Animist Buses
I don’t know if they do this in other countries but buses here, when they are not being used, display on the destination indicator the message ‘I am not in service’. The animist in me appreciates this recognition of the soul of the bus. I think they could go further though; ‘Please leave me alone, I’m thinking’, for example, or, ‘I just can’t be bothered right now’, or ‘I am merging with the infinite.’
The Waste Land
What did T.S.Eliot mean by ‘April is the cruellest month?’ Is it that March brings the first sunny sense of relief that winter is over, but then April comes with grim freezing days of slanting rain in your deceived face?
It used to make me laugh, speaking Spanish, that their word for ‘disappointed’ is ‘desilusionado’ — disillusioned — you put your arms around someone with a broken heart and say, consolingly, ‘you had a lot of illusion, eh?’