每日一词一文

September is a door that does not slam; it simply stands open, and we walk through without quite noticing the threshold. The light changes first, growing courteous and slanted. Then the mornings arrive with a small chill folded inside them, like a note slipped under the door of summer, announcing that the season of bare arms is over and the season of sweaters has begun.

九月是一扇不会砰然关上的门，它只是敞开着，我们走进去，却几乎没留意那道门槛。先是光线变了，变得有礼而倾斜。接着清晨带着一小团叠在里面的凉意到来，像一张塞进夏天门缝的便条，宣告露出手臂的季节结束、穿毛衣的季节开始。

Every September, the year turns a corner and asks us to turn with it. School bells remember their old authority; calendars grow suddenly serious; the evenings pull in like a tide. Even those of us who left the classroom long ago feel the old summons, the particular ache of fresh notebooks and unnamed possibilities waiting to be sharpened.

每年九月，一年都会转过一个弯，并邀请我们与它一同转弯。上课铃想起它昔日的权威；日历忽然变得严肃；黄昏像潮水一样越退越早。连那些早已离开教室多年的人，也会感到那古老的召唤：新笔记本与尚未命名的可能性正等着被削尖，那是一种特别的微痛。

A threshold is where two rooms meet, and we are rarely the same person on both sides of it. September is the threshold of intentions: the year's vague promises must either be honored or let go. Something in the slanting light insists on accounting, the way a good teacher insists that the answer, however late, be written out in full.

门槛是两间屋子相接之处，而我们跨过它前后，很少还是同一个人。九月是意愿的门槛：这一年含混的许诺，要么兑现，要么放手。倾斜的光线里有某种东西坚持要算账，就像一位好老师坚持要求：答案无论多晚，都要完整地写出来。

There is sadness in this season, and it is a useful sadness. It reminds us that nothing stays, that the particular summer will never be repeated, that the children who went back to school will not be the children they were in June. But the same current that carries things away also brings the next thing; the art is to stand still in the moving water and feel both at once.

这个季节有悲伤，而那是一种有用的悲伤。它提醒我们：什么都不会停留，那个独一无二的夏天再不会重演，回到学校的孩子们，也不再是六月里的那些孩子了。但把东西带走的那股水流，也把下一件东西带来；生活的艺术，是在流动的水里站定，同时感受这二者。

So cross the threshold deliberately. Buy the new notebook even if no one requires it; clear a shelf for the books you have been meaning to read. Let September do what it has always done: harvest what was ripe, store what was good, and make room, with a firm and gentle hand, for what is trying to begin.

所以，故意地、郑重地跨过那道门槛吧。即使没有人要求，也去买一本新笔记本；清出一层书架，放那些你一直想读的书。让九月去做它一直在做的事：收割已成熟的，储藏还好的，然后用坚定而温柔的手，为正要开始的事物腾出地方。