Wednesday
Written by Wednesday Klevisha
Originally Published in March 2022
Sometimes I think about the misty past
Before words were used to describe everything
Signify, contain and otherwise compartmentalize
When days were yet to be
But then I'm back here
In the world of words
Where everything is cocooned in definition
And contained in linguistic cups
The taxonomists name the various insects
Physicists name the molecular elements
Astronomers name the stars that hover overhead
So why shouldn't I name myself
I suppose I'm fixated on this idea of transition
A fascination with becoming
That I'm not what I am
And I am yet to be
Don't get me wrong
I have no qualms with Nick
I won’t shudder upon hearing it
And though it's as respectable a name as any other
The name has always been liquid for me
Easy to pour out
If I were born in a different form
My mother told me she would have named me
Sarah Michelle
“You mean like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”
She’s a huge fan of Buffy
But Sarah Michelle Gellar
Wouldn’t begin slaying vampires until 1997
An odd correlation and nothing more
Instead she named me Nick
After St. Nick for his generous nature
Though, my father told me he named me Nick
After a good friend of his from high school
Who got into a motorcycle accident
Who he doesn't talk to anymore
The spelling of my birth name was
N-I-C-H-O-L-L-E-S
Mum told me the spelling was cause I was unique
My father told me she didn't know how to spell
So why didn’t he say something
There’s marriage for ya
Contradictory narratives.
The first of many contradictions.
I find inconsistency irritating
Despite being in a romantic relationship with paradox
And I flirt with ambiguities
In a permanent state of ambivalence.
I see us all as tangled in tense knots
Locked in extreme dichotomy
Folded along these lines
Like origami people.
I do believe that we can communicate
That we are equipped with ways in which we might unfold
And reveal to the world
Our various multitudes
So the name helps me express what is dormant
So as to be seen,
And it also helps me see you
And the lines upon which you are folded.
So, why Wednesday?
The only person I've heard named Wednesday
Is the youngest daughter from the Addams Family
An inversion of the nuclear family
A modern family with a gothic sensibility
You may already be thinking about Jenna Ortega
Though I chose this name around 2018
And used it publicly a year before the show
An odd correlation and nothing more
Etymologically, it is a day to honor one eyed Odin
Who traded his eye for knowledge
However this god is particularly patriarchal
And I operate as parody of patriarchy
The word Wednesday is of a Germanic persuasion
But if you see it through a Romantic lens
Mercredi, Mercoledì, Miércoles
Then the day celebrates the god of Mercury
Mercury, like the Mercury Theatre On the Air
Which produced that famous Panic Broadcast
Scaring parts of New York and New Jersey
Into believe Martians had landed
Perhaps they had
Mercury, like the element with its mercurial nature
Sensitive and responsive to temperature
A Roman word for the Greek Hermes
Hermes, trickster and messenger
Chthonic god of Boundaries
Parent of a child who was either transformed
Or always was Hermaphrodite
Another conflicting origin story
Hermes god of the middle
Mediator of the gods
Guide to Hades
A traveler between worlds
In the middle of the week
And among the strong
Ethereal, transitory Pandemonium
Interstitial and in between
I feel confident navigating between these worlds
Between the west and the east
Between the masculine and feminine
Between all extremes
I consider myself a kind of intermediary
A medium in my own right
A bridge between discourse communities
With feathers on my ankle
I have no desire to be purposefully obtuse
Or unproductively opaque
But if I cannot be who I want to be now
Then when is the day?
