What's In A Name?

"MY EYES ARE OPEN."
About seven years ago I heard this phrase and I had an epiphany. My life needed change and the one factor that tied me to the past was my name. I was never pleased with my family name because my dad after the divorce completely rejected me and my mother. In fact, his entire side of the family cut communication and all ties to us. So what is in a name? Everything!!!
I was watching Fight Club for about the sixteenth time when I realize that change is an internal process that may take a second or sometimes many years to occur. For me it was in that one second that I didn't want to be the same anymore. Sapien just means wise. The correct use of the word in English is sapient which means wisdom. After my epiphany I went on the computer and began looking up names especially those dealing with comics. There was this strange bust of a character who had already been introduced into the comic Hellboy but no one had seen. His name was Abe Sapien. The toy manufacturer had a picture of a man with zebra-like stripes on his face and a speed dial type of device on his chest. I said to myself this looks neither like an Abe nor a Sapien. Then bingo! Nathan Abe? No. Nathan Abraham? No. Nathan Sapien? Ah-ha!!! So for several years I was just Nathan Sapien then the other part of the name came to me. A friend of mine got engaged and in a lot of the correspondence I kept telling her everything was Zen. Jokingly I said maybe I should add this to my name and she told me it was more of an aspiration than a name. I LOVED IT. There was a certain exotic and spiritual quality to it. In my mind there seem to also be a challenge of whether I could live up to the standards created by the name.
Anyway, that is how I got the name Nathan Zen-Sapien. Oddly enough when I checked the website for the picture of Abe Sapien the manufacture had made a mistake and posted the wrong pic. Apparently, Abe Sapien is a mer-man or half fish/half man creature. If I had known this I probably would not have pick Sapien as my pen and stage name. Nothing against fish people but lets face it the zebra/robot dude was just a little bit cooler.
Keep a peaceful state of mind and make sure that your eyes are open.
N8