In twenty-one years, I have not considered changing to Todd. The bizarre course of my life suggests that Odd is more suited to me, whether it was conferred by my parents with intention or fate.

A person's name is a fate-conjuring incantation.

So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!

The twilight seems invidious.It simply can__ let the sun hide away when darkness is just another name for night..

Imagine, if you will:A bright yellow star lit the darkness somewhere in deep space, accompanied by its rather dysfunctional family of nine deceptively ordinary-looking planets. During its enormously long lifetime many beings had named it from the far ends of distant telescopes, including it into numerous star clusters and constellations as they were perceived from their vantage points. Once, or maybe twice, creatures simply looked up into their own skies to name it from their own now long dead and deserted worlds. In more recent times, beings from a world that orbited a different sun far away gave it a name too _ creatures that called themselves Human, who travelled here and settled on one of its inner planets. The planet they chose to make a new home on? They called that Deanna. They called the star Ramalama.

It is good practice to never fault someone for their birth name, being that it is always of far greater importance how men speak of you, than the name by which you are addressed.