Friday, January 11, 2013
New Names
When I ask someone their name, and they tell me, I never register it. I forget to listen to their response, somehow assuming that just asking the question was enough. And when I realize I hadn't paid attention, I ask them again. But as soon as their vocal chords start vibrating to create the appropriate sound waves which flow through the air to be received by my own complex hearing system, I have stopped paying attention again. One second later, the second time, I have no idea what their name is.
A. I am a selfish, self-absorbed bastard.
B. I have the attention span of a flea.
C. I have the memory of a goldfish.
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"Love after Love"
ReplyDelete--Derrick Wolcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
What good is a name anyway?
ReplyDeleteWhen we see a squirrel, we call it a squirrel.
Perhaps one is too busy observing the unobservable differences between oneself and the newcomer to remember a name.
Or perhaps those who do remember a name are unaware of that distracting truth, which emanates from every individual, to the conscious observer, and prevents their retaining such useless a detail as one's name.