“The Great Wall of China’s attractive, but he’s too thick — my husband is sexier.”
— Eija-Riitta Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer, The woman who married the Berlin Wall
Do objects have souls?
A few weeks ago my laptop’s battery was in trouble and I had to bring it in for a checkup. While the computer was being fixed my Blackberry simply stopped operating. I was frantic.
I felt betrayed by the objects I rely on, ‘love’ and care for. “Why is this happening to me?” was my new mantra.
One of my friends suggested that Mercury was in retrograde; another asked if I had done something to offend my favorite objects. We laughed, recalling a Woody Allen routine where his appliances are on the fritz and he hits them, and when he goes into the elevator the elevator asks if he was the one who roughed up the toaster.
We all have a connection to objects. The more contact we have with them, the more intimate our relationship, the more we ascribe to them human feelings and gender attributes. “The car died – she won’t turn over” and “I love my new phone” are common examples.
But where does it end?