LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  Reading Bill Hayes's immensely entertaining The Anatomist , I have thought about how labels (words) change depending on thin lines of being, and attitudes. As soon as I die, the minute I stop breathing, I will become a cadaver, in a question of seconds. The name for a dead person or body is cadaver. My Random House Dictionary defines the term as: "A dead body, esp. a human body to be dissected, corpse." Webster gives these synonyms for cadaver: "bones, carcass, corpse, corpus, relics, remains, stiff." Of all of them, I prefer stiff. Somehow I think that before decomposition sets in, I will be just about the same, except that instead of being a person I will be a cadaver, a corpse, and people will probably look at me with apprehension or even disgust. Friends -few- will probably come to pay "respects", not to me, but to my cadaver, my corpse. I prefer stiff because this is what happens when rigor mortis sets in. "Delfín cuts a good-looking stif...

April, that cruelest month, mixing memory and desire, is ready to depart this year. Today it is gasping for its last breath before going the way of all calendar months. And this may sound very lyrical and all, as Holden Caulfield would say, but it is a delusion, a figment of our imagination, as are most of our inventions, including words. What´s in a "word"? April does not exist; we have invented it, as we have invented words whose meanings are elusive and hard to capture, like happiness, perfection, freedom, democracy, and God itself. And yet, when we utter those words we think we know what we are saying, and the recipient thinks he understands what you are saying... but, alas! is it so?  This thought leaves me pensive and sad, this last day of April 2023.