Now, I'm the kind of person who, when a ninth-generation Indonesian medicine man tells you that you're destined to move to Bali and live with him for four months, thinks you should make every effort to do that. And this, finally, was how my whole idea about this year of traveling began to gel. I absolutely needed to get myself back to Indonesia somehow, on my own dime this time. This was evident. Though I couldn't yet imagine how to do it, given my chaotic and disturbed life. (Not only did I still have a pricey divorce to settle, and David-troubles, I still had a magazine job that prevented me from going anywhere for three or four months at a time.) But I had to get back there. Didn't I hadn't he foretold it? Problem was, I also wanted to go to India, to visit my Guru's Ashram, and going to India is an expensive and time-consuming affair, also. To make matters even more confusing, I'd also been dying lately to get over to Italy, so I could practice speaking Italian in context, but also because I was drawn to the idea of living for a while in a culture where pleasure and beauty are revered.

我是那种当一位第九代印尼药师跟你说你注定搬到巴厘岛跟他住四个月的时候 ，会觉得自己应当尽力而为的人。最终，我这一年的整个旅行想法都因而开始瓦解。我必须让自己再回到巴厘岛才行，这回用的是自己的钱。这很明显。尽管如果考虑到我当时杂乱失常的生活，我无法想象自己应该怎么做（不仅要解决一场昂贵的离婚，以及大卫的问题，还有一份不容许我一次离开三四个月的杂志社工作。）但是我“必须”回到那里。不是吗？他不是已做了预言？不过问题是，我也想去印度，去拜访印度导师的道场，而去印度也还是件花钱、花时间的事情。更为难的是，我最近想去意大利想得要命， 除了可以实地练习讲意大利语外，也因为我渴望在一个崇尚享乐与美的国家住上一阵子。

All these desires seemed to be at odds with one another. Especially the Italy/India conflict. What was more important? The part of me that wanted to eat veal in Venice? Or the part of me that wanted to be waking up long before dawn in the austerity of an Ashram to begin a long day of meditation and prayer? The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously amid extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? My truth was exactly what I'd said to the medicine man in Bali—I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence—the dual glories of a human life. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I'd been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion . . . well, surely there was a way to learn that trick. And it seemed to me, just from my short stay in Bali, that I maybe could learn this from the Balinese. Maybe even from the medicine man himself.

这些渴望似乎互相抵触。尤其是意大利 ／印度的矛盾。什么比较重要？想在威尼斯吃小牛肉的我？或者黎明前在朴素的道场中起身、开始整天静坐祷告的我？伟大的苏菲主义者鲁米（Rumi），曾叫他的学生们写下他们人生中最想要的三件事。假若清单中的任何项目与其他项目发生冲突，鲁米告诫说，就注定不快乐。过单一目标的生活较好，他如此教导。那如果要在极端中过协调的生活，怎么样呢？如果说，你能创造一种辽阔的生活，有办法把看似不协调的对立物整合成一种无所不包的世界观，那又如何？我的理念正是我告诉巴厘药师的话——我想同时体验两者。我要世俗享乐，也要神圣的超越——人类生活的双重荣耀。我要希腊人所谓的，善与美合而为一。在过去 痛苦的几年间，我失去了两者，因为欢乐与虔诚都需要在没有压力的空间中茁壮，而我却生活在一个焦虑无止境的垃圾压缩机当中。至于如何在享乐的需要以及对虔诚的渴望之间求取平衡……这个嘛，总有方法学到诀窍。从我在巴厘岛的短暂居留看来，似可从巴厘人，甚至药师本身身上学到这点。

Four feet on the ground, a head full of foliage, looking at the world through the heart . . .

四脚着地，枝叶蔓生的脑袋，通过心看世界……

So I stopped trying to choose—Italy? India? or Indonesia?—and eventually just admitted that I wanted to travel to all of them. Four months in each place. A year in total. Of course this was a slightly more ambitious dream than "I want to buy myself a new pencil box." But this is what I wanted. And I knew that I wanted to write about it. It wasn't so much that I wanted to thoroughly explore the countries themselves; this has been done. It was more that I wanted to thoroughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country, in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. It was only later, after admitting this dream, that I noticed the happy coincidence that all these countries begin with the letter I. A fairly auspicious sign, it seemed, on a voyage of self-discovery.

我决定不再选择意大利、印度或印尼？最后我只好承认，我通通都想去。每个地方待四个月，总共一年。当然，这个梦想比“我想给自己买新铅笔盒”稍有企图心。但这是我的愿望。而我知道我想写下这些过程，倒不是为了彻底探索这些国家本身；这已经做过。而是去彻底探索自己处在每个国家当中的自我面貌，因为这些国家在传统习惯上把那件事做得很好。我要在意大利探索享乐的艺术，在印度探索虔诚的艺术，在印尼探索平衡二者的艺术。承认了这个梦想后，我才留意到令人愉快的巧合：这些国家都是以字母“I ”起头，似乎蹊跷地预示了自我发现的旅程。

Imagine now, if you will, all the opportunities for mockery this idea unleashed in my wiseass friends. I wanted to go to the Three I's, did I? Then why not spend the year in Iran, Ivory Coast and Iceland? Or even better—why not go on pilgrimage to the Great Tri-State "I" Triumvirate of Islip, I-95 and Ikea? My friend Susan suggested that perhaps I should establish a not-for-profit relief organization called "Divorcées Without Borders." But all this joking was moot because "I" wasn't free to go anywhere yet. That divorce—long after I'd walked out of my marriage—was still not happening. I’d started having to put legal pressure on my husband, doing dreadful things out of my worst divorce nightmares, like serving papers and writing damning legal accusations (required by New York State law) of his alleged mental cruelty—documents that left no room for subtlety, no way in which to say to the judge: "Hey, listen, it was a really complicated relationship, and I made huge mistakes, too, and I'm very sorry about that, but all I want is to be allowed to leave."

请各位试想，这念头为我那些自作聪明的朋友们提供了多少嘲弄的机会。我要去三个以“I”开头的国家，是吗？那为何不在这一年去伊朗（Iran）、象牙海岸（Ivory  Coast）和冰岛（Iceland）呢？甚至这样更好——何不去朝拜大纽约地区的艾斯利普（Islip）、I-95公路和宜家（Ikea）？我的朋友苏珊建议我成立一个非营利救济组织，名叫“无国界离婚人士”。但这些玩笑都处于假设阶段，因为我仍没有去任何地方的自由。那场离婚——在我从婚姻出走过后许久 ——尚未发生。我开始不得不给我先生法律压力；从我恐怖的离婚噩梦中，使出可怕的手段，比方说送交文件，写恶毒的法律控诉（纽约州法律的要求），控诉他有所谓的精神虐待情事——这些文件没有斟酌余地，无从告诉法官：“嘿，听着，这真的是一段复杂的关系，我也犯过许多大错，很抱歉，但我只想获准离去。”

(Here, I pause to offer a prayer for my gentle reader: May you never, ever, have to get a divorce in New York.)

（在此，我停下来为我温文儒雅的读者祷告： 但愿你永远无须在纽约办离婚。）