日复一日，我的白痴岁月，空心佬倌，端靠常识度日罢了。其荒莽无文，恍若白垩纪侏罗纪的一只大爬虫。
Day after day, I shambled through life like a zombie, with only instinct to guide me along. The primitive and uncivilized nature of my life made me feel like a giant reptile during the Cretaceous or Jurassic periods.
爬虫日子我唯一读得进眼的东西，是一篇色彩研究，关于红绿二色在中国诗词里的视觉意象。
In my days as a reptile, the only thing I was able to read was an article on color, some research on the visual imagery of red and green in Chinese poetry.
我带在身上数念珠般反覆诵读，事实上，这篇研究更接近一册搜罗殆尽的色彩元素周期表。它胪陈了几个色彩系统对于红绿的各样命名，单是日本人所著中国色名综览，依据MUNSELL色环罗列，以明度顺序为先，明度相同的，彩度高者先，红色，即有一百四十种红。且看，色谱七·五R的红，润红、淡藏花红、指甲红、谷鞘红、淡桃红、淡罂粟红、苹果红、颊红、瓜瓤红、铁水红、草莓红、曲红、法螺红、桂红、榴花红、汞红、烹虾红、胭脂红、蟹螫红。 I carried it with me like a rosary and read it over and over again. In fact, the work was more like a volume of exhaustive research on a color periodic table. It listed names for reds and greens from several color systems. A Japanese book on Chinese colors alone has 140 different reds, which, based on the MUNSELL Color Chart, are listed in order of shades, and within them by tints. Just look at the reds in row 5 on chart 7: moist red, light primrose red, fingernail red, vale red, light peach red, light poppy red, apple red, cheek red, melon pulp red, molten iron red, strawberry red, distiller's red, escargot red, cassia red, pomegranate red, mercury red, cooked-shrimp red, blush red, and crab-pincer red.