Hi, my name is Pipi de Faux-pas-Bidet. Enchantée!
I thought I had met people with funny names. A handful of Thais, whose birth names are too long to be rememberable, have short nicknames, and somehow, they favour single-syllable names not exactly far away from the English alphabets: I have worked with an A, a F, and I met once an E, who introduced me to an O. My good friend told me she once had a co-worker named Spaghetti, and my mother had a student named Cucumber. Once I encountered a person named Water at a bar somewhere in a city, while each of us sipped our single malts (with water on the side) in front of glass paned windows. And a few year’s back, when I picked up the phone at work, a certain Frau Morgenbesser wanted to talk to my boss (thus for a while I called myself Frau Heuteschlecht). I have studied with Miss Special, and shared a studio with Miss Good.
But. How do you top a Madame Ovary? or Mr. Cigar Stubbs? Maybe a Mr. Baretits? This, is pure bliss! “How to name your baby” from the Paris Review, Summer 1976
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Does the inner voice exist? The inner voice doesn’t exist. Yes it does. No it doesn’t.
For me it does. It takes on several personas, it’s able to speak in different languages, in various accents of some languages, its voice is always different, sometimes a squeaky baby, other times a solemn baritone.
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Ultimately, reading is an egoistic act, a wasted attempt to escape reality. Procrastination in disguise: look, she’s always got a book in her hand; she’s going to grow up to be an intelligent lady! No doubt, reading means going onto fantastical journeys into the wild, experiencing heart-wrenching sadness with an imaginary best friend, tasting chocolates and candies which never existed and will never exist, getting to know about what is going on in the world, learning about the differences between plant species, the poverty of the world, the importance and origins of hair on the body, etc., but at the end of the day (in which all you do is read) all you want to do is to avoid having to do what is to be done, be it taking a shower, cooking dinner, changing the bedsheets, calling your mom, or what not, while your conscience would be soothed by the fact that you read, that you read all day! – it’s an intelligent, respectable endeavour, and despite the fact that you actually have not done anything but read, you are ultimately a good, responsible, and especially intellectually capable person.
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