21 August 2002: Retroactive

She’s back. Last night was our first night sleeping in each other’s arms. My lips and tongue are numb and swollen from all the kissing.

I’ve never been with another dragon before. Like the buffalo, it’s a very rare power animal. I never really thought about what it might be like to find a female one. Now I’m finding out. Wow.

Having decided to call her Dragon Lady, I now feel that I must go and change her name to Dragon Lady in the previous entry. Just as when Zebra recently emancipated herself from being Taarna’s slave, I went back and found the entry where I’d called her Slave, and changed the name to Zebra.

All true names are retroactive. I wasn’t raised with the first name Nicholas, but as soon as I claimed it, my memory integrated it: when I dream about my childhood now, or remember it in waking memory or hypnotic regression, I hear my parents and friends calling me Nicky. That’s how I knew it was really my name all along. To me, at least, a good name taps into something more deep and true than my linear time perception.