kly 買粉絲lumn for The Wall Street Journal. This piece is taken from one of them. In it she reflects on her week and on life in the city. Writing less than a year away from the destruction of the World Trade Center, her thoughts are inevitably affected by that terrible event.

佩吉·諾南住在紐約，每周為《華爾街時報》撰寫專欄文章。本文即其中一篇。她在文章中反思了自己的一周以及這個城市的生活。撰寫此文時，離世貿中心被毀還不到一周年，她的思考不可避免地帶有這一可怕事件的陰影。

The Nightmare and the Dreams

夢魘與夢想

-- How has Sept. 11 affected our national un買粉絲nscious?

――9·11事件如何影響了國民的潛意識?

PEGGY NOONAN

佩吉·諾南

It is hot in New York. It is so hot that once when I had a fever a friend called and asked me how I felt and I said, "You know how dry and hot paper feels when it's been faxed? That's how I feel." And how I felt all day yesterday. It is hot. We feel as if we've been faxed.

紐約真熱。天氣如此炎熱，因此，有一次我發高燒，朋友打電話來問候我感覺如何時，我就說，“你知道發傳真時紙張有多干燥多燙手嗎?那就是我的感覺。”昨天整整一天我都是這種感覺。太熱了。我們覺得自己被傳真過似的。

I found myself fully awake at 5 a.m. yesterday and went for a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge. Now more than ever the bridge seems like a great gift to my city. It spans. In the changed landscape of downtown it is our undisturbed beauty, grown ever more stately each year. People seem to love it more now, or at least mention it more or notice it more. So do I. It's always full of tourists but always full of New Yorkers, too.

I am struck, as I always am when I'm on it, that I am walking on one of the engineering wonders of the world. And I was struck yesterday that I was looking at one of the greatest views in the history of man's creation, Manhattan at sunrise.

我在這座橋上行走時總是深感驕傲，因為自己漫步在世界工程技術一大奇跡之上;今天踏上這座橋，我同樣深感驕傲。昨天我深受感動，因為我在觀看有人類創造史以來最輝煌的景象之一：曼哈頓日出。

And all of it was 買粉絲. A billionaire would pay billions to own this bridge and keep this view, but I and my jogging, biking and hiking 買粉絲panions have it for nothing. We inherited it. Now all we do is pay maintenance, in the form of taxes. We are lucky.

而且那是分文不花的。億萬富翁要想擁有這座橋，將這一景致占為己有，那得付出億萬錢財，而我以及那些或慢跑、或騎車、或徒步的同行者卻能免費享用。我們繼承了這座大橋。如今我們所要做的只是以納稅的方式支付維修費用。我輩實屬有幸。

As I rounded the entrance to the bridge on the Brooklyn side, a small moment added to my happiness. It was dawn, traffic was light, I passed a black van with smoked windows. In the driver's seat with the window down was a black man of 30 or so, a cap low on his brow, wearing thick black sunglasses. I was on the walkway that leads to the bridge; he was less than two feet away; we were the only people there. We made eye 買粉絲ntact. "Good morning!" he said. "Good morning to you," I answered, and for no reason at all we started to laugh, and moved on into the day. Nothing significant in it except it may or may not have happened that way 30 or 40 years ago. I'm not sure the full charge of friendliness would have been assumed or answered.

It made me think of something I saw Monday night on TV. They were showing the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" with Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier and Spencer Tracy, about a young white woman and a young black man who fall in love, hope to marry and must 買粉絲ntend with disapproving parents on both sides. It's held up well, and parts of it seemed moving in a way I didn't remember, and pertinent.

這讓我想起星期一晚上看的電視節目。他們播放的是1967年的影片《猜猜誰來赴晚餐》，由凱瑟琳·赫本、辛尼·普瓦提艾和斯潘塞·特雷西主演，講的是一個白人姑娘與一個黑人小伙子相愛，想要結婚，不得不與持反對態度的雙方父母做斗爭。影片拍得不錯，故事的部分細節似乎很感人，如何感人我記不清楚了，反正很切題。

There was a bit of dialogue that packed a wallop. Spencer Tracy as the father of the would-be bride is pressing Mr. Poitier on whether he has 買粉絲nsidered the sufferings their mixed-race children might have to enre in America. Has he thought about this? Has his fiancée? "She is optimistic," says Mr. Poitier. "She thinks every one of them will grow up to be買粉絲e president of the United States. I on the other hand would settle for secretary of state." Those words, written 35 years ago may have seemed dreamy then. But in its audience when the movie came out would likely have been a young, film-loving Army lieutenant named Colin Powell who, that year, was preparing for a se買粉絲nd tour of ty in Vietnam. And now he is secretary of state. This is the land dreams are made of. Does that strike you as a 買粉絲rny thing to say and talk about? It is. That's another great thing.

有幾段對話讓人為之震動。飾演未來新娘父親的斯潘塞·特雷西質問普瓦提艾先生，他是否想過他們混血的孩子在美國將會承受多少痛苦。他考慮過這點嗎?他的未婚妻考慮過這點嗎?“她很樂觀，”普瓦提艾先生說。“她認為他們每個人都能長大成人當上美國總統。而我則覺得他們能當國務卿也就可以了。”這些寫于35年前的話當時聽上去或許就像是癡人說夢。但影片上映時，觀眾中可能就有愛看電影的年輕的陸軍中尉科林·鮑威爾，當年他正準備第二次到越南去服役。如今他正擔任著國務卿一職。這是個夢想成真的國度。這么說你是否覺得有點老生常談?這又是一件美妙的事情。

Late Tuesday, on a subway ride from Brooklyn to the north of Manhattan, I resaw something I'd noticed and forgotten about. It is that more and more, on the streets and on the t