Names

I am writing to you from a grocery store that is about to close. It is cold outside and the sun is down. There are one or two more grocery shoppers I’ll talk to tonight before I lock the doors. To feel it all unmakesensible. Because making sense of it is not the point. The point is making it stop. Could explain until there is no more breath. But make it stop. Death like I have never seen in my home. Cold like I have never felt so regularly, except for sometimes I have felt cold. Not regularly though.

In the unmakesensibleness of cruelty I cling onto details that do make no sense. In Fethiye Çetin‘s book My Grandmother, a familial investigation of the Armenian genocide, she recalls a folktale her grandmother told her about a fly. A fly is proposed to again and again by different suitors. She asks each suitor how they plan to harm her, and they each respond with horrible, creative answers. The fly eventually chooses to not wed anybody.

When I was reading that, I heard buzzing in my window. I found there a fly. I gave the fly a name, and said hello to her for the rest of her life. The next month, there were two flies, and again I welcomed them and said hello. Then I told my friend about my flies, and she wrote a poem about opening a window for them to escape, which never occurred to me. Now, there are regular flies at my job, when they come to my face I blow them away by pursing my lips and pushing out some breath.

A customer came in while the flies were there. She, the customer, was wearing beautiful pants. I complimented them, they were soft bell bottoms. She said, don’t you see that I am wearing Red, Green, Black, and White.

Every customer who comes in is a person who is currently alive. One thing we first learn about someone’s unique aliveness is their name. There’s a man who comes to visit me at work. He has a name. Every week he asks if I remember his name. At this point I really do remember his name. This last Saturday when I said Hello, hello followed by his name, he fell to his knees. He was laughing, he said, I can’t believe you remembered my name! On his knees, I laughed and said of course, how could I forget? Then he bought one thing and talked to me for a long time. The only thing to do is to love the people.

A baby, who is the son of a regular customer, pointed at the grocery store yesterday and said “dance.” He said this because when he comes to the grocery store, I dance with him while his dad shops. We dance to whatever is on the radio, even if it’s a sad song. For example, Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me was playing one day, and this baby, to whom the lyrics made nonsense, choreographed an elephant trunk dance with his right arm.

I hand a woman her pizza and she blows me a kiss. Blowing a kiss is a lot like blowing away a fly. She says thank you Page, which is my name. Which signals to me that I am also currently alive.

A man came in and asked me about my older coworker. This coworker has a PhD in something. The customer said poor guy, that with all his education he has to work here. And then this is what I didn’t say but I thought - I thought don’t you see it’s important to cherish near strangers especially? When I stand here behind the check out, people come in the door and out the door so quickly, and I get to witness them and see their faces and learn their names even if I learn nothing else about their lives. There’s nothing poor about this opportunity. And you, who I can’t make assumptions about except for that things have been hard. That if there’s any possibility you are on the verge of tears, I must treat you with that much gentleness.

The woman who blew me a kiss called the students who are protesting this genocide dangerous and militant. I overheard her say this. And then she called me over and asked me to tell her everything I know about baking bread.

I might have told her what bread requires. Clean water. Flour that exists and is near you. Heat. Time. Mostly it requires access to staying alive.

Every face of every named person, if dealt a different hand, would not be here for me to say hello to. Every process, privilege, accident that got them here and keeps them here, I daydream about it, but I cannot make sense of it. While making nonsense, I chip away at every formality, I mean assumption, by first and foremost learning a name.

(squash price tag drawn by a cute & cool child whose name begins with the letter F)

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. - Italo Calvino

Below I am sharing a list of beautiful names. Rest in peace. Ceasefire yesterday, but that didn’t happen, so ceasefire now.

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