Sorry about the English. It’s late and composing in Spanish is still laborious for me.

Curiosamente, el hombre responde a una mujer agressiva quien quiere capturarle. En la vida mujeres escojen a los hombres y no el reverso. Al edad de 84 años, creo que es lo que pasa entre hombres y mujeres. Una mujer agresiva me capturó hace años y nos quedamos casados después de sesenta y uno años.

@Álvaro y Graham, ¡Guau! Ojalá hubierais sido mis profes en la universidad.

In the first story, the shift in world view revolves around an alternative linguistic model of reality in which the grammatical gender of objects or attributes must agree with the sex of the person to which they are associated; in the second, it involves learning to discern the ‘invisible’ bubbles in which the ‘dead’ (the less socially adroit) are imprisoned.

In the first, he dwells on the view having overheard a girl and a boy arguing over it; in the second, a school mate introduces him to the idea.

At the end of the first story, the narrator’s wife leaves him and he becomes unable to share his life with anyone whose mode of expression does not fit in with his alternative linguistic model; in the second, the narrator ultimately comes to the realisation that he, too, is trapped a bubble of his own making.

So perhaps the question should not be whether those leading sheltered lives are emotionally dead, but rather whether or not when adopting a mindset or belief system from outside, one becomes trapped within it, destined only to think or behave within its confines.

In _La muerta_, having been humiliated by the girl, the narrator publically announces that she is ‘dead’, after which she begins to lose her friends. But, as she had friends before, had she really been ‘dead’ in the first place? Or did announcing it become a self-fulfilling prophecy? In seeing her bubble, was the narrator projecting his own insecurities onto the object of his desire? In claiming that the ‘dead’ can only be rescued by the ‘live’, is the narrator abdicating his own responsibilities? Surely each of us can, with sufficient resolve, come out of our shells? Or can we?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etbx9tAU5Rg

No creo que sólo una mujer viva pueda despertar a un hombre “muerto”, o viceversa, sino que afortunadamente los propios “muertos” pueden autorresucitarse, gracias, mayormente, a que el tiempo lo cura todo. En otras palabras, no creo que los etiquetados como “muertos” estén abandonados a su fortuna, sino que creo que el propio individuo siempre tiene la posibilidad de destruir su propia burbuja.

Pero más interesante aún me parece la posibilidad, que en mi opinión es viable, de que una mujer “muerta” y un hombre “muerto” puedan rescatarse mutuamente, lo que otorga al amor un poder aún mayor, una naturaleza más misteriosa y una irracionalidad más acorde al mundo de los sentimientos.

Fue interesante que el hombre parece a Clark Gable porque CG verdaderamente está muerto!

Creo que el amor puede despertarnos, es una cosa tan preciosa, pero no todos tienen tal suerte encontrar el amor….por eso….están muertos? Tal vez es posible enamorarse con arte, o una pasión (como tengo tengo para español).

Les escribo de aquí, dentro de mi burbuja.
Elena de Vermont, USA