音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:01.09]Passage 20. Suppose Someone Gave You a Pen

[00:07.76]Suppose someone gave you a pen — a sealed, solid-colored pen.

[00:14.00]You couldn’t see how much ink it had.

[00:16.95]It might run dry after the first few tentative words

[00:21.11]or last just long enough to create a masterpiece (or several)

[00:26.36]that would last forever and make a difference in the scheme of things.

[00:30.41]You don’t know before you begin.

[00:33.04]Under the rules of the game, you really never know.

[00:36.76]You have to take a chance!

[00:38.84]Actually, no rule of the game states you must do anything.

[00:43.65]Instead of picking up and using the pen,

[00:46.71]you could leave it on a shelf or in a drawer where it will dry up, unused.

[00:52.84]But if you do decide to use it, what would you do with it?

[00:56.89]How would you play the game?

[00:58.93]Would you plan and plan before you ever wrote a word?

[01:03.20]Would your plans be so extensive that you never even got to the writing?

[01:08.23]Or would you take the pen in hand, plunge right in and just do it,

[01:13.37]struggling to keep up with the twists and turns of the torrents of words that take you where they take you?

[01:19.60]Would you write cautiously and carefully,as if the pen might run dry the next moment,

[01:25.62]or would you pretend or believe (or pretend to believe)

[01:30.22]that the pen will write forever and proceed accordingly?

[01:34.49]And of what would you write:

[01:36.78] Of love? Hate? Fun? Misery? Life? Death? Nothing? Everything?

[01:43.46]Would you write to please just yourself? Or others?

[01:47.51]Or yourself by writing for others?

[01:50.57]Would your strokes be tremblingly timid or brilliantly bold?

[01:55.28]Fancy with a flourish or plain?

[01:57.68]Would you even write?

[01:59.32]Once you have the pen, no rule says you have to write.

[02:03.26]Would you sketch? Scribble? Doodle or draw?

[02:06.55]Would you stay in or on the lines, or see no lines at all, even if they were there?

[02:13.22]Or are they?

[02:14.31]There’s a lot to think about here,isn’t there?

[02:16.83]Now, suppose someone gave you a life...