Things That Are Named

I have seen the names given to this world by those others, and the names they give themselves. It gives a solidity to the world, knowing that it is named and given a place within a scheme of things. The others, they seem real too, named and categorised, and yet, here am I amorphous and indistinct with soft edges that blur into each other and into the world. I’m never really that sure where I end, and the world begins around me. We grow to fit each other’s shapes and I learn all about its sharp sudden corners, but still there seems times when I merge into the background like some well-camouflaged lizard that becomes just another green shadow amongst all the shadowed leaves.

Or, it is that I grow here, rooted, out of the ground around me, moving as the breezes move me, turning slowly, imperceptibly, to follow the sun’s arc through my skies whilst everyone else is moving freely through this world they have named and tamed, as if they know where they are going, and how to get there.

I have wandered those streets too, looking for a place I could go to, and found nothing but more streets, each leading away from me, curving off into distances beyond everything. I have walked them, seeking that one place where all seeking can stop, the place where the name seems real enough to touch, to hold and to hold me, secure in its own identity. I have never found it though, so I came back here to think about what all those others see when they call my name.