Japanese Teacups

 "When one of my Japanese teacups is broken, I imagine that the real cause was not the careless hand of a maid but the anxieties of the figures inhabiting the the curves of the porcelain [missing text here]. Their grim decision to commit suicide doesn't shock me: they used the maid as one of us might use a gun. To know this (and with what precision I know it!) is to have gone beyond modern science."

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 416

I'm sure I shared the bizarre story of the time when I was in Omaha, Nebraska for a conference, which had to be something like thirty years ago. I was coming back from dinner when I found myself in front of an antique shop. Featured in the window were a couple old suitcases, sort of like the one that George Bailey received as a gift from Mr. Gower in It's a Wonderful Life. I remember feeling so sad, and it just seemed so unfair that suitcases which might have circled the globe were ending their days on a neglected side street in Omaha, Nebraska. At that moment an incredible desire came over me to smash the window of the shop and free the suitcases. Our ability, or at least my ability, to animate the inanimate - and probably inanimate the animate - never ceases to amaze me.