In the darkening sky she had seen the first star come out; it brought her heart into her throat. That point of silver light spoke to her like a signal, released another kind of life and feeling which did not belong here. It overpowered her. With a mere thought she had reached that star and it had answered, recognition had flashed between. Something knew then, in the unknowing waste: something had always known, forever! That joy of saluting what is far above one was an eternal thing, not merely something that had happened to her in ignorance and her foolish heart.

The flash of understanding lasted but a moment. Then everything was confused again. Lucy shut her eyes and leaned on Harry’s shoulder to escape from what she had gone so far to snatch. It was too bright and too sharp. It hurt, and made one feel small and lost.

Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning
only to find them gone.

Maybe this was true in Elizabethan England, but, maybe not so true anymore. Now we can choose whatever alias we want, and we must, as a requirement of the Twenty-First Century. We have personal e-mail, work e-mail, twitter, instant messaging, last.fm profiles, blog profiles, and on and on. Has anyone else been daunted by the task of naming oneself? Presenting oneself to the virtual and non-virtual-by-extension world packaged and labeled by your own hand?

I feel some shame knowing that I’ve occupied plenty of good, usable monikers on G-mail and Twitter. I confess, I’m a name addict. I’ve changed my e-mail address too many times than any responsible adult should, but the problem is, I never felt my name fits me. It’s a ubiquitous name, first AND last, in America, and maybe even the UK (starting with Ireland). In fact, a girl on the other side of the very town I grew up in shared the same first and last name. I received her bus pass and an enduring identity complex one suburban August day. Hello, my name is literallyjess and I’m a name hoarder.

I have gone from jessicantelope to aequilibra to jayayess to literallyjess on my personal e-mail in a few years’ time. I have stored away possible e-mail addresses, for business, personal, and business/personal use just in case. I have changed my last.fm profile names, and probably the saddest to me is that I am going, actually, I have almost gone this entire semester without a DJ name on my college radio show because I am in DJ name purgatory and in quasi-denial of identity crisis hell.

But I’m not the only one who takes this name thing seriously. Some known and lesser known examples:

My friend recently changed her name from Kate to Cate upon the realization that a K had snuck into her name from some dark corner of the alphabet (it’s Catherine, not Katherine damn it!) and the reception predictably went with gentle mocking, the type that only real friends can get away with. Admittedly, I supported the change from the beginning for my own reasons -how urbane Cate with a C is! Not like her kountry kousin at all.

A girl I know, Jessica, prefers Gessi. With a G. A girl Meaghan I know, prefers the nickname Alex derived from her full _middle_ name Alexandra. Middle as first is her preference. Why didn’t I think of that when I was young? These girls are two of my online education classmates, a place where our names are our single most important features of identity.

In literature we have George Sand and Mark Twain among countless others.

I’m somewhat comforted that I’m not alone and that I can have control over my name in certain contexts, but, even with all these modern name-changing outlets begging me to exert my free will and imagination, I feel impotent. Can I really change my name now, at this point knowing so many people already, having established relationships etc etc, and even if I do change my name, will you really think of me any differently?

I love this passage. There scenery is so vivid, the colors are striking and the shapes so opulent (those fancy lobsters!). This scene is so clear to me I just want to live in it.

Actually I wrote a “review” of the book quasi-recently on Goodreads (though haven’t been active lately on that site…) Here it is, a sort-of response to some of the other Goodreads reviews, copied and pasted:

rating:
bookshelves: read
(edit shelves)
status: Read in October, 2009
review: To say one dislikes or likes a character in this novel I think is to misread it. The characters blend into the scene, and the story is of occurrences rather than drama. This is part of the reason Flaubert is heralded as sort of patriarchal figure of modern lit; he wrote anti-drama. Flaubert was more interested in the wallpaper at the Lion d’Or than Emma and Léon’s weekly Thursday “business”, and he’s blasé straight until the end describing the dismal life of Berthe in the wake of tragedy that itself is written as if it “just happens”. I would accuse Flaubert of unabated indifference if they weren’t _his_ characters in _his_ story. Once readers accept the novel for what it is (or what it is not, rather), Madame Bovary is truly beautiful. The image of watercress and asparagus in the bowl of a fountain wherein little lobsters scuttle about is burned in my memory. There’s beauty in the precision of Flaubert’s words… the novel is in the minutia of the landscape, the banal details that, while riding on the cab or walking through the courtyard, you would see, hear, and feel if you were there. The landscape is alive and Emma, Charles,and all the others are part of that landscape. It’s impossible to dislike Emma or like Charles, dislike Homais or like Justin; you either appreciate Yonville or you don’t.

(from today’s AWAD)