What is your name?

My name is wind. I am transparent but not shallow and I am cool, but extremely volatile. I am that which you feel passing against your skin when you are out beneath the sheen of the sun, I am that which ruffles the hair and pulls up your skirt rudely. I am not living in the sense of heart beats and pumping blood. I am complacent with the job I have to circulate the air and affect the weather. Wherever you go, there I shall be. I am present in every day, in almost every way. I am the most powerful thing in the entire world. I know how to be soft and soothing in the swelter of mid day, I know the role I play in the midsummer’s storms and the wintery gale-force shadows. I am the fingers on the little children’s windows and I am the tapping on their roofs in the night. I am the eerie unseen but clearly felt force.

No, sir, I asked “what is your name?” Well, my name is water. I am damp beneath your collar after a slow drizzle. I am that which soaks you when the skies open with malicious intent and I scream against the tarmac reminding everyone that I come and go as I please. I am the life force, without me the African continent will dry out, without me the world will shrivel to nothing. I am water, also known as rain, or snow, or seas or hail or lake. I am flowing and moving, torrential and damning. I move quickly and I seep into all things, consuming the space I find with a drip-drip or a shy trickle. I come in floods and I come in sprinkles. My vastness is mystifying and my depths are unknown. I hide the majority of the earth and I am as calm and peaceful as I am rage-filled and vengeful. Do not take me for granted, because I have my own temperament. Do not pollute me, for I will pollute you and kill many.

The man at this stage was absolutely exasperated and over-whelmed. All he wanted was a name. “Please sir, I just want to know what your name is so that I can...” Yes, yes, my name is Mr Shoe. I am that black-buckled shiny number at the end of your stumpy looking leg. I keep your little piglets warm and your heels protected. When you thrash me against the stones and mire I still keep your skin and flesh intact. When I start to rip and tear, leak and smell, I maintain the responsibility and duty of keeping you in your place. You kick the stones and cones with the end of me, so that my nose is ripped open and begins to bleed. And when you are lazy and tired you drag my behind on the rough ground until it wears away. I am a shoe, not a slave. Do not abuse me or misjudge my value, because without a shoe you would be cold, you would suffer pain and discomfort. When you take for granted that I am inanimate, be aware of those that should think that of you and your purpose. I am a shoe, wear me proudly.

“Look,” said the man, “I only wanted to know what your birth name is? The name you were given as a human being when you entered into the world?” The gentleman looked upon this man and frowned. He said “Have you always lacked the ability to understand when someone is telling you important things?” The man became sharp and repugnant with this remark, he straightened himself and looked at the gentleman and said sharply, “I do not think you are well Mister, in fact, I think you have some serious sickness...” “You judge too quickly! I am telling you things you fail to think about, fail to feel, fail to inhale as part of your daily takings and sustenance!”

“What is in a name? You are so desperate to know my name. Well, I ask you, what is in a name?” The man looked struck. He seemed to throw sparks from the strands of hair that had begun to stand on end. “It is a simple question, the kind of question one asks regularly and gets a regular type of response out of. What makes you so exempt from the question, or to say the least, the answer?”
“I am not exempt. I have seen you day-in and day-out from across the way, bellowing questions at people and getting your answers, but this is not what gives you the answers at all, because at the end of the day, the regular questions which you ask every person are not the questions which lead you to the clarification you need in this life. I am not exempt at all. It appears you exempt yourself from what you would term ‘irregular’” The gentleman lifted his hat slightly, crossed the sandy path and stood beneath the great beech. Just then the sun shone through the great branches and seemed to halo him in golden light. “Stop asking the questions you think you need, stop barking those questions in succession and repetitiveness and you shall see the answers without needing to ever ask for them.”

I am the earth; I leave you with an entire world to discover piece by piece. I cannot literally speak to you, or tell you about the natural happenings of life, but I give you what you need to create the learning and discovering. But do not abuse it, or mislead it. For there is only one earth and one moment.

And with that, the gentleman lifted his hat to the man again, bowed slowly and smiled on his glance upwards. As he turned around and began to walk away with a slight left lope, the wind gusted up and blew the light autumn leaves about the man. In the wind he could smell the coming autumn rains in the distance.