Naming & making: Naming is simple-minded, but making is a complex activity in the world that manipulates names along with other things. Things. There is a materialization of language going on here. Despite modern linguistics, there remains a potent connection between a name & its thing: not arbitrary despite the fact that sign & signified bear no apparently necessary connection; names take on a numinous quality through long habit: forms of life. So the fact that I call one particular furry quadruped cat & another dog, does not require anything but an arbitrary connection between sign & signified--nevertheless, long habit produces overlapping webs of association & meaning surrounding these words. The connection between word & thing is not metaphysical, but that does not prevent it from being ontological. (Am I using these terms correctly?) Okay: the question, really, is: How do we get beyond naming & into thinking?