Chapter 1: Paradise Pickles & Preserves

《微物之神》真的是一本讀不膩的小說，裡面的文字實在太美妙了。

1. "Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it." (13)

「一旦安靜降臨，它便停留並擴散在艾斯沙身上。它從頭上伸展開來，用濕軟的手臂環抱；它將他擺盪進入古老、如胎兒心跳的節奏；它讓偷偷摸摸長出吸吮的觸毛，沿著他頭顱內部移動，吸著記憶的小丘低谷，從它舌尖攆走老舊的詞句；它將描述思想的話語剝掉，讓思想變得赤裸、無可言說、麻木不仁。對於一個觀察者來說，他幾乎是不存在的。過去的這幾年，他慢慢地從世界淡出。他已經習慣長居體內的不安章魚，對於過往噴出漆黑的鎮定劑。漸漸地，他沉默的理由遭到掩埋，葬在安慰人心的皺褶深處。」

2. "Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story." (32)

「瑣事、尋常事物被砸碎又重建。賦予新的意義。突然間又成為故事刷白的骨架。」