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Lê Thanh Việt
(lethanhviet)

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Cái này lấy từ "Chicken soup for teenage" . 1 phần của trong series này đc dịch ra tiếng Việt trong bộ " những tấm lòng cao cả " của nhà xuất bản Trẻ . Hy vọng mọi người enjoy these . :)
 
I slouched down in the passenger seat of our old Pontiac ’cause it was the cool way to sit when one is in the fourth grade. My dad was driving downtown to shop and I was going along for the ride. At least that’s what I had told him -- actually I had an important question to ask that had been on my mind for a couple of weeks and this was the first time I had been able to maneuver myself into his presence without being overt about it.

“Dad...” I started. And stopped.

“Yup?” he said.

“Some of the kids at school have been saying something and I know it’s not true.” I felt my lower lip quiver from the effort of trying to hold back the tears I felt threatening the inside corner of my right eye -- it was always the one that wanted to cry first.

“What is it, Pumpkin?” I knew he was in a good mood when he used this endearment.

“The kids say there is no Santa Claus.” Gulp. One tear escaped. “They say I’m dumb to believe in Santa anymore...it’s only for little kids.” My left eye started with a tear on the inside track.

“But I believe what you told me. That Santa is real. He is, isn’t he, Dad?”

Up to this point we had been cruising down Newell Avenue, which in those days a two-lane road lined with oak trees. At my question, my dad glanced over at my face and body position. He pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. Dad turned off the engine and moved over closer to me, his still-little girl huddled in the corner.

“The kids at school are wrong, Patty. Santa Claus is real.”

“I knew it!” I heaved a sigh of relief.

“But there is more I need to tell you about Santa. I think you’re old enough to understand what I am going to share with you. Are you ready?” My dad had a warm gleam in his eyes and a soft expression on his face. I knew something big was up and and I was ready, ’cause I trusted him completely. He would never lie to me.

“Once upon a time there was a real man who traveled the world and gave away presents to deserving children wherever he went. You will find him in many lands with different names, but what he had in his heart was the same in every language. In America we call him Santa Claus. He is the spirit of unconditional love and the desire to share that love by giving presents from the heart. When you get to a certain age, you come to realize that the real Santa Claus is not the guy who comes down your chimney on Christmas Eve. The real life and spirit of this magical elf lives forever in your heart, my heart, Mom’s heart and in the hearts and minds of all people who believe in the joy that giving to others brings. The real spirit of Santa becomes what you can give rather than what you get. Once you understand this and it becomes a part of you, Christmas becomes even more exciting and more magical because you come to realize the magic comes from you when Santa lives in your heart. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?”

I was gazing out the front window with all my concentration at a tree in front of us. I was afraid to look at my dad -- the person who had told me all my life that Santa was a real being. I wanted to believe like I believed last year -- that Santa was a big fat elf in a red suit. I did not want to swallow the grow-up pill and see anything different.

“Patty, look at me.” My dad waited. I turned my head and looked at him.

Dad had tears in his eyes, too -- tears of joy. His face shone with the light of a thousand galaxies and I saw in his eyes the eyes of Santa Claus. The real Santa Claus. The one who spent time choosing special things I wanted for all the Christmases past since the time I had come to live on this planet. The Santa who ate my carefully decorated cookies and drank the warm milk. The Santa who probably ate the carrot I left for Rudolph. The Santa who -- despite his utter lack of mechanical skills -- put together bicycles, wagons and otehr miscellaneous items during the wee hours of Christmas mornings.

I got it. I got the joy, the sharing, the love. My dad pulled me to him in a warm embrace and just helds me for what seemed the longest time. We both cried.

“Now you belong to a special group of people,” Dad continued. “You will share in the joy of Christmas from now on, every day of the year, not only on a special day. For now, Santa lives in your heart just like he lives in mine. It is your responsibility to fulfill the spirit of giving as your part of Santa living inside of you. This is one of the most important things that can happen to you in your whole life, because now you know that Santa Claus cannot exist without people like you and me to keep him alive. Do you think you can handle it?”

My heart swelled with pride and I’m sure my eyes were shining with excitement. “Of course, Dad. I want him to be in my heart, just like he’s in yours. I love you, Daddy. You’re the best Santa there ever was in the whole world.”

When it comes time in my life to explain the reality of Santa Claus to my children, I pray to the spirit of Christmas that I will be as eloquent and loving as my dad was the day I learned that the spirit of Santa Claus doesn’t wear a red suit. And I hope they will be as receptive as I was that day. I trust them totally and I think they will.
 
I was doing a guest writing workshop at Susanville State Prison near the Sierra Nevada foothills in northern California. Most of the men doing time there are sentenced to prison because of drugs. They are housed in huge dormitories in bunk beds. They have no privacy, no place to be alone, no place to think quietly. I had great apprehensions when I walked onto the prison grounds. I had taught writing workshops at many California prisons, but those prisons had cells. In Cells, even if they are shared with another inmate, one can find a least a little writing time. Surely the men here at Susanville were not going to be interested in what I had to offer.

I had decided to spend my two days giving a monologue workshop. I wanted the men to have a chance to write and then perform before a camera. I wanted them to see themselves on video before I left the prison at the end of the second day. I felt that life in this prison had probably stripped them of most of their identity and that writing and performance art might restore some sense of who they were or who they could be.

I was pleased that twenty men had signed up for the class. This was the maximum number I had said I could take. I spend the first hour with them, talking about what it was like to be a writer. Telling them that there is a joy and a freedom in the words. That no matter how much they were all forced to be alike, dress alike, eat the same food, keep the same hours, that in their writing they could finally be different. As different as they wanted to be. Writing, I told them, can be the most liberating of all the arts. You can be free with the word. There are no limits. told them that every time I picked up a pencil or sat down at a computer or a typewriter that it was as if I was coming home, coming home to my art, my words, that this was a world that no one else could take away. This art would sustain me throughout all my days.

The men listened well and when I finally had them start their writing projects, they worked hard. There was only one, a young, very handsome blond man, who I worried about. He was reluctant to share during that first day when I had them writing their monologues. Every other student read and rewrote and read again, but this man sat quietly, erasing, writing, tearing up drafts, starting again. Whenever I would approach his desk, he quietly covered his paper with his arms.

“Can I see?” I ask.

“It would be easier for me if you didn’t,” he would answer then a shy smile would appear.

I figured, what the heck. Even if he doesn’t share his writing with the class, he’s writing. He is choosing to spend his whole day in this hot stuffy classroom working on something called monologue. That morning he probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word. This should make me happy. But it didn’t. I was concerned about his need for privacy, about his inability to share, knowing that he didn’t think his writing was good enough.

I had worked in prisons for too many years to be fooled by his shyness. I knew that many of the inmates had learned at a very young age that they could do nothing right. They had been abused and tormented as children and lacked any self-confidence. But no matter how much I praised the other prisoners he wouldn’t relent. He went back to his dormitory that evening with his writing tucked into his jeans pocket. Many of the other men just left their work on the desks. Not him. He was taking no chance that I would read it after he was locked away behind the bars. He was right, of course. 1 would have made a beeline right for his desk the minute he got out the door. He had judged me right.

The second day all the men returned to the classroom. This was particularly pleasing to me. Even the young blond man. This was the day for reading and taping. I wondered how the silent, shy student would handle this. I was actually surprised to see him there. He had combed his long, blond hair and his shirt was neatly pressed. He had obviously thought about the fact that he was going to be filmed and wanted to look his best. At last I was going to hear what he wrote.

He didn’t say much during the performances. I had given the men fairly loose instructions about who should be speaking in their monologues. I had, though, told them that I wanted to hear their characters tell me what it is they really wanted, what it was that no one understood about them, and why they needed to talk. He sat there quietly, watching the work of his fellow inmates. One of the men had written a monologue for God, and another had been Abraham Lincoln, another Martin Luther King, Jr. Some of the monologues were funny, others serious. Even though they hadn’t had time to memorize their lines, once they began reading, the scripts in their hands were hardly noticeable, and I was extremely moved by their work.

Finally, he was the only one who hadn’t read his monologue. When all the others were finished I asked him, “Are you ready now?”

“I don’t think so,” he answered in such a gentle voice. Then the men were on him.

“Man, if I can do it, you can do it. Try it. You’ll like it. Come on man, don’t be shy. Nobody’s going to judge you here.”

So he got up, took his script to the performance area and stood before the camera. He looked so young. The papers in his hands were shaking like frightened birds, but he looked with determination into the eye of the camera and opened up his monologue.

“My name is Bruce. I am twenty-one years old and I am dead. I am dead because I spent time in prison for drugs and I didn’t care. I didn’t care about me. I went to bed every night just counting the days ‘till I could get out and get that next fix. I would kill for my next fix. I would kill for my next fix.”

He went on about his life, how he was raised in poverty by alcoholic parents, beaten, hungry, no life at all, shuffled back and forth through foster homes. While he read, he showed scars on his body, the burn marks on his arms where a drunken father had extinguished cigarettes, the cuts on his wrists where he had tried to take his own life. I couldn’t help it. The tears began forming in my eyes, hot and painful. My God, why had I asked him to share this horrible pain? Then he got to the end of his story.

“Even though I died right there in prison, I want to tell you something. The reason I need to talk to you today. I have risen again, just like in the Bible. I am reborn. One day a woman came in and told me to write. And I had never written before, but I did it anyway. I sat for eight ours in a chair and focused the way I have never focused before. I could never even sit still before! I wrote out my ugly life, and then I was able to finally feel something. To feel pity. For myself. When no one else was ever able to feel it. And I felt something else. I felt joy. I was writing, and what I was writing was good. I was a writer! And I was going to get up in front of all those men in that class, and I would say that this . . .” At these words he held up his little manuscript. This is more important to me than any drug. What I wanted to tell you was that I died a drug addict, and I was reborn as a writer.”

We all sat there stunned. The camera kept running. He took a self-conscious little bow. Then he said, “Thank you,” once again in his quiet voice. And then the men broke out in spontaneous applause. He walked over to me and took my hands. Inmates are not allowed to touch their teachers, but I let him anyway. “You have given me something,” he said, “that no drug has ever given me. My self-respect.”

I think of him often. I pray that he has continued to find respect for himself through the written word. I know, though, that that day in that room with those men, a writer was born. After a long and terrible journey, a lost soul had come home, home to the words.
 
hic:((, bằng tiếng anh làm sao mà hỉu được:(( anh việt dịch sang tiếng pháp đê:D, sao thiên vị dân anh thía:>
 
nguyễn hà thu đã viết:
hic:((, bằng tiếng anh làm sao mà hỉu được:(( anh việt dịch sang tiếng pháp đê:D, sao thiên vị dân anh thía:>
anh thì lại mù tiếng Pháp em ạ . 8-}
 
Rất may đã có mình đây, với tài năng bẩm sinh. Ta sẽ dịch sang tiếng Pháp cho :D . Xin cho thời hạn là 2 năm để chỉnh lý xuất bản và in ấn . :|
 
Thế có dịch luôn ra tiếng việt không?
 
sao mọi người bất công với những kẻ mù cả 2 thứ tiếng thía nhỉ?
ai có lòng tốt dịch ra tiếng việt đi?
hoặc tóm tắt cũng được:D
 
Truyện vớ vẩn quá...... :> siêu sao tiếng anh đã đọc xong hết.... :>
 
:eek: vậy siêu sao cho biết nội dung đi :D tóm tắt đối với siêu sao chắc là dễ ợt mừ :D
 
hehheh, siu sao Híp dịch ra tiếng pháp đê, cần giè chỉnh lý xuất bản và in ấn, tóm tắt nội dung sơ sơ bằng tiếng pháp cái lào:D
To híp: vẫn chưa thay avatar àh???cái ảnh của anh hình như nagỳ càng bị xé to thì phải:-?
 
Đối với Minh Ngọc dịch được và tóm tắt là 2 chuyện đơn giản ý mà... :> nhưng đưa tiền đây đã.... :))
 
Cháu Ngọc đừng múa rìu qua mắt thợ. Đừng quên là siêu Híp đang ở đây đọc thông viết thạo Anh - Pháp . 2 thứ tiếng trên của ta giỏi ngang tầm với tiếng Đức của ta vậy :> . Đời mấy ai theo kịp được ta :>
To Hà Thu : đã bảo send cho anh cái ảnh thì mới change avatar được chứ :D
 
Chỉnh sửa lần cuối:
The bed was about forty-five years old when Mom passed it along to me a few months after my father died. I decided to strip the wood and refinish it for my daughter Melanie. The headboard was full of scratches.

Just before starting to take the paint off, I noticed that one of the scratches was a date: September 18, 1946, the day my parents were married. Then it struck me - this was the first bed they had as husband and wife!

Right above their wedding date was another name and date: "Elizabeth, October 22, 1947."

I called my mother. "Who is Elizabeth," I asked, "and what does October 22, 1947, mean?"

"She's your sister."

I knew Mom had lost a baby, but I never saw this as anything more than a misfortune for my parents. After all, they went on to have five more children.

"You gave her a name?" I asked.

"Yes. Elizabeth has been watching us from heaven for forty-five years. She's as much a part of me as any of you."

"Mom, there are a lot of dates and names I don't recognize on the headboard."

"June 8, 1959?" Mom asked.

"Yes. It says 'Sam.'"

"Sam was a black man who worked for your father at the plant. Your father was fair with everyone, treating those under him with equal respect, no matter what their race or religion. But there was a lot of racial tension at that time. There was also a union strike and a lot of trouble.

"One night, some strikers surrounded your dad before he got to his car. Sam showed up with several friends, and the crowd dispersed. No one was hurt. The strike eventually ended, but your dad never forgot Sam. He said Sam was an answer to his prayer."

"Mom, there are other dates on the headboard. May I come over and talk to you about them?" I sensed the headboard was full of stories. I couldn't just strip and sand them away.

Over lunch, Mom told me about January 14, 1951, the day she lost her purse at a department store. Three days later, the purse arrived in the mail. A letter from a woman named Amy said: "I took five dollars from your wallet to mail the purse to you. I hope you will understand." There was no return address, so Mom couldn't thank her, and there was nothing missing except the five dollars.

Then there was George. On December 15, 1967, George shot a rattlesnake poised to strike my brother Dominick. On September 18, 1971, my parents celebrated their silver wedding anniversary and renewed their vows.

I learned about a nurse named Janet who stayed by my mother and prayed with her after my sister Patricia's near-fatal fall from a swing. There was a stranger who broke up the attempted mugging of my father but left without giving his name.

"Who is Ralph?" I asked.

"On February 18, 1966, Ralph saved your brother's life in Da Nang. Ralph was killed two years later on his second tour of duty."

My brother never spoke about the Vietnam War. The memories were deeply buried. My nephew's name is Ralph. Now I knew why.

"I almost stripped away these remarkable stories," I said. "How could you give this headboard to me?"

"Your dad and I carved our first date on the headboard the night we married. From then on, it was a diary of our life together. When Dad died, our life together was over. But the memories never die."

When I told my husband about the headboard, he said, "There's room for a lot more stories."

We moved the bed with the story-book headboard into our room. My husband and I have already carved in three dates and names. Someday, we'll tell Melanie the stories from her grandparents' lives and the stories from her parents' lives. And someday, the bed will pass on to her.
 
8-} Vịt điên dịch cho Hiền nghe coi !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D
ko biết tiếng Anh
 
ông ko được coi thưởng cháu.... :>
bố kém quá, con đọc xong rùi.... :. con hơn cha và cả cháu hơn ông ngoại là nhà có phúc..... :>
 
dài bỏ bố ........................................ Vịt bảo half vampire gì mà có thấy vampire gì đâu toàn santa thế ?
 
Tô Như Dũng đã viết:
Cháu Ngọc đừng múa rìu qua mắt thợ. Đừng quên là siêu Híp đang ở đây đọc thông viết thạo Anh - Pháp . 2 thứ tiếng trên của ta giỏi ngang tầm với tiếng Đức của ta vậy :> . Đời mấy ai theo kịp được ta :>
To Hà Thu : đã bảo send cho anh cái ảnh thì mới change avatar được chứ :D
To híp: ảnh nào cơ??? anh thì còn tạm chấp nhận chứ pháp với đức ở đâu ra thế bố :)) híp dạo này lại mắc thêm chứng bệnh hoang tưởng, lun nghĩ mình là siêu sao:)|. Bạn ngọc là con híp phải đề phòng nhé, bệnh này di truyền kinh lém đấy, có mỗi hiền là chưa làm sao:D
 
Ngọc là cháu híp ... :D gọi híp là nội
TND toàn khua môi múa mép với mấy ng` ko biết gì chứ ta đây ... thi` làm sao mà khua được !
Vịt ơi ! truyện 1 có bản dịch tiếng Việt rồi đấy :D
 
đâu đâu, cho tao xem với, không dịch được cái trên :((
 
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