“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 WallDo 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?
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While I don’t understand this person’s worldview, I do understand animism differently from your description. Animism doesn’t mean you’ve given “human qualities to inanimate objects.” It just means that you view the inanimate as being alive. Something can be alive and have no human qualities at all. After all, how human is a rock? While Erika’s perception is bizarre, it’s no weirder than my relatively recent recognition of my mirror touch synesthesia. Yes, I knew I could feel it when you touched your face, but being rational, I chose not to believe it. Since it’s been proven scientifically, I’ve tuned into it and it is *really* weird. If one can be rational–i.e., not hallucinating–and have an experience that’s so unusual that it doesn’t make sense even though it’s real, then I suppose it’s possible for this person to be in love with the Eiffel Tower.
HORATIO: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET: . . . There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
You can find ANYTHING in Shakespeare!
I don’t know if I quite understand the relationship between the bow or Eiffel Tower. But they seem quite different from the nun’s position. I would think the person who married the Eiffel Tower and was “one” with the bow realized that they could not return her affection. Because the nun believes that Jesus was physical(and Catholics believe that the physical body of Jesus enters them at communion) it seems she’s getting a “return” of affection. The same as my grandmother still considers herself married to my grandfather who died 10 years ago, he’s still there in spirit.