Naming the Bird

I’m sitting on the porch, bathing in green: green grass, green bushes, green trees, green air. Then, in the dark green crown of an oak—or is it a maple, or a birch?—the annual flute recital begins. It’s the thrush, giving it his all with his double syrinx, filling the evening with his cool, green tune. But what kind of thrush is it—wood thrush, hermit thrush, veery? And instantly, like the bird’s syrinx, my consciousness splits in two. One part of me wants to rush inside, grab my phone, and hold the Cornell Lab of Ornithology app in the direction of the trees so I can identify the bird. The other part just wants to sit and listen.

What’s with us humans and this need to name things? Even in the Garden of Eden, where pleasure was supposed to be the thing, Adam was naming the animals, as opposed to just enjoying them. Along with original sin, he passed this compulsion down to us, and now here we are, with our apps, identifying not only birds and beasts, but trees, weeds, flowers, fungi, and even rocks. I am not anti-word per se, but I suspect that this Adamesque obsession detracts from our ability to experience wholly what is before us, and robs us of at least some of its pleasure. It engages our left brain, leaving its twin on the right to languish.

No question that there is pleasure in coming up with the right name for something. But it’s more of an “aha I’ve got you!” satisfaction, akin to swatting a mosquito, as opposed to the more contemplative delight of simply perceiving with the eyes or the ears or the skin.

You know how blissful months-old babies are (when changed and fed and burped and not asleep, that is). They look wide-eyed at the world, and listen wide-eared, and are full of wonder. But soon Adam’s heritage begins to manifest and the hitherto blissful infant points her chubby finger and says Da-da, and doggie, and it’s all downhill from there. She has tasted the heady pleasures of identification, and there’s no going back.

I was a Biology major in college, and in those days that meant mostly learning the names of things. Sure, we learned about mitosis and meiosis, and Darwin, and that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, but mostly we memorized names—and not just in English, but in Latin. French being my other major, this all felt familiar—just another huge vocabulary lesson. I thought it was hilarious that the scientific name of the quaking aspen was Populus tremuloides.

But now, 90% of the names that I learned in Botany and Field Zoology have fled my brain, as have the names of French novelists, poets, playwrights, and critics. Nevertheless, I continue to take pleasure in plants and animals and books. Actually, I take more pleasure in these things now than I did back when I had their names at my fingertips. This may be less due to memory loss than to my exposure to the Buddhist thought that permeates our culture. Or perhaps I’m finally experiencing the wisdom of age, of which until now I had not an inkling.

Correlation is not causality, but the fact is that, as I lose the names of things, plants, animals, and people, my appreciation for them increases. Just because I can’t remember whether you were baptized June or Jane, John or James, doesn’t mean that I have forgotten that you have children living far away who will be visiting soon, and that you are fond of your crazy, slightly overweight dog, whatever “their” name is.

So where is all this going? It is a fact that word loss, anomic aphasia, does not improve with the years, on the contrary. But if my hypothesis is correct, just think of what we stand to gain. I can imagine a future summer’s evening when I’m sitting outdoors in my wheelchair and, having forgotten both the word for thrush and the word for bird, all I can do is point a tremulous finger in the direction of the trees. And take in all the notes.