Naming Is a Sacred Act Because: A List

1. 1. The first complete sentence I learned to say in French was “Bonjour, je m’appelle Elizabeth.” Hello, my name is Elizabeth.

2. 2. I was named after my mother’s best friend, Elizabeth King, whom I call Aunt Liz, a beautiful, funny lady I worshipped as a child.

3. 3. Names interest me. Names are nouns and fragments of story and character. They’re invocations.

4. 4. Jim Henson.

5. 5. Joseph Cornell.

6. 6. Meridythe Schauble. My friend Meridythe once told me she collects people, and I think what she meant is that she loves hearing the stories that make up each person. Stories are in people, and people are stories.

7. 7. I met Meridythe in Boston. She was from Maryland, and so was I. She had been told by people on the street that she reminded them of a fairy, and so had I. These two things were the feathery-gone stuff we founded a friendship on, although later we would learn that her mother and my father knew each other years before through the News American, an Annapolis paper that folded when I was five.

8. 8. I love that newspapers “fold.” I love that the Bible is “The Word” and that ’90s rappers said “Word,” meaning “I agree” or “I feel you.” I love the phrase “I feel you,” although it makes me squirm. I love that crows congregate in murders, that groups of slugs are cornucopias, that baby oysters are spats, that in French a comma is a virgule, and squirm somehow sounds like it is, as does scrappy, and quiescent. I love that it’s someone’s job to name colors of paint and lipstick, and that it is someone else’s job to collect and discern and collate all of the synonyms in my thesaurus, and I like to pretend that these are my jobs. My landlords named their baby Coco, and Coco liked to gather snails and line them up on the porch. A group of snails is a walk. Coco was shy, but once she ran up onto the front porch and hugged me around the waist for no reason, and I loved her for that.

9. 9. I love that Meridythe spells her name with three different vowels, and that she uses the E twice, and as a teenager I began going by “Lyzz,” and in my mind I am still very much a Lyzz, and not a Liz.

10. 10. On paper, I’m almost always Elizabeth, but you can call me Lyzz.

11. 11. 11. A more literal translation of “Je m’appelle Elizabeth” is “I call myself Elizabeth.” I wish we introduced ourselves in English this way.

12. 12. The Z page of my Dr. Seuss alphabet book said, “Z, Z, What begins with Z? I do. I am Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz.” As a small child I used to repeat this to myself like a refrain. Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz was a lanky striped character with blue hair, which, to my mind, is also somehow me.

13. 13. I don’t like having such a common name, but I’m glad to share it with Elizabeth King, and Warren, and Taylor, and Bishop. Elizabeth Bishop said: You are an Elizabeth, you are one of them.

14. 14. Bishop’s “Waiting Room” poem comes on slow at first, and then: Wham! The child’s awakening of consciousness is tucked inside it like a tidy bomb that sets all my synapses clicking and whirring. I love what poetry does to the brain.

15. 15. I believe art rewires the brain like neurological diseases do.

16. 16. I believe poems and lists and collages are related forms.

17. 17. Joseph Cornell is a visual artist, but I admire his poetic sensibilities: how he uses metaphor, repetition, juxtaposition, white space, and formal constraints. The wooden box is his blank page.

18. 18. Joseph Cornell and Jim Henson scribbled in margins and collected detritus and kept closetfuls of things for using in their work, and this makes me feel better about my need to collect zines and books and field guides and letters from people. I am interested in typography and linguistics and...