first principles

when you turn 25, you can rent a car without paying the underage premium -- it is the age where you are statistically likely to be responsible and productive member of society.

it is also the last age restricted barrier to cross.
until you reach retirement and senior benefits of course.

things have been busy for me these past few weeks. the kind of busy where there is just no time to stop and think and be. i had planned on a quiet birthday, locked away in my room, whittling away at my "to do" list. but apparently i have better friends than i realised.

thank you all.

--
i think somewhere in the transition to working life, i lost sight of my path in all the busyness. and perhaps this is a good time to slow down, have more conversations, and remember to live.

we should never be too busy to spend a morning jumping in puddles, and looking under rocks.

The Remains of Education

I remember 3 speeches from graduation.

The first, was by the writing professor. "There are many things that remain from education," he said, "like Incompletes and Withdrawals... those will stay with you forever." Then he continued, "but what also remains, from our point of view, what grows quietly as we watch you working on your papers, or talk with you late into the night... what has never been mentioned, is love."

The second, was by the dinosaur scientist. "I am an unlikely scientist," he told us on the quad, amidst the rain, "and you also -- especially in these uncertain times -- should embrace contingency, because it is the unexpected and unplanned for twists and turns we take in life that come to define it."

The last, was by a graduating student. "I remember this from class," he said, "Exit, chased by a bear." He continued, "Bears are the nagging problems and unexplained questions that have chased us these past four years. And now that we no longer have bears chasing us, we must find our own bears to chase."

crescat scientia; vita excolatur

May knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.

dawn

"I think its good you have the feelings you have, even if it makes you sad," H told me, "I'm sorry I don't have anything more profound."

"You think too much," I said.

It was 5.01 am when I headed home. The birds were up, but the streets were silent; the world was still asleep. As I zipped through the quiet streets on my bike, running stop signs and red lights, I could not take my eyes of the sky: it was the most beautiful mix of yellow and pink and the palest of blues, and the city itself seemed to glow with a calm confidence in the golden light.

I continued on past my apartment to the lake, gathering the liquid light. I watched the gulls swoop and dive and call out to each other... until the sun came up, and the world began to wake.

home

i was in pilsen yesterday, signing the lease on my new place. i'm excited to move. the place itself is nice, if a little eccentric in it's design (i'll be living in a basement, with doors randomly inserted into hallways to turn them into rooms).

but the real draw is the neighborhood. hyde park is a violent mix of ivory tower scholars, rich old (and often black) people, US presidents, and gang violence spilling occasionally spilling over from the surrounding neighborhoods. pilsen is mostly a latino corner of chicago (i'm actually just a few blocks away from the national museum of mexican art). the streets and houses are a little more run down, but the place somehow just feels so much more at ease with itself: families stand around outside their houses, carrying their smallest kids in their arms and chatting the day away while their older children play on the sidewalk; others set up stands selling cut fruit and snacks on their front porch... and when people look at you, there is no hostility or suspicion, just a kind of polite, detached curiousity (i can almost hear them thinking "hmm. an asian kid").

3 blocks south of my place, there was a group of italian restaurants. i picked up some pasta to go, and when i got home, was pleasantly surprised to find bread as well, and a whole clove of roasted garlic to go with it. and for a brief moment, i had a memory of another home, in another world, from another life.

hopleaf

I had dinner with an old friend at a gastropub famous for it's mussels. "Mussels for two" gets you a huge tub of mussels, with bread and a basket of fries.

"I don't like to think about bad things," she says to me, "because there's no point".

I remember the conversation; it's one we've had before.

"But if you ignore what is, how can you be real?" I ask. "And if you don't face something, how do you move forward?"

I think way back we began as very similar people, but somewhere along the way, made opposite decisions. Maybe one day we'll meet again, somewhere in the middle.

Mayflies

I went for a run by the lake today. 6 miles! Furthest I've made it in my cycle this year. The mayflies were out in clouds so thick you could actually see them as a black haze around the trees. And when the path got near a swarm, you would feel them glancing off your cheeks (I kept worrying I was going to inhale some of them).

It was L's birthday today. 23 generations of Mayflies (46, if this species spawns in the fall as well). Gosh we're old.

in a perfect world we would all be able to lick our plates in public and not feel bad about it.