Unit 02 appetite

L APPETITEby Laurie LeeOne of the major pleasures in life is appetite, and one of our major duties should be to preserve it. Appetite is the keenness of living; it is one of the senses that tells you that you are still curious to exist, that you still have an edge on your longings and want to bite into the world and taste its multitudinous flavours and juices.By appetite, of course, I don't mean just the lust for food, but any condition of unsatisfied desire, any burning in the blood that proves you want more than you've got, and that you haven't yet used up your life. Wilde*said he felt sorry for those who never got their heart's desire, but sorrier still for those who did. I got mine once only, and it nearly killed me, and I've always preferred wanting to having since.For appetite, to me, is this state of wanting, which keeps one's expectations alive.I remember learning this lesson long ago as a child, when treats and orgies were few, and when I discovered that the greatest pitch of happiness was not in actually eating a toffee but in gazing at it beforehand. True, the first bite was delicious, but once the toffee was gone one was left with nothing, neither toffee nor lust. Besides, the whole toffeeness of toffees was imperceptibly diminished by the gross act of having eaten it. No, the best was in wanting it, in sitting and looking at it, when one tasted an inexhaustible treasure - house of flavours.So, for me, one of the keenest pleasures of appetite remains in the wanting, not the satisfaction. In wanting a peach, or a whisky, or a particular texture or sound, or to be with a particular friend. For in this condition, of course, I know that the object of desire is always at its most flawlessly perfect. Which is why I would carry thepreservation of appetite to the extent of deliberate fasting, simply because I think that appetite is too good to lose, too precious to be bludgeoned into insensibility by satiation and over-doing it.For that matter, I don't really want three square meals a day -- I want one huge, delicious, orgiastic, table-groaning blowout, say every four days, and then not be too sure where the next one is coming from. A day of fasting is not for me just a puritanical device for denying oneself a pleasure, but rather a way of anticipating a rarer moment of supreme indulgence.Fasting is an act of homage to the majesty of appetite.So I think we should arrange to give up our pleasures regularly-- our food, our friends, our lovers-- in order to preserve their intensity, and the moment of coming back to them. For this is the moment that renews and refreshes both oneself and the thing one loves. Sailors and travellers enjoyed this once, and so did hunters, I suppose. Part of the weariness of modern life may be that we live too much on top of each other, and are entertained and fed too regularly. Once we were separated by hunger both from our food and families, and then we learned to value both. The men went off hunting, and the dogs went with them; the women and children waved goodbye. The cave was empty of men for days on end; nobody ate, or knew what to do. The women crouched by the fire, the wet smoke in their eyes; the children wailed; everybody was hungry. Then one night there were shouts and the barking of dogs from the hills, and the men came back loaded with meat. This was the great reunion, and everybody gorged themselves silly, and appetite came into its own; the long-awaited meal became a feast to remember and an almost sacred celebration of life. Now we go off to the office andcome home in the evenings to cheap chicken and frozen peas. Very nice, but too much of it, too easy and regular, served up without effort or wanting. We eat, we are lucky, our faces are shining with fat, but we don't know the pleasure of being hungry any more.Too much of anything-- too much music, entertainment happy snacks, or time spent with one’s friends, creates a kind of impotence of living by which one can no longer hear, or taste, or see, or love, or remember. Life is short and precious, and appetite is one of its guardians, and loss of appetite is a sort of death. So if we are to enjoy this short life we should respect the divinity of appetite, and keep it eager and not too much blunted.It is a long time now since I knew that acute moment of bliss that comes from putting parched lips to a cup of cold water. The springs are still there to be enjoyed -- all one needs is the original thirst.*Wilde: Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), British dramatist, poet and novelist. He was skilful in producing paradoxes, e.g.There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.--- Picture of Dorian GrayGerald: I suppose society is wonderfully delightful!Lord Illingworth: to be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy. __ A woman of No importanceABOUT THE AUTHORLaurie Lee, British author, has written books of poetry (The Sun My Monument, The Bloom of Candles, My Many-Coated Man), travel (A Rose for Winter), and autobiography (Cider with Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning) . He won Atlantic Award in 1947, William Foyle Poetry Prize in 1956, and W. H. Smith Award in 1960. The selection is taken from I Can't Stay Long (1975), a collection of his essays.英國詩人和作家李(Laurie Lee)，文風質樸，作品多為描寫童年和田園生活的自傳體故事，如《與蘿西共飲蘋果汁》、《我在仲夏清晨踏上征途》等。