Baby Name

To name something you have not seen seems presumptuous. How can a name be the only thing you know? It is a false conceptual handle on an unknown phenomenon.

Even so, there is a baby--or rather, there is a heartbeat, and a shadowy ultrasound image, a growing abdomen where he allegedly lives--and there is a baby's name. It is a boy's name that came to me early on, so unmistakably as to relieve one of the need for further brainstorming.

Now the baby's movement has is becoming apparent. It is extremely subtle. But now the name begins to denote something more real. There is evidence; there is someone this name applies to. Deep inside, someone devoid of concepts--a tiny being in a dream--is called something. Is named and measured and planned-for. I suppose it has always been this way. Knowing nothing, we are born into this world of speech, symbol, and meaning. It's not more valid than the void; it's just the law of this realm.