train of thought.

I find myself rummaging through stacks of paper from freshman year, and I have to look at my watch to remind myself that it is, in fact, October 20th, 2008. It's like those annual Christmas-cookie-recipes that consume your house with the scent of memories--those smells that somehow allow you to remember exactly what you were doing the previous year when you caught that same aroma. I remember when I wrote this. I was just beginning to get into the swing of the high school scene, no thoughts of college in mind, aside from the occasional, "I wonder what it'll be like to be a senior," thought that sometimes knocked on the door of my head." I instinctively look out my window. Have you ever noticed that whenever people reminisce or try to grasp the concept of time, they almost always gaze out a window? I wonder why. Perhaps it is because the glass that separates them from the scenery they can so clearly see is much too familiar, like the next turn of a calendar page when you sneakily peek at next month's picture, as if someone is watching you. The view from my window is the same as it was two years prior, but I am not. The leaves, trees, and grass are all the same, but somehow they are different. This ensemble of nature seems stagnant, yet cyclical. It is as if they keep repeating their turns in season just in case I might have missed something, for I am in forward motion. I do not make my rounds; I make footprints. But the leaves keep falling right outside my glass. The tree just stands there. And the grass just rests. Much to their delight, I suppose, I seem to notice something different each time I look out that window. I am reminded of who I was, who I am, and I wonder what I will be next time I turn to look outside through that expectant window pane.