A Moment of Bedazzlement
Sep. 5th, 2006 03:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksI am having one of those moments where one is going along, the way one does, and then suddenly one is just sheerly overwhelmed by the basic circumstances of one's life. Wait-- I'm how old, again? I have how many tattoos? I've been married how long, again? That is so cool! I swear ten minutes ago I was seven! That kind of moment. Only I'm having a manifestation of it that I don't usually have.
Isn't it so neat that everyone has a name? Just the concept of naming, itself, that you take a word, which may or may not mean something else, and you apply it to somebody, and then to some extent it means them, as well as meaning all the other people who have ever had it, and it gathers layers of resonance as history moves onward, both in general and in specific, so that the first time you meet somebody you may have real difficulty remembering their name but after you've known them for fifteen years you have difficulty thinking of that name as belonging to anyone else.
And that this, arbitrary and awkward as it may sometimes be, is so useful, and works so well so much of the time, that it is genuinely universal and people will name anything they can get their hands on.
Isn't that impressive? It's no wonder it's generally considered one of the great human achievements; it even beats traffic (and if you don't think that the evolution of traffic laws is one of the great human achievements, try to consider how you would get anything from place to place without it: totally unregulated transportation systems in which all are against all do not survive).
So yeah. Names. I've got one, which is really nifty.
Also I'm twenty-five, and I've been married three-ish years depending how you count it, and I've got three tattoos, and all of this still surprises me, because honestly, who'd'a thought it?
Isn't it so neat that everyone has a name? Just the concept of naming, itself, that you take a word, which may or may not mean something else, and you apply it to somebody, and then to some extent it means them, as well as meaning all the other people who have ever had it, and it gathers layers of resonance as history moves onward, both in general and in specific, so that the first time you meet somebody you may have real difficulty remembering their name but after you've known them for fifteen years you have difficulty thinking of that name as belonging to anyone else.
And that this, arbitrary and awkward as it may sometimes be, is so useful, and works so well so much of the time, that it is genuinely universal and people will name anything they can get their hands on.
Isn't that impressive? It's no wonder it's generally considered one of the great human achievements; it even beats traffic (and if you don't think that the evolution of traffic laws is one of the great human achievements, try to consider how you would get anything from place to place without it: totally unregulated transportation systems in which all are against all do not survive).
So yeah. Names. I've got one, which is really nifty.
Also I'm twenty-five, and I've been married three-ish years depending how you count it, and I've got three tattoos, and all of this still surprises me, because honestly, who'd'a thought it?
