More bodies moving upstream—back onto land—than down. Shins splinting, steps slapping, declining the ramp. Onto the pier. Each approaching face a flesh mass, eyeholes searching, mouthholes sucking. Gasping. Heads uptilted slightly bc the incline. You forge a path through them, overcorrecting to make room for Mama. Like leading an expedition through safari grass, slicing a machete path. Garments this close up losing their individual presentation-symbolism, morphing into contingent colors, fabric-distinguished pieces of a bigger, amalgamating patchwork-whole. Home free when the pier-entrance bottle’s neck loosens. When the decline horizontalizes.

Able to speak and think again, without the constriction of other bodies touching yours.

Kettle corn, $7.

Cotton candy, $8.

Carousel-ride, $5—but closed for the season looks like.

What it came down to was names.

Names were what most demonstrated the limits of language.

Of words.

A name was a word.

A single name place-held a person.

In many cases: countless people.

‘Bill’ was a word-sound that signified countless people named ‘Bill.’

‘Bill’s currently living, dead, and yet to be born.

And not only was every ‘Bill’ different, but a single ‘Bill’—that individual person, ‘Bill’—was himself ever-changing.

Capable of.

Words/names describing inanimate, unself-conscious things alone were inadequate, since, like ‘Bill,’ categorical names signified groups of things, each contingent example of which individually different.

Y’know: snowflakes.

Mass-produced products that, in theory, were structurally identical were an interesting case. Their presence as things at all the last couple hundred years had implications for why things were how they were, today. But even then. Product inconsistencies. Machine malfunctions. Wonky Nike tracksuits on extreme markdown at Ross Dress for Less, the sleeves too long for the torso or the swoosh dimensions off.

But people.

People were on another level than all of that.

Than everything else.

Not only different in each individual example, but each individual example changing constantly.

Sure, snowflakes changed constantly. Melting the moment they became snowflakes.

People, though. Not only changed constantly, but were capable of rebooting.

Of living multiple lives.

Of dying and being reborn in new form.

Shedding skin entirely then regrowing an entire new set of cells while still constituting the same ‘thing.’

Retaining the same ‘name.’

Still the Argo.

I’m writing this, but don’t fully understand.

Don’t physically comprehend.

I stamp names onto shit all the time.

Table, door, jacket, cig.

Let’s go, get shit done, use my tools.

Shiiit—I stamp names onto people.

Names that only pertain to the fixed part of them I find useful.

Ex, editor, side, autonomous, roomie.

I do this. We do this. This is what we do.

Like the ladies ushering home soldiers whose friends got merked, who lost limbs, who witnessed physical carnage in WWI. Who had no experience of what physically being there felt like.

No amount of saying would make them understand. Will make me understand. Will make you. The absurdity, the inadequacy, of stamping a name onto a person and fixing them as that name-thing.