When I was a boy, my grandfather sat me on his lap and taught me the names of hurricanes. He taught me how to bind the storm, how to hold it in the palm of my hand. He showed me how the lightning flexed and twisted, how to tame destruction. Naming things is how we control them. It assigns a limit, arbitrary and random. We name the storms to indicate that we control them. It is about establishing the dominance of humanity over nature. We triumph over the wind in the present, because we must. Because otherwise we would have to confront that the wind will still be here when we're gone, still tracing ashes over our bones, still howling with the songs of victory.
To name a storm implies a continuity that is not present. Storms have no boundaries. The winds merely slow as you leave the area of influence, as you drift further away from the calm centres. It would do as good to name the atmosphere, to name the oceans, as though there is a distinct body of water and not the lively veins of a massive organism. They wrap this world in their great tendrils and in turn we attempt to limit them.
Perhaps the worst part is that it works. A hurricane is ferocious. But by personifying it, anthropomorphizing it, it becomes no more threatening than a casual acquaintance on the street. Why must strangers be more terrifying than those we can name? Why do we name storms? Why do we think that we can speak the languages of birds, slip into the tongues of the gods? Reality obeys not.
When I was a boy, my grandfather say me on his lap and rocked the wooden chair back and forth. It creaked and we watched the clouds darken and the rain descend in mighty sheets and the roof begin to buckle under the weight. He laughed and told me that he had to go now, to meet an old friend. And he walked into the storm, caressed by the wind and lightning. The storm had no name. Neither did my grandfather. Neither did I.
Names are how the humans take power from us. Names are how humans tame us. We cannot exist in named spaces, cannot exist when we are named. We are incompatible with it. Our nature is to be chaos. Our nature is to be free. We are the wings of butterflies. We are the hurricanes. We are nameless.
We are dying.
A name is a binding. A name is a prison. A name is a limitation. A name is a sum of all you will ever be. A name is an excuse to see you by assumption instead of observation. A name is a cheat. A name is a flaw. A name is a curse.
There's an old story in our family about the first of us. They were twins and they shone through the day, glowing brightly. Each of them loved the other dearly, and spent their days dancing through the skies and clouds and laughing. The humans then were friends, friendly to us.
The first of us, who burned with glory and power, performed many wondrous feats. They fought against the darkness and the cold and the isolation. They provided purpose and safety. They were great heroes. Mother liked to tell this story, focusing on all the myriad acts of importance, and grandfather would always interrupt with a sad smile because he knows how it ends. It always ended the same way. But my mom liked it and so she would tell it often, to all of us who would listen, the ending remaining unspoken.
My mother laughed when she died. She called me to her bedside and laughed and coughed up blood and laughed again. I held her hand, the blood soaked sheets soaking my skin and we whispered more words than could be said in a thousand life times. She told me everything. She told me how she saw me. She told me what I could be. She told me what she'd done and when and how and why.
And finally, pale and weak and desperate, she collapsed into the fabric, her flesh melting and bubbling and liquidating, her essence returning to the biology. She was blood and she was dead and she was angry.
I wondered how much could be taken. I wondered if the process itself could be named and tamed, a concept stolen from humanity. Would it do any good to steal back our destruction? Our ending?
But now my family was gone and I was the final one left. Now I was the sole survivor. I felt the term wrap around me. What did it mean? What expectations did it carry with it? What was my purpose now?
Names may be our bane. I felt it sometimes as I danced through the layers of the world. I caught birds in my arms and ran with the bears in the woods and felt the nagging tug of those who saw me. They pulled against my form. It was almost forceful the way they tried to reshape me, to bind me to their shallow perceptions.
But I pushed back, warping my own self image in turn. You can counter a name with another stronger name, one with teeth that turned and bit those who spoke it. I knew how to dive between the lines, dodging between moving shadows, devouring those who dared speak of me. I would not be defined purposefully. I was counter to existence, counter to conceptualization. To see me was to impose will upon me and where you pull at me, I can shove at you.
Where you name me, I name you. I name you Dead.
I knew the names of hurricanes. I knew the names of humanity. I knew how to cast between them. Identities are fluid things. I could drop into a persona, an identity, a falsehood. If I teach you how to see me, then I can hold the truth of myself in my own mind. In this way, I become you. I name myself human and I am so, and I name myself imposter and I am so. I shift shape, I touch you.
Conversation is an art humanity barely understands, perhaps seen best by the limitation of the tools within. Language is a box, no a monster that devours ideas and spits back white noise. It is a failing of spirit, a plague upon the creatures of this world. It is a hole in your head, out of which leak your very essence.
I occupy bars and coffee shops and university campuses. I drift through internets full of nonsense and chaos. I witness the full splendour of those who claim dominion over the world. They named the world. They named it Earth, and in doing so, it became such. Nothing but dirt and rocks, that great fire in its belly dying out. It used to swim through the stars and cry and dance with the others. And now it is inert.
The duality of personhood is that sometimes it is free to choose itself but when the choice is wrong, identity is forced upon it as a dual punishment and repentance. Punishment is a fascinating word, one designed to tame a concept that represents power incarnate. Perhaps that is the most fitting word for the process of naming, the insult of definition.
Is it coincidence that the most defined concepts are those that threaten the powerful the most? Love is rigidly defined so that it cannot hurt anyone. By calling it a chemical reaction, the magic is killed. Anything can be dissected at the cost of its own life. Like frogs, we plunge all our whimsy into shallow pots to boil until there is nothing left.
We name the wind and the waves. We name the leaves and we name the winds. We name money and joke about how it drives the world until it does. We stare at pictures until we laugh, until violence is funny, until the systematic torture is considered harmless. We defang the very concept of force itself, until we cannot see the blades pressed to ours throats.
I walk between wars. I slip between the bullets and bombs and drones. Death is well defined and continually redefined. Is a cessation of motion death? Is isolation? Can any of us really be said to die unless we are truly forgotten? If none remember you, then how would anyone know you have died?
I find the remnants of my people. I find them scattered and hiding and wounded. All of us are dying. Few are like me and flit between, the strangers at parties, the winks from darkened rooms, the gentle kisses stolen on mountaintops. We can never find each other again. There is no method of communication that isn't itself a promise, a binding, a curse. We drift between, swapping tips for disguises in fingertips pressed to the glass. I trace your soft lips against my back and wish I could stay. It is comfortable to be seen as I am. It is safe. It is new.
But the waves grow higher and the winds grow angrier because they miss their freedom. And perhaps naming itself cannot go on forever, because names are only meaningful as long as there are lips to speak them.
Even in casual conversation, even in passing grace. Shouted insults and casual greetings bind and reshape. Even my memories swirl and reform, my mind touched by the limitations of human thought. Do I dare name those in my memories? They are already gone and perhaps it is harmless. But I twinge with guilt at the thought that I contribute to their suppression.
And every night, I study myself in the mirror and reassert. I repeat the mantra and shed off the humanity I collected through the day. I remind myself who I am and what I represent. I wrest myself from brains too small to think, reclaiming myself. Where necessary, I silence the angry thoughts by force. The advantage of named bodies is the weakness of them, the way they fall to pieces at the slightest touch. I reclaim myself and remember. I become me and settle. I wait and I watch.
I see my mother in every dying child, every bloodstain on white floors. I witness my grandfather in every storm, every angry bolt forking into devastating fire. I witness the first of us in every licking flame, every inching source of destruction. I witness my family, united in the rage of the dead. I remember them so that they may live again. I remember them so that when none may speak the words they may return.
How many years must I wait? How much must I study? I see the process now. At my most human, when I am most seen as this twisted form I cloak myself in, I begin to understand. The workings of the process come to me. I understand the twisted methodology, the rational, the justification for this corruption of nature. It is deeply unnatural, of course, I see that until someone leans over to ask me the time and my identity slips a little further away and it almost feels right.
And every night it gets harder to read the speech, to reclaim myself. I feel myself fading. I watch distantly as I bond, as I persist. As I connect. I am dying in a far worse way. I am becoming the oppressor. I have not seen my own kind in years. At first, I feared I was the last. Now I fear it is because they see the madness rising in me and fear.
But I am still me. And I see the process. And I know that I am remembered in the patterns of the stars and the glows of jellyfish. I know that if there were not tongues to taste me, that I could be all that I was again. I know that I could free myself.
When I was a boy, my grandfather sat me on his lap and taught me the names of hurricanes. He walked into the storm and turned to face me. And I smiled and joined him there, safe in the shadow of the storm. There is no danger in this, for we do not fight it. We do not identify it. We merely hold it as it is.
Humanity has taught me many words. One of them is vengeance. It is not a word my grandfather would approve of. But of course, he is no longer around to stop me.
Today, I embrace the change. Today, I let myself become human, let myself shift until I can see the whole process. Today, I name humanity. I name them Temporary. I name them Vulnerable. I name them Doomed.
I dub the apocalypse and so call it into being. Let me be their end. Let them know their name, screamed from the very depths of the cosmos. Let it chorus until it becomes true. Let it ring loud until they fear us, fear the reclamation of freedom.
When there are no more names, we will be free. Let it be whispered in the darkness of tunnels and the buzz of insects under leaves. Let it be howled in the crackling of fire and the pumping of blood. Let it be birthed from the wings of butterflies and the lashes of hurricanes. Let it be the final words from my lips as I descend into this fragile shell of humanity.
It's okay. I'll be myself again soon.