at 26 + 2 weeks

i still find there is much to gain when you pay attention to children.

kids chalking up the sidewalk in front of MoAD today.

"you can never grow too old for fruit-by-the foot,"

said my 7-year-old god daughter as she ripped me a piece of color by-the-foot last

night

age & travel

a writer friend of mine wrote that "the older he gets, the more he travels, the less he knows." i understand what he meant now.

it seems the more places i see and experience, the bigger i realize the world to be. the more that i become aware of, the more i realize how relatively little i know of it. how many places i still have to go, how much more of it there is still to learn.

maybe that's enlightenment enough. to know that there is no final resting place of the mind. no moment of smug clarity. perhaps wisdom, such that it is, for me, means realizing how small i am, and unwise, and how far i have yet to go.

~anthony bourdain (at the end of his peru episode in season 1)

in a name

last month i read the namesake by jhumpa lahiri. my initial reaction: it made me miss my parents. although just a bart trip and a car ride away, it's so easy to get busy in my own little world of work and friends. the holidays, thankfully, have been great time to take advantage of the proximity to family. the time spent is simple but so special. take last friday: a birthday dinner at a cheap vietnamese restaurant followed by squeezing onto the couch on a cold, rainy night to watch the "expendables" with 3 of the most important people in my life. maybe i'm romanticizing the mundane moments, but i can't deny that at that moment i was truly happy.

--

the book also made me consider all the nicknames i have or had in my lifetime: cj, camel, c-dawgg, cam, mealy/meal, camiye, camizzle/camiz, homie, c, etc. some have stuck while others have been lost in memory, but each name is relegated to specific person(s), places, times in my life. it is interesting how a nickname is not just something someone calls you, but reflects a relationship, an intimacy, an inside joke that you share with certain people.

"there's so much in a name and so much more in you"