[Taxacom] Unnamed

[Dick Jensen]

Thanks, Jim.  Perhaps more timely now than then.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: James H Beach <beach at ku.edu>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Thu, 26 May 2011 20:46:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Taxacom] Unnamed


Despite the probability than a some percentage of Taxacom readers may have read this back in 1985, this is too good and relevant not to share with all of you already over taxed subscribers.


She Unnames Them

Ursula K. Le Guin

The New Yorker, 21 January 1985



MOST of them accepted namelessness with the perfect indifference with which they

had so long accepted and ignored their names. Whales and dolphins, seals and sea

otters consented with particular alacrity, sliding into anonymity as into their

element. A faction of yaks, however, protested. They said that "yak" sounded

right, and that almost everyone who knew they existed called them that. Unlike

the ubiquitous creatures such as rats and fleas, who had been called by hundreds

or thousands of different names since Babel, the yaks could truly say, they

said, that they had a name. They discussed the matter all summer. The councils

of elderly females finally agreed that though the name might be useful to others

it was so redundant from the yak point of view that they never spoke it

themselves and hence might as well dispense with it. After they presented the

argument in this light to their bulls, a full consensus was delayed only by the

onset of severe early blizzards. Soon after the beginning of the thaw, their

agreement was reached and the designation "yak" was returned to the donor.

Among the domestic animals, few horses had cared what anybody called them since

the failure of Dean Swift's attempt to name them from their own vocabulary.

Cattle, sheep, swine, asses, mules, and goats, along with chickens, geese, and

turkeys, all agreed enthusiastically to give their names back to the people to

whom-as they put it-they belonged.



A couple of problems did come up with pets. The cats, of course, steadfastly

denied ever having had any name other than those self-given, unspoken, ineffably

personal names which, as the poet named Eliot said, they spend long hours daily

contemplating although none of the contemplators has ever admitted that what they

contemplate is their names and some onlookers have wondered if the object of

that meditative gaze might not in fact be the Perfect, or Platonic, Mouse. In

any case, it is a moot point now. It was with the dogs, and with some parrots,

lovebirds, ravens, and mynahs, that the trouble arose. These verbally talented

individuals insisted that their names were important to them, and flatly refused

to part with them. But as soon as they understood that the issue was precisely

one of individual choice, and that anybody who wanted to be called Rover, or

Froufrou, or Polly, or even Birdie in the personal sense, was perfectly free to

do so, not one of them had the least objection to parting with the lowercase

(or, as regards German creatures, uppercase) generic appellations "poodle,"

"parrot," "dog," or "bird," and all the Linnaean qualifiers that had trailed

along behind them for two hundred years like tin cans tied to a tail.

The insects parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral

syllables buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and

tunnelling away.



As for the fish of the sea, their names dispersed from them in silence

throughout the oceans like faint, dark blurs of cuttlefish ink, and drifted off

on the currents without a trace.



NONE were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of

them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in

the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer

than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so

close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. And the

attraction that many of us felt, the desire to feel or rub or caress one

another's scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another's blood or flesh,

keep one another warm or that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the

hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food.

This was more or less the effect I had been after. It was somewhat more powerful

than I had anticipated, but I could not now, in all conscience, make an

exception for myself. I resolutely put anxiety away, went to Adam, and said,

"You and your father lent me this-gave it to me, actually. It's been really

useful, but it doesn't exactly seem to fit very well lately. But thanks very

much! It's really been very useful."



It is hard to give back a gift without sounding peevish or ungrateful, and I did

not want to leave him with that impression of me. He was not paying much

attention, as it happened, and said only, "Put it down over there, O.K.?" and

went on with what he was doing.



One of my reasons for doing what I did was that talk was getting us nowhere, but

all the same I felt a little let down. I had been prepared to defend my

decision. And I thought that perhaps when he did notice he might be upset and

want to talk. I put some things away and fiddled around a little, but he

continued to do what he was doing and to take no notice of anything else. At

last I said, "Well, goodbye, dear. I hope the garden key turns up."

He was fitting parts together, and said, without looking around, "O.K., fine,

dear. When's dinner?"



"I'm not sure," I said. I'm going now. With the-" I hesitated, and finally said,

"With them, you know," and went on out. In fact, I had only just then realized

how hard it would have been to explain myself. I could not chatter away as I

used to do, taking it all for granted. My words must be as slow, as new, as

single, as tentative as the steps I took going down the path away from the

house, between the dark-branched, tall dancers motionless against the winter

shining.

-------------------------
James H. Beach
Biodiversity Institute
1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66044
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