What's In a Name?

So this was intended to be a short intro to an essay that I am working on. Unfortunately, I was whipped viciously by the rambles and in the end I have a long rant of nothingness to present to the world. Enjoy or don’t.

Names are a peculiar instrument of human existence. They are the verbal recognition of one’s being by another. As time passes they are but single word descriptors of one’s whole existence, purpose and role. A name is the singular, yet complicated, answer to “Who am I?” or “Who are you?” Other animals certainly must have something parallel means of recognition through grunted noises, for our pets seem to be able to distinguish between “Kodi” and “Titus” when we call their names. However, humans have the extended philosophical mess with which to contend. It is highly doubtful that Fido ponders the label of his soul and considers whether it was the appropriate gesture to name him Fido as opposed to Frank or Domino or Hobbit. It is only humans that take the primal grunt, the tick tick versus the tick tock and consider it a staging place for nicknames, childish pranks. Only humans find concern with whether there is a cosmic connection between the syllables that express a uniqueness within a crowd and the soulful matter that compiles to form our innerness, our aura and spirit.

More logically, but equally as impractical, a name is a tool of legacy and bloodline, passing on the namesake’s inspiration in a single word. It is a whisper of hope and prophecy, as proud parents hope to somehow influence a child’s entrance and place in this world with a connotation or a definition found in a book entitled, “Baby Names: Setting a Spiritual Path for your Child to Come.” It is both a self classifying system of evolution and geneology and a subtle attempt to place a piece of our own witty thought on the world. Naming a child is an incredibly stressful moment in a persons life (so I would guess). As personal philosophy tears at whimsy and superstition, all while compromising with the strange and peculiar logics of another persons love for Stevie Nicks or the color purple. Two people come together bring their traditions and notions of naming a child.

The art of naming children is cultural. The western world, descendant’s of European blood tend to have the “last name,” the ”appellido" that accentuates the sheer sexual prowess and fortitude of one man named Lopez or Smith. Similarly, eastern cultures pass on the names but with the name in the front. The eastern world tends to be more poetic in its original name of descendent but in the end, the rules of ancestry still apply. Some cultures, like the Portuguese and Spanish, prefer to name children in paragraph form, complete with foot noted dates of when the village was sacked by communists. The Germanic peoples tend to be short and to the point, like only a German can. While our British people like to have names sounding as if even Shakesspeare would make fun of them for being a little too stuffy. Whatever the background, it is rare that the naming of a child is anything less than an ordeal filled with opinions and questions of another’s integrity, ubringing, or taste in music.

Usually, this process of naming a child is a function of family tradition. A common consideration for naming children is to pay homage to loved family members or familiarly heroic figures in one’s family tree. The greater the aristocracy of your lineage, the more likely you are to follow this route. It is a symbolic nod to the long practice of incest amongst the nobles for fear of tainting the great blood pool. As Easter Island has shown, such protectionism may not have been the best form of preservation. In the US, probably the more common practice is to name a child on a whim, on a song, or on a book. Like bad tattoos people pull from the strangest of places to name there children. At thirty, and with several friends and family either having children or talking about it, I find this conversation so interesting. Would be or soon to be parents consider a strange plethora of factors when naming their children. People discuss possible playground taunts; vicarious hopes and ambitions; nicknames that will actually be what the child is called but not their real name; the place of conception versus the name of the artist of the first version of the song that was the playing in the car when they first discussed having kids, and so on and so on. The results are sometimes trite and laughable, like a washed up beach volleyball player naming his son Spike. Others are simply appalling distortions of the English language like ”Urhines”.

Now this being said. Most of us have a decently common and practical name. Sure, there are a few jokes to be made here or there. The Silly Willies, the Chatty Cathies, the Sheila the Sluts. Some nicknames hang on a little too long. Prophecies rarely prevail except that every once in while a kid name Colt actually does become the quarterback for Texas. Whatever the result, like asks us, sometimes begs us to rearrange and recondition our brains to hear another calling. (Ice T dropped Cop Killer for Detective as it apparently pays better). Sometimes our profession or stage in life require us to “rename” ourselves. Like Willi to Will to sound more . . . plain? Or Will to W. R. Eilers to sound more literary? However, in the end we must remember that our names are quite simply what there were intended to be, a way for those around us to announce that their comments, hurtful, pleasant or otherwise, were directed at us. In turn, we are conditioned to respond to any and all of the possible names beaconing us to retort.

Read more . . .

Whoo Whoo Whoo

Over the top a bit, but I needed to get things going as apparently once a week so quickly has become once a month. To more effort!!! Cheers.

Whooo whooo whoooo, soft and gently whispered across a morning wake not that long ago. The call of a mysterious bird stood out amongst the plops and bangs of the urban awakening. This subtle vibrancy that had wandered into my morning mood, sparked a curiosity my mind. What creature had spilled this whooting cry into my day, dripping off of the chirps and buzzes just out our bedroom window. I wanted to know what bird had squeezed a owlish whoot into the sun shining grips of the day. For many days, I assumed that the sound was just that, the lost moans of a youthful owl. In the spirit of telling stories, I assumed that a young owl had planted himself not far from my window, confused or too anxious to fall asleep. I imagined that he sat perched high upon telephone pole and warned the world of his unveiled terror or more likely fearfully whooting away his own fears of the day’s brightness and chaos. No longer hidden by the night’s dark cover, certainly, he could not have been so intimidating to the sleeping moles and mice hiding deep in the day time holes. Thus, after my mug had been filled with the perfect mixture of coffee and honey I moved to the balcony to search out this base song. However, my inquiry was of little resolve and I was left only with the ringing resonance of this birds distant message.

For weeks, I continued this ritual. In the morning, I would scan the horizon as I sipped on my coffee, determined to find this enigma amongst the morning chatters of song birds, traffic and the rising temperature. As the time passed, the joyful investigatory morning ritual slowly transformed to a nagging torture. With the first breaths of meeting the day, before the creep of sunlight had bore through the curtains, I would hear that whoo whoo whoo of my omnipresent imaginary owl. Over time, I began to notice that the my feathered friend had followed me far and away. Taking breaks at work I would hear the coo of an epidemic of lost youthful owls, bouncing the day with strange and eerie call. In the distance as I walked to my car, several blocks away on my lunch time sun light absorb. As the days passed, the sound had left its place in the classification of soothing and curiously tonal hmm. From haunting and sad it quickly became and annoyance. Like the tell tale heart of Poe, it had become overwhelming. The whoo whoo whoo pierce the air, flooding atop the crash and bang of trash trucks and sirens. Conversations would be left hanging as my attention was obsessive and single minded. Like a jealous boyfriend, I fumed with irrationality at the mere existence of this flighty beast. A single note of this demonic avian hum would send anxious needles up my spine, pinching with a bitter cold slashes.

Quite obviously, this being had substantially interfered with my life’s existence. He had whittled away the layers of my soul with a whoo whoo and a whoo. Determined to rid my sanity of this plaguing song, I began researching. I spent hours listening to the songs of Florida’s great winged fellows. Over and over I listened to calls of owls and pigeons and sparrows and water fowl. I needed to know the face and the composition of my dreadful terrorizer. In my studies, I continuously skipped over the innocence the beamed from the word “dove.” I mean come on, a dove is the symbol of peace. Noah’s great hope was manifest and joyously presented in the mouth of a white dove. Never could such an angelic creature be the dismal source of misery’s soundtrack. But there it was, peering up at me time and time again. The mourning dove, its soft, fat gray body was unassuming and almost pigeon ish but without all the sickening hunger for leftovers. I pressed play, and there it was, a canned reel of my tortuous whoot.

In a moment I was swooned with disappointment, relief and sorrow. I had always kept this image of a majestic owl wandering the day lit streets of Miami with an a noble and disheveled manner. Sadly, my hopes of finding the proliferation of these woodsy owls in urban transformation had been dashed away. My pains seemed wasted and trite. Such an upheaval of personal attention and thought had been revealed for the minuscule and mundane that it really was. I imagine it was likely how Dorothy felt when she finally met the Wizard. Smacked head on with mediocrity in glorious clothing. It made me want to just kick that plump, beady eyed ball of feathers in a calm but swift gesture of bestial dominance. I had placed this fierce bird on par with Poe’s Raven, looming and undeniably haunting. Alas I had come to find that my mysterious raven, who’s who who who was now so much less the “Nevermore” was quite simple a dud, a second hand character actor, horribly unconvincing in costume or demeanor. It was frustrating that his poor attempts to be forever mourning did not justified any of the personal uproar. Its appearance, its call, its squatty manner bring about visions of losing your car at the mall. Quite sadly, life, it turns out, was not as scary as I had imagined it to be.

Read more . . .