childhood memories

For some reason, this fall has been like a return to childhood. I don't really know why. Maybe it's that this I missed an American, East Coast fall last year, or maybe it's the fact that this is my last "real" fall as a student -- my last fall as a college student, at least. Maybe it's that I've been playing intramural soccer on Sunday afternoons, and it brings me back to after school practices under the weak light of October late afternoons, and all their concomitant orange leaves, shin guards, water breaks, and crisp, fresh air. Or maybe it's that I'm reading all about fractal geometry for my thesis, and it's bringing me back to that other kind of geometry (Euclidian) and the math that I did growing up. (And remembering how much I love math, and how good I was at it, and how different my academic pursuits might have been.) Maybe it's that I'm too tired of reading for school to pick up an actual "grown-up" book and have instead been perusing my monumental junior fiction book collection that still resides in my bedroom. (I'm currently reading "Walk Two Moons" for perhaps the seventh time... I could write a whole other post on that. Maybe I will.)

Whatever the reason or reasons, this fall has been a bit of a trip through my past. I knew that I had changed a lot in the past year, grown up a lot, but I guess I didn't realize how much until I started being able to look back at the person I was growing up, and until I started being interested in doing so. It's fascinating to look back at your life with eyes that now see so much more. It's fascinating to look at geometry for what I thought it was and what I now know it to be. It's fascinating to reread books and marvel and how much I understood and how little I understood. It's fascinating to think about all the assumptions I had about people and the world, and how right they were, and how wrong they were.

I guess you know you're grown up when you can look back at your younger self, and instead of feeling disdain for your mistakes and your naivety, you feel tenderness. I guess you know you're grown up when you feel like your own mother.

I was looking for a fall fling and instead I fell in love with fractals

... having been poking at my thesis, and I'm beginning to wish I were a math major.