The ancient Romans believed in a protective spirit of a place, known as a genius loci. In certain wonderlands, the spirit of place can operate in a way that makes passers-by more intelligent. It all depends on what’s available in the way of cerebral surprises. The other evening, I watched a TV documentary about the huge sewage canals beneath Paris. Crowds of onlookers in the street were behaving feverishly because workers digging up the street had asked them to step back a little… to make way for an emerging boat. When people are told that a boat is about to appear from beneath the street pavement, their brains are indeed capable of going into overdrive. First, you imagine that somebody is cracking a joke, and making fun of you. When you do indeed grasp the image of a big flat-bottomed vessel being hauled up from the bowels of the City of Light, your neurons go wild, and start to chatter like a Geiger counter in a nuclear fallout zone. I should explain that the above vessel is simply used in Paris sewage canals to pick up solid rubbish. It needs to be taken out of the water from time to time and brought up onto dry land, to be cleaned and repaired.
