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The ocean ends, like life and vision, at a horizon that is the fault of the curvature of the eye and earth, with no proof of true end at all. The ocean seems indefinite. It presents the eye with a line that is an illusion. We linger on its shores or live on its surfaces, but never have a means of encompassing the whole. … A single drop is as endless as all. The world is the world regardless of where you stand. … Water offers to us our own reflection, but not as a mirror does. We see our own face on the surface of the water, but we see through our face the depths below.

Dan Beachy-Quick, A Whaler’s Dictionary, 2008.

If one cannot identify the native plants in a particular landscape―and almost any name will do―the plants tend to blur into one another and become a confused and confusing mass of vegetation, or bushes. In other words, if you can’t name it, you can’t really see it. In this lies the magic of names and naming. To name a thing is to give it a second creation, a creation by the viewer.

in Going Back to Bisbee by Richard Shelton, 1992.

Morrie.

Short for Morrison. Short for James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree.

Morrie is my daughter’s cat, which is another way to say, Susan is Morrie’s person. The shelter named him Morrison, and Susan figured he had experienced enough confusions in his life without starting life in a new home with a new name, so it stuck, though it seemed natural to both shorten and lengthen it. Morrie was rescued from a dire hoarding situation, where he was one of 150 cats removed from a house in Phoenix. He was so poorly socialized he was practically un-adoptable, and spent months at the shelter before Susan began her patient work of helping him live in a proper and loving home. In just a few months he has gone from wild cat to lap cat, living his best life.