my name would have been kofi, friday born, had my parents been west african. a co-worker, an akan from ghana, tried to show me earlier the nuances and the apparent joy with which they would name their kids after the day they were born.
hours later and unblunted by the staidness of my apartment, i am still atwitter in the wonder of that story. and certainly it is not just insatiable vicariousness on my part. how one culture privileges one thing over another and to not understand it all. always, there is a case for bewilderment as much as there is for beauty.
of course, this could be nothing else than raw exoticism, a vain grasp for the strange and the other. in east asia, they would say “flower in the mirror, moon on the water.”