago. The thermostat in my room is set as high as it will go , and a smaller space heater sits directly behind me. It clicks and groans and spews hot air like a fairy‐tale dragon , and still my body shivers with a cold that will never go away, a cold that has been eighty years in the making.

Eighty years, I think sometimes, and despite my own acceptance of my age, it still amazes me that I haven't been warm since George Bush was president.

I wonder if this is how it is for everyone my age.

My life ? It isn't easy to explain . It has not been the rip‐roaring spectacular I fancied it would be , but neither have I burrowed around with the gophers. I suppose it has most resembled a blue‐chip stock: fairly stable , more ups than downs , and gradually trending upward over time . A good buy , a lucky Buy , and I've learned that not everyone can say this about his life . But do not be misled . I am nothing special ; of this I am sure . I am a common man with common thoughts , and I've led a common life. There are no monuments Dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten,but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.

The romantics would call this a love story , the cynics would call it a tragedy. In my mind it's a little bit of both , and no matter how you choose to view it in the end, it does not change the fact that it involves a great deal of my life and the path I've chosen to follow . I have no complaints about my path and the places it has taken me; enough complaints to fill a circus tent about other things, maybe, but the path I've chosen has always been the right one, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

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