How are you pronounced?

I have been reading Joan Didion's Blue Nights and among the many, many thoughts that curl around me as I read, ponder, imagine is her reference to Ntozake Shange. I know that name. Have I read her book, her poems?

Medical alert: my brain has been on vacation, pining for estrogen, low in neuroplasticity, a term used first by the Polish neuroscientist Jersy Konorski -- not the writer Jerzy Kozinski, although pronouncing either name is vaguely orgasmic. I Google "Shange," learn how to pronounce "en-toh-ZAH-kee SHAHN-gay." Say that, enjoy the pleasure: "en-toh-ZAH-kee." Makes you want to change your name, does it not? To have a name that sings itself?

I changed my name when I was 34 years old and completely divorced. Completely, that is, compared to kind of separated (still living together), formally separated (living apart), legally separated (paying money to a lawyer, signing a piece of paper, counting months until divorce). That was in the gray ages when someone had to be at fault. I wanted to leave, so I accepted the charge: Mental Cruelty. Say that, lips pressed, breath expelled, a pout, tongue to teeth, "Men... tull... crew... ull... tee!" Say "Mary." Say "Marry." "Mary does not want to stay Mary-ied."

Over a Sunday morning plate full of tidbits from Frisch's breakfast buffet in Cincinnati, Ohio, I announced to my lover, Len, that I must change my name. When he asked what name I was considering, I said "Vladimir Shostakovitz." A whole alphabet of mouth play.

Ntozake knew that "Paulette L. Williams" was not a name that was going anywhere. I knew the name "Mary Schwab" could not hold the woman I would become. I wished to break completely, dump the "Mary" as well as the "Schwab." But I was drifting without the tether I'd been taught to desire -- life as a wife -- and needed something familiar in the lone container of my self. Though I longed to be a "Maya" or a "Simone" or even an "Ntozake," I kept "Mary" for safety, for assurance, and looked to goddesses for the unexpected.

Everyone loves Athena; everyone knows Diana. More private, a quiet healer, the goddess I chose was known for protecting her believers from evil spirits. By the time she reached the Greeks she was the cat-goddess.

Still worshiped today (see per.Bast.org), her name creates a yearning.

Say "Buh." Breathe "ahh." Push your teeth with "sss." Then tongue it: "tuh."

"Buhahhssstuh."