Names and I
Anna Lesiczka
4th April 2023
Names and I
The building where I lived for three years from 1998 to 2001 is in front of my hometown's biggest graveyard. We moved in there just after my grandfather died. Therefore it became a place where we were usually strolling.
I don’t know if my affection towards cemeteries was imprinted in me through this early childhood experience or if I like them because of the same reason I like calendars.
Just names; not a person, not a character; a word.
There are eight maps on the walls in the apartment where I am sitting now: two maps of Stockholm, one of Berlin, New York, Amsterdam, Heusden, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. I’ve never been to the last three cities and never heard about Heusden, even though once I lived only 100 kilometers from it.
Maybe because it’s the most basic name and it never catches attention, people I meet barely remember it. When I lived in Poland I used to remember all the names, but when I moved abroad it changed. They stopped reminding me of anything so I started struggling like everyone else.
There are many ways to say a name but only one good way to write it.
People mostly try to name everything. I think that I am the same because unnamed things are the scariest
and the most appealing.
Sometimes I would play The Sims just to name things.
In the past,
I could think for hours about names for my children.
Virtual children who won’t belong to me.
But I have a name for my real son. I’ve kept it.