Read another entry in my LIFE magazine, this one about Mexico. Near Mexico City is Xochimilico, an isolated island within a lake. “Though it might seem like any other island at first, as you move closer you’ll start to see the dolls. Yes, dolls,” the magazine says.

A few thoughts. I think Western culture has a lot of doll motifs in horror. Chucky from the comedy/horror movies, Annabelle from those movies, the male mannequin in the “Boy” movies, and “Dead Silence.” As a teenager, I made a bad joke about a woman I liked that she was a “sex doll,” and it was one of the reasons the relationship failed. Graham Greene is one of my favorite writers. As I recall his ex-wife became obsessed with dolls and small houses after he left her.

The magazine entry mentions that a caretaker of the Mexico City island found a drowned girl in a nearby canal and was “haunted by the girl’s restless spirit.” The idea of Ophelia from Hamlet drowning herself and Virginia Woolf drowning herself comes to mind. Apparently visitors to the island bring dolls with them to add to its collection, “including a wild-haired Barbie.”

In related news, the following is from the Poetry Foundation web site:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.